UK UK - Tina Bell, 18, left home at 8.20pm to buy sweets, the following year her skull and two bones were discovered, Billingham, Teesside, June 2, 1989

[MsMiniSleuth]

The sister of a brutally murdered teenager says she has now given up hope her killer will ever be caught.

Tina Bell was just 18 when she disappeared on June 2, 1989, and the following year her skull and two bones were discovered.

Police believe the sadistic killer had tried to dissolve her remains in some kind of chemical bath, Teesside Live reports .

Now sister Angela Wade fears the person who killed Tina will never be brought to justice.

Tina left her parents’ home at about 8.20pm, and was last seen walking away from a flat above a fruit shop.

Her mum and dad, Bob and Cath Bell, would never see her again. And sadly, both went to their graves never seeing justice for their daughter.

In April 1990, a skull and two other bones were found by two youths out shooting pigeons at the ICI Cassel Works. Forensic tests confirmed they were Tina’s.

A medical expert said Tina's skull had been subjected to “corrosive chemical action”.

Police believe that Tina was probably murdered the same weekend she vanished.

And while several people have been questioned in connection with the horrific case, it remains unsolved to this day.

[...]

Murder of teenager, 18, who was 'dissolved in acid' will 'never be solved'

Angela Wade fears those responsible for sister Tina Bell's death 30 years ago will never be brought to justice

www.mirror.co.uk

 

[MsMiniSleuth]

A teenager, who went missing 34 years ago, after popping out to buy some sweets for her younger brother John, had ties to both a convicted paedophile and a convicted murderer.

Tina Bell, 18, disappeared in June 1989, in the town of Billingham, Teeside, in an area then dubbed the Murder Mile, but her remains were not found until the following April, on wasteland near her family home.

Initial forensic results suggested that her body had been dissolved in acid, leading her case to be dubbed the ‘Acid Bath Murder’ but it later emerged that the land was blighted by chemicals.

Now, a cold case investigation, by Silent Witness star Emilia Fox and criminologist Professor David Wilson, for their TV series In the Footsteps of Killers, has revealed that Tina lived within walking distance of both predators - and both men could be suspects in her case.

One of the men, Billy Dunlop, who is currently serving a life sentence for the 1989 murder of Julie Hogg, partied with Tina on the night she died and was one of the last people to see her alive. Her body was discovered only a few streets away from where Julie’s body was found.

Billy was acquitted twice of murdering Julie in 1989, but became the first person in the UK to be re-tried under double jeopardy rules after a campaign by her mother.

‘It seems that Tina was mixing with some dangerous characters,’ said Wilson. ‘I’ve been looking into Billy Dunlop and I’ve discovered that by the time Tina was in this flat with him on the night she disappeared, he’d already got a history of vicious assaults and violence including against a teenage girl.’

The other, paedophile David Courtney, dubbed the ‘child rapist preacher’, who died in Wakefield Prison after being convicted of child sex offences, lived 300 yards from her home and she would regularly have sleepovers with his children.

Former Surrey Police detective superintendent Graham Hill, who led the investigations into missing toddler Madeleine McCann and schoolgirl murder victim Millie Dowler, told the programme: ‘We have a convicted paedophile, who is living 300 yards from where the victim was living when she went missing.

‘She knew his family. She knew his children. She slept over in his house. It’s highly conceivable that David Courtney was abusing Tina and he murdered her to cover up that abuse.’

[...]

Did convicted murderer Billy Dunlop kill teenager Tina Bell?

A teenager, who went missing 34 years ago, after popping out to buy some sweets for her younger brother John, had ties to both a convicted paedophile and a convicted murderer.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[MsMiniSleuth]

Watch In The Footsteps of Killers episode shown February 9 2023.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/in-the-footsteps-of-killers/on-demand/73534-006