Murder of Debbie Griggs

Debbie Griggs was a 34 year old woman who disappeared from her family home in Deal, Kent, on 5 May 1999. She was married to Andrew Griggs and was pregnant at the time of her disappearance.

Investigations and trial
At the time of her disappearance, Griggs had three sons with her husband Andrew and was pregnant with her fourth child. Andrew had previously claimed to relatives, medical professionals, and neighbors that Griggs had been struggling with postpartum depression (a claim which Griggs wrote in her diary was false) and was not compliant with medications. A day after her disappearance, Andrew told police that Griggs had depression and had "stormed out"; as a result, her disappearance was initially treated as a missing persons case. Though Andrew later became an initial suspect in the Police's investigation into her disappearance, prosecutors at the time were not trained on matters of domestic abuse, and the Crown Prosecution Service found in 2003 that the evidence submitted to them offered "no realistic prospect of conviction".

A new investigation began in 2018, upon which Andrew was later charged and found guilty of her murder following a trial held at Canterbury Crown Court. Griggs was handed a life sentence with a minimum tariff of 20 years.

Possible motive
Debbie had discovered her husband was grooming a 15 year old girl and wasn't willing to cover up for him. It seems he feared she would get half the family freezer business if she divorced him over the abuse.

Discovery of remains
Her remains were discovered in 2022 after a tipoff to police. Her remains were found in the back garden of a house in St Leonards, Dorset where her husband had moved to after the initial investigation.