S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
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What is the story of Sheena's disappearance and reappearance?
You can sense that you're at the beginning of having real agency, where you're like, what am I good at? Where do I want to go? What do I want all of this to look like? To be 15 is to still be a child, but a child first grasping the raw, undiluted potential of life. It's the age Sheena Walker was in 1990, when she first disappeared from her mother, her siblings, her friends. Her mother got the call that they'd found her six years later. When the Devon police figured out Sheena's true identity, immediately, they set about how best to reunite mother and daughter. Taking into consideration, of course, that the daughter in this case now had two young daughters of her own. The officer tasked with setting up this sensitive reunion was Brian Slade, a member of the original team that conducted the search of Little London Farmhouse.
I joined the police in 1987, and in 1996, I was an aide on a CID office at Tall Bay.
Slade had been assigned to be the point of contact between Sheena and the police ever since they still thought Sheena was Noelle.
How did Sheena Walker's identity affect the investigation?
She maintained that she was the wife of David Davis.
During the month between the Halloween arrest and the police figuring out that the Davises were in fact the Walkers, Sheena was laying low at Little London Farmhouse with her children and almost nothing else. The police had seized everything, and Sheena didn't have a penny to her name, to any of her names. So she was being looked after by social services and Officer Slade. But then the facts from Interpol, the police learning her true identity, and all of a sudden, her mother, who she'd spurned six years earlier, was on a plane to reunite with her. Barb Walker was the only person who never stopped looking for Sheena. When Sheena first disappeared, of course, there was outrage, media coverage, police investigations.
What role did Barb Walker play in searching for Sheena?
But as the months folded into years, the crowd thinned out. Until it was just Barb, trying to get Sheena's story on TV in any way she could. America's Most Wanted passed on her pitch. Unsolved Mysteries didn't call her back. So she settled for an episode of the shortly-lived program called Missing Treasures.
I'm Al Waxman, and this is Missing Treasures, a search for our lost children. Children change people's lives. They allow us to see the world anew. Their loss can be devastating.
For Barb, Sheena's birthdays came and went on the calendar, marking not her arrival in this world, but her absence from it. After a few years, a Canadian police officer suggested to Barb that she should just move on and forget about her, because she wouldn't be the same kid anyway. But then the call finally came, and she got on a plane to meet her now 21-year-old daughter. Detective Bill McDonald sent Slade to meet her.
Bill instructed me to go to Heathrow Airport and collect Barbara, and we went through the process of bringing Barbara and Sheena together. She was a nice lady. She's really pleased to meet us. Clearly, Barbara was really keen on meeting Sheena. Sheena obviously didn't know the game was up at that time, and we didn't know what reaction we would get. Hence, we used social services to because obviously the children have got to be a big priority, and we need to make sure that we dealt with that situation as delicately as possible.
They set up the meeting in a social services building, in a room with a children's play area. They brought Barb through the door, and there was Sheena, the daughter she never gave up on, in the flesh, a mother herself now, The moment that Barb thought might never happen was here.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the story of Sheena's disappearance and reappearance?
0:51–2:09
2
How did Sheena Walker's identity affect the investigation?
2:09–3:04
3
What role did Barb Walker play in searching for Sheena?
3:04–5:17
4
What were the challenges in Sheena's reunion with her mother?
5:17–8:16
5
How did the police uncover Albert Walker's crimes?
8:16–11:59
6
What was Albert Walker's connection to Ron Platt?
11:59–17:56
7
What was the significance of the timeline during the investigation?
17:56–23:54
8
How did the events on July 20th, 1996 unfold?
23:54–37:35