Hi, and welcome back to The Unseen Podcast, a podcast dedicated to missing
people, unresolved cases, and UK true crime. Today we're going to be
covering the disappearance of Jill Brown from Essex in nineteen seventy eight when she was
just nineteen years old. Her family have never stopped looking for her and they
still want to know what happened to their daughter and sister and why she disappeared.
This episode is about a missing person and so does not contain any descriptions
of violence. However, listen to discretion is always advised. Dovercourt is a
seaside town which is located in the County of Essex. It's described as a
small town which has shops and cafes along the front which the local and any
tourists that came to the town use. During the nineteen seventies, the Brown
family lived in Dovercourt and were a large part of the community. Will and
Edna Brown were well known to the locals in the town as they ran a
local shop and cafe called the devon Calf on Oakley Road in Dovercourt. This
has been described as being close to the local pub called the Devonshire Arms,
and therefore was a local spot where many people would go in and pass through
it regularly. The Brown family lived in Dovercourt with their three daughters, Janet,
Jill, and Elizabeth. They were a religious Catholic family and attended church
at Our Lady Queen of Heaven in the town. The Brown family therefore were
well established and this continued as the three sisters grew up. Jill Brown was
the middle child of the three, and her sisters have described her as very
quiet and a homely person. While she enjoyed spending time with her friends,
she loved nothing more than being at home and was very content with this.
Her family have said that she was not someone who was always going out and
she was an early riser in the home. She would always be downstairs before
anyone else, making herself breakfast, and this was something she loved to do.
She loved being with her family and just enjoyed her own space and being
a homebody. Elizabeth described Jill as someone that she looked up to, and
she stated on the Missing podcast that she would take her around over Court and
spend time with her friends. They had a close relationship despite the ten year
difference between them. Jill was a warm person who loved her family and also
loved animals. Elizabeth explained on the Missing podcast that she would often bring home
animals and remembered that she once tried to smuggle kittens home in her coat.
By nineteen seventy eight, Jill was nineteen years old and still living at home
with her parents and Elizabeth. Their older sister, Janet, had got married
and moved out of the house. Jill worked at a local laundry, which
was located on Brooklyn Road in Dover Court. The Christmas holidays of nineteen seventy
seven had come to an end, and by January third, nineteen seventy eight,
people were beginning to start back at work. Her family have recently confirmed
that the third of January was in fact the first day back at work for
Jill, and that morning she'd set out from the family home as she normally
did. That day was known to have been an extremely foggy one, and
Jill always walked to work. Her family stated that along the way she would
often meet a friend and then they would continue on to their job. This
was Jill's normal routine and there was no reason why this should not have been
the case. On January third, nineteen seventy eight. This day, however,
was different. Elizabeth later told the Missing podcast about the day that Jill
went missing. She had left the house like any normal day. Elizabeth stated
that there was nothing unusual, the only thing being that she remembered how foggy
that morning had been. She recounted that when Jill finished work, she would
normally get on the bus home and would return to the bus stop near their
home at around five thirty pm. You could usually time Jill to the minute
to when she would normally get off the bus. Elizabeth said that her parents
would normally drive her to the bus stop so she could meet Jill after work.
Her dad would cross her over the road and she would stand and wait.
When Jill's bus pulled into the bus stop that day and the doors opened,
Jill did not get off. This was a surprise and it was certainly
odd. Jill was normally a person of habit and she would get on the
same bus each night. Elizabeth told her parents that Jill had not got off
the bus, and they didn't seem immediately concerned, telling her that perhaps she'd
missed it or was laid out of work that day. They returned to the
bus stop for the next bus arriving. However, Jill was not on that
one either. When eight pm rolled around, that was when Jill's parents began
to get concerned that she had not arrived home. Elizabeth remembered that her dad
asked her if she knew who the woman was that Jill worked with and usually
met on her way to the laundry. Elizabeth did know where this woman lived,
as she'd been there before. The family went to the woman's house and
asked her if she'd seen Jill that day. This woman told them that she
had not actually been in that day and had called in sick with the flu,
and so had not seen Jill at all. She therefore couldn't help them.
She did point them in the direction of another woman who worked with them
that might be able to help. The family then went to this other woman's
home and asked her if they had seen Jill or might know where she is.
This woman told them something that they were not expecting. Jill had not
been at work that day, and it appeared that she had never arrived after
setting off from home that morning. This was immediately a worry, and Jill's
parents were eager to try and find her as quickly as possible. They reported
her disappearance to the local police. However, they didn't seem as eager to
try and track her down as they were. They were told they would have
to wait twenty four hours to report Jill missing, and the opinion was at
the time that as she was nineteen, she was still a teenager and was
probably off somewhere with her friends and would return. Jill's family, however,
knew that this was not likely and was not something that Jill would be doing.
Elizabeth recalled that her father decided to spend all that night driving around and
searching for Jill in the local areas of Dovercourt and Harwich and looking in all
the places he could imagine she might go. Her mother spent all night ringing
around people like her friends and their family and asking if Jill had been in
contact with them or they had seen her. Nobody had, and her father
was unable to find her. He decided to return to the police station at
four point thirty the next morning, and he didn't take no for an answer.
The police eventually decided to open a missing person's report for Jill. Elizabeth
recounted on the Missing podcast that the police came to speak to the family in
their home, and they also took fingerprints of her parents and her to try
and figure out which were Jill's fingerprints and items in her room. They also
searched the home, inquiring about attic space which had been screwed shot by the
previous owner. Elizabeth said that they gave her parents a hard time, even
suggesting that they may have had something to do with Jill's disappearance. This was
hard for the family to hear. The other theories suggested by police was all
so difficult to hear. They suggested that Jill could have taken her own life.
This was something that the family did not believe. There had been no
indications that anything was wrong in the weeks and months prior to her disappearance,
and her family didn't believe that there was any reason why she would have wanted
to do that. Her family since confirmed on an appeal by Essex Police that
Jill took none of her belongings with her that day. All of her things
were still in the home, including a rice, which Jill had specifically asked
for from her parents that Christmas. These were things that her family believed that
she would have wanted to take with her that day if she were perhaps choosing
to leave her life behind. There were no real indications as to what could
have happened to her that day, and police were left with attempting to track
down people who may have seen her on her walk to work that morning.
Police did speak to a few people who had seen things that morning, However,
there were not many people that had witnessed anything at all. They spoke
to a workman who had shouted down to Jill that morning as she was walking
by. He didn't have much to add to the investigation, however, he
was looked into. Another man, a cold delivery man who knew Jill from
delivering to the family shop, also saw Jill that morning. He stated that
he saw her walking on her usual route to work and that this didn't seem
out of the ordinary. Through these inquiries, not much was gleaned. However,
they did establish that Jill had not got to work that morning, and
that her journey had either changed or been interrupted along the way. The question
was how and why. The police investigation at the time was not rigorous and
was hampered by the lack of resources. During the nineteen seventies, many missing
person investigations relied on witness sightings and little else. There wasn't much noted at
the time, and the media coverage of Jill's disappearance was few and far between.
Her description at the time that she disappeared was that she was five foot
two inches tall with shoulder length brown hair. She was last seen wearing a
blue mark. On the day that she disappeared. It was hoped that someone
would know something. However, time began to pass without anyone giving any irrelevant
information. Jill's family were left devastated by her disappearance, and Elizabeth explained that
her childhood had been forever changed by it. She stated that her parents became
quite strict and into her teenage years, wanted her to be home by eight
pm and wanted to know where she was at all times. This, she
knew was understandable after what had happened. Her family continued to try and find
out what had happened to Jill over the years, and always did everything they
could to figure it out. They hoped that someday she would return home and
explain where she'd been and what had happened. In nineteen ninety nine, an
age progression image was made of Jill showing what she would have looked like at
age forty. This, they hoped might drum up some information and that someone
might recognize her. Just last year, the sisters, alongside Essex Police,
made an appeal for information in Jill's disappearance. They explained that Jill had missed
so much in their family, father's days, mother's days, the birth of
her nieces and nephews, and that this is something that devastates them the most.
They appealed directly to Jill and told her that if she was watching,
they just wanted to know that she was safe, and that was all that
mattered to them after forty five years of not knowing where she is. They
said that this mattered all the more now that their father had sadly passed away.
He had always hoped that Jill would return. They said that their mother,
Edna, was now ninety one years old, and they hoped that they
would find out some information before she also passed away. On the Missing Podcast,
Elizabeth stated that she had always hoped that Jill was out there and that
she would come home to them eventually. She said it was only recently that
she had begun to consider the possibility that foul play had been involved in her
disappearance and that someone else was the reason why Jill had not returned. She
said her sister Janet had said there was a third possibility that they would never
find out where she was. This is the one that they really hope is
not true. It's clear Jill's family are desperate for answers and they hope that
someone can remember something despite the time that has elapsed. This is something I
always say on this podcast. You just never know who's listening and who might
know something. Essex Police made a statement on the appeal video from Detective Inspector
Lydia George, who said that they care very much about Jill's case and they
want to solve it for her family. They have stated that the case is
still open and that they would welcome any information, no matter how small it
is, that may be able to help the investigation. If you know anything
about the disappearance of Jill Brown from Dovercourt in nineteen seventy eight, please contact
Essex Police on one oh one or through the Major Investigation Portal link which will
be in the show notes. Thank you for listening to this episode and if
you want to hear from Elizabeth directly. Then please go and listen to the
missing podcast episode, which you can find on All podcast players are in the
link in the show notes. If you'd like to support the podcast further,
then you can on Patreon and contribute to the exclusive polls to get extra bonus
episodes every month. You can also get access to new episodes early and ad
free. You can use the link in the show notes to visit Patreon and
see what we offer. You can also support us by reviewing the podcast wherever
you listen, including Spotify, and also just share the episodes. You can
subscribe on YouTube and follow us on social media as our ways. I'm Caprice
and this has been unseen the sh