Tuesday 20 February

Tuesday 20 February marks a shift from separate accounts of missing women toward a practical theory of how they may have been taken. Around this date, the investigation compares the women’s routes and turns its attention to unmarked vehicles, while a parallel thread traces how Terri Briggs and Berri Briggs were persuaded to arrange a meeting in Newcastle.

Date and narrative position

The date appears as a chapter heading after a scene in which a man leaves a house noisily, hears a woman call out, and takes keepsakes with him. The heading then opens the next morning’s account, with Eve Strong stopping for coffee on her way to work and noticing a local newspaper headline. This transition places a private intrusion beside the public investigation, without establishing that every event in the surrounding narrative occurs on the same day.

The date therefore serves as a point of orientation within interleaved plotlines rather than a complete account of one day. The chapters around it move between police work and the twins’ online exchanges, gradually bringing a pattern of deception into view.

The investigation compares the women’s movements

In a briefing led by Gary Baxter, the investigators set the women’s last known journeys beside one another. Becky Allsopp had travelled from Newcastle Central Station toward Sunderland by Metro and was last accounted for after leaving the Stadium of Light area, beyond the reach of the CCTV cameras. Catherine Caslaw had gone to the cinema and then for a drink with her boyfriend; after an argument, she left. Louise Usher had been to the gym after work, and her father said that she sometimes walked home, sometimes took the bus, and only occasionally used a taxi. Felicity Wanless had been out with friends, left the pub before them, and did not reach home.

The contrast between these routines gives the inquiry a specific question: how could the women have been approached without attracting notice? The detectives assume that they were forced into a vehicle, but have no reports of shouting or screeching tyres. The lack of an obvious disturbance makes the means of approach as important as the places where each woman was last seen.

A vehicle becomes a line of inquiry

CCTV later provides a concrete lead in Jill Richards’s disappearance. Footage follows her from a supermarket past McDonald’s toward Roker Avenue, then picks her up again at a bus stop outside the Salvation Army. A car-sales showroom across the road captures her checking the timetable before flagging down a vehicle shaped like a black cab. It has no sign on its roof.

That detail conflicts with the police warning to hail only white cars and only when they display a taxi sign. Eve Strong recognizes the significance: the footage suggests that someone may have exploited the appearance of a cab while disregarding the safety cues the warning identified. The vehicle does not, by itself, establish who was driving or prove the whole method, but it strengthens the investigation’s suspicion that an apparently ordinary pickup could conceal an abduction.

The twins’ messages and the Newcastle meeting

In a parallel thread, Terri Briggs and Berri Briggs receive messages from someone they know as Mario. He reminds them of an earlier conversation and invokes the people who supposedly bought them their phone. The twins ask for a new photograph rather than relying on the pictures they have already seen on Facebook; the reply turns the request back toward them. Later messages press them to confirm that they will meet, and the twins agree to travel by Metro to Newcastle and meet opposite Central Station around ten.

Their plan includes setting a phone alarm for half past six so they can leave before their mother usually gets up. The messages thus connect an online exchange to a concrete journey and an intended meeting place. Later, examination of the phone identifies the number as registered to Jason Dodds and shows that he had posed as someone else, pressed the girls for pictures, and persuaded them to skip school to meet him in Newcastle. In an interview, Frank McQuillan describes how they had presented themselves as slightly older and used internet photographs of attractive young men for a Facebook page. The date’s surrounding narrative consequently links the investigation of suspicious pickups with another form of deception: contact established through messages and converted into a planned encounter.