‘I have lost all faith in the police’: Sister of missing North Yorkshire man criticises force

Victoria Orr was talking about her brother Steven’s disappearance on the new series of true crime podcast The Missing - which is released today.

Steven Clark went missing on 28th December 1992 whilst walking from his home in Marske to Saltburn with his mother, Doris. He was last seen going into a public toilet in Saltburn. Detectives from Cleveland and North Yorkshire Police forces launched a cold case review in 2020 and subsequently arrested Steven’s parents, Doris and Charles, who were now in their 80s, on suspicion of his murder.

The couple were arrested when somebody came forward in 2020 claiming to have seen Steven close to his home in Marske less than an hour after his mother last saw him. Victoria believes the claim, made nearly 30 years after her brother’s disappearance, was made in an anonymous letter to police.

“Why it was taken seriously, I really don’t know. It has devastated our family,” said Victoria.

All charges were dropped in February 2021 due to a lack of evidence.

Speaking about her parents’ arrest, Mrs Orr, who now lives in Northumberland, said: “It was just horrific. And the whole time I’m panicking thinking, well, I want to talk to my Mum and Dad. How are they coping? You know, they’re in their eighties now… this is just a horrific shock. So it was the beginning of a very long nightmare.”

She describes being interviewed by the police about whether there was any history of violence in her childhood home as “traumatising”.

Despite earlier reports upon Mr & Mrs Clark’s release, Victoria confirms to the podcast that her parents are in the process of making a formal complaint against the police through their solicitor.

She also describes the turmoil that her parents experienced when police arrived to search their house, even going to the lengths of using an excavator to dig in their garden.

“At one point there were about nine police vehicles outside my Mum and Dad’s house and a forensics tent up in the garden. They dug up the garden looking for who knows what and of course didn’t find anything. But this was in the middle of Covid as well. So we were in the middle of a lockdown.

“My Mum and dad had to go and stay in a hotel. They couldn’t come and stay with me even though I wanted them to because it was against the rules and against the law.”

The podcast, presented by journalist Pandora Sykes, encourages its listeners to work together with Locate International, a charity that uses volunteers from around the world to reinvestigate all 13,000 missing person cold cases at UK police forces.

In 2022, Locate International successfully identified 26 people from its investigations into 128 different cases of missing persons and unidentified remains.

“I want to set the record straight,” says Victoria. “I want people to be searching for Steven. I want them to know that he comes from a family that love him and and just want him to come back.”