Police search site over woman's 1992 disappearance

Police are searching a site in Leeds in connection with a woman's disappearance 34 years ago.

Patricia Hall, who was 39 and from Pudsey, vanished in 1992 and her body has never been found.

Officers from West Yorkshire Police's Major Investigation Review Team were searching a site at Fulneck in Pudsey in connection with the disappearance, a force spokesperson confirmed.

"The search for potential evidence follows recent information received by the team and is being carried out on a speculative basis," the spokesperson said.

They added: "There is nothing to suggest any link to the Moravian Church, which owns the site."

Assistant Chief Constable Sarah Jones, West Yorkshire Police's lead for specialist crime and criminal justice, said: "We are conscious of the understandable public focus that this activity is likely to attract in this high-profile case.

"Patricia's family have been informed, and we will be keeping them updated.

"We obviously have a duty to act on any new information we receive but at this stage we are keeping an open mind."

Jones said officers "would welcome any new or additional information that could assist us in getting Patricia's family the answers we know they still desperately need".

A cold case review into mother-of-two Hall's disappearance concluded last year without establishing any new lines of inquiry.

An inquest into her presumed death opened in April this year. The hearing was adjourned until a date yet to be fixed.

The coroner in that hearing, Oliver Longstaff, said Hall was last seen on 25 January 1992 "when family members spent the day in Ripon".

He said there had been no sightings of her since, no "circumstantial evidence" that she was alive and she had made no attempts to "contact any family member or social acquaintances".

"There is reason to suspect that Mrs Hall's abrupt and complete disappearance is a consequence of her having died a violent or unnatural death," he said.

Her husband Keith was tried for her murder but was found not guilty in 1994.

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