UK UK - Beata Bryl, 23, Wooburn Green, Bucks, 28 July 2006

Perodicticus potto

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This case has haunted me ever since I saw a poster appealing for information about seven years ago. I just Googled it again and was sad to see that a solution was no closer.

On 29 July 2006, the burnt remains of 23-year-old Beata Bryl were found in a woodland near the village of Wooburn Green, Buckinghamshire (about 20 km north of London). She had been struck over the head more than 20 times before being doused with petrol and set on fire. Her body was wrapped in bed linen, and a pillowcase with a "distinctive" pattern of hearts and stars covered her head.

Beata is last definitely known to have been alive at 11.29 pm the night before her body was found. She was caught on closed-circuit television as she got on a train at Leytonstone tube station in East London. No one knows what station she travelled to. The bags she was carrying in the CCTV footage have never been found.

Beata had moved from Poland to London in 2004 - one of many Poles who came to Britain to work following Poland's entry into the European Union. At first she found a good job and seemed happy, but then things began to fall apart. A Guardian article from September 2006 gives the fullest account I have found of her story:

Born in Gliwice on February 27 1983, Beata was brought up in the fold of a Catholic family and took her first communion at the local church aged eight.

By her early 20s, Beata, who spoke fluent English, talked of little but travelling to Britain. And when she first arrived in Britain in 2004, everything seemed to be working out. "She rang me all the time, she seemed happy," said her mother. "She was working in the catering business and doing some security work, and she even went with the boyfriend to France on holiday."

To keep her in touch with home, Mrs Bryl sent her daughter regular food parcels from Poland, and in turn she received money sent by Beata, who knew her mother was out of work and struggling.

Over the months, she moved to different addresses in east London, but Mrs Bryl began to realise that her daughter could be in danger.

"After about a year things changed. I realised something was very badly wrong. She told me she was being molested and beaten. I suspect this older man may have been using her for sex with other men. She would run away, but he would always find her. She would ring me up, sounding terrified, saying she was being threatened."

Her daughter's mental health deteriorated, until in August last year she suffered a breakdown and spent a week in a London hospital. While she was there, her mother contacted the Polish consulate and demanded that it help her daughter to return home.

"I wanted to go to London and bring her home myself, but I had no money, so I had to rely on the consulate," she said.

In October last year, her daughter arrived at the front door of the flat, looking painfully thin, exhausted and scared.

"She stayed a few months, but then this man began to call again, insisting she must return to London, calling every day, luring her back," said her mother. "There was no talking to her then, she refused to listen, and she returned to this man and to London."

Anti-trafficking charities believe Beata's story contains evidence that she was trafficked into the UK, even though at first she may not have realised she was being treated as a commodity. [...]

On Beata's return to the UK in February this year, the evidence mounted, according to her mother. "Sometimes she would call in the middle of the night, crying and desperate. She once said she was being taken somewhere in a car against her will by this man. She said she was being kidnapped."

In her flat, where pictures of Beata adorn the mantlepiece, Mrs Bryl has two folders of letters and documents testifying to her attempts to save her daughter from the danger she believed she was plummeting into. The documents are mostly negative responses from the Polish consulate in London, the Polish police, Interpol, and other groups which she approached for help.

Her last attempts came early in June when phone calls from her daughter abruptly stopped, prompting Mrs Bryl to contact the Polish consulate once more and report her daughter as missing. She received a reply a few days before Beata's charred remains were found. "Re your missing daughter," the letter read. "We are not able to help in this matter."

But the mother did have one more opportunity to speak to her daughter. It came in a phone call she received as she was travelling on a train for a day out in the Polish countryside on Thursday July 27. "She rang me and I was so delighted," she said. "But I knew immediately something was wrong. She said someone was threatening to kill her, she ordered me to return home and lock the doors, saying they were threatening me too. She sounded terrified."

Two days later the macabre discovery by a motorist in the woods outside Wooburn Green provided proof that the threats were not empty.

Police were not certain where Beata had been living in the weeks before her death, but assumed it was somewhere in London.

An inquest in July 2007 recorded a verdict of "unlawful killing." A pathologist who testified at the inquest said that Beata's head injuries were caused by "an implement that had a threaded screw-type pattern on it." Police believe her body was moved to Wooburn Green after she was killed elsewhere.

At least 13 people have been arrested in connection with Beata's death at one time or another, but all have been released without charge (they were not publicly named, in accordance with British law). Thames Valley Police offered a £10,000 reward for information leading to her killer. Two years after her death, they increased it to £25,000. But to no avail. Her killer remains at large.

Britain's tabloid press normally thrives on the murders of beautiful young women, but Beata's death received surprisingly little coverage. I suspect this has to do with her nationality (there is a lot of prejudice against Eastern Europeans here) and her mental illness. She's now all but forgotten. I would like to see justice for her.
 
I wonder if they can/have traced the sheets to a manufacturer or anything like that? Maybe they would eventually be able to figure out who those sheets belong too.
 
I swear that when I first searched for her case years ago, I saw an appeal with a picture of the sheets' fabric pattern. But I can't find it now for the life of me.
 

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