So what did she tell me?
First, let’s go back to that night. Christmas Eve, 1988. It almost feels like I was there. When Maryanne told me the story, I could see it, feel it, smell it.
Maryanne Manon had been waiting for Sonia’s phone call since she sent her that letter back in 1981. She prayed every day that Sonia would call. She never gave up hope.
When Sonia eventually called, the night before Christmas Eve, Maryanne was prepared. She booked herself in at a hotel close to Sonia’s house. When Sonia called again, not long after Sorrel left with Alfie, Maryanne drove to the house and the two women talked. This was much earlier than Sorrel claims. More like 8 or 9 p.m. Sonia was drunk, yes. But Maryanne says she was far from unreasonable, far from violent. She was, however, broken. Sorrel had destroyed her. Not physically, but emotionally and psychologically. Sonia was a wreck.
Almost.
Calling Maryanne was Sonia’s last stand.
Maryanne followed Sorrel, driving behind him until he reached the Wentshire Forest Pass, where she saw Sorrel stop in the layby. It was raining heavily by then. Maryanne got out of the car and put her hood up to obscure her face and approached. Slowly.
But by the time she reached the car, she realised that Sorrel was not there. He was not looking under the bonnet, as he would claim.
Maryanne was confused. Had he known what was happening? Where had he gone? Had she missed him in the rain? She approached the car to see Alfie asleep in the back seat. Maryanne was horrified but also elated. This was her opportunity, placed before her on a golden platter. Sorrel’s car was unlocked.
But where on earth was Sorrel?
Maryanne paused by the passenger door, hesitating over whether to simply snatch the sleeping child. If she was caught, she thought, if this was some ambush, at least she would have tried. At least she would have done what she swore she would try and do. She leaned inside, and what she saw at Alfie’s feet chilled her to the bone. In the footwell lay an axe, rubber gloves and a roll of bin bags. For a horrible few moments Maryanne thought she was too late. She thought Alfie was dead. She checked his pulse. He was unresponsive but breathing. Maryanne now thinks he’d been drugged. Sonia, remember, had been prescribed Amitriptyline for her depression. Maryanne thinks it was this that had been given to Alfie.
Maryanne had made her promise: she’d sworn Sorrel would have no more victims.
She bundled the sleeping boy into her car and drove away.
For all Sorrel knew, on his return from whatever he had been doing in the woods, his son had run away into Wentshire Forest. Therefore, Sorrel’s story of what happened that night is only partly true. He did stop. But if it was because of the engine, where was Sorrel when Maryanne arrived? She certainly didn’t see him looking under the bonnet. Whatever plan he was putting into action deep in the forest, whatever hideous act he was preparing, involving the axe and other objects Maryanne saw in the footwell, when Sorrel came back to his car, Alfie was gone.
But then there was Sonia. Poor, broken Sonia, utterly consumed by alcohol and still within Sorrel’s control. Almost. She’d made a choice, too, when she called Maryanne.
Sonia believed Alfie would be taken from her eventually. Sorrel had her believing that social services were primed and ready to remove the boy from her care at the drop of a hat. So, however she looked at it, she could see no way that she wouldn’t lose her son. Maryanne gave her at least some control over how it happened.
And when Sorrel took Alfie that night, Sonia, despite her drunken state, noticed something. Her medication had gone along with her son. Used to Sorrel’s tactics, she could see only one explanation. That medication was going to find its way into Alfie, and then Sorrel, posing as the ever-devoted father, would alert the authorities to his little boy’s drugged state. Sonia realised if the authorities found her meds in Alfie’s bloodstream, it would be the end for her, the inept mother.
This was Sorrel. He went for her like a predator, straight for the jugular.
Sonia clearly didn’t know about the rubber gloves and bin bags. The axe. Thankfully, she hadn’t ever considered such a fate might await her son.
Maryanne had a completely different fate in mind for the boy, though. One she had promised Sonia she would make happen. She knew somewhere. Somewhere Alfie would be able to grow up. Where that little boy would want for nothing. It wasn’t strictly above board. But money can buy you secrecy, she said.
A long time before Sorrel Marsden was even in her life, when she was still ‘flotsam’, Maryanne Manon had met a couple. She wouldn’t tell me who they were. All she’d reveal was that she’d been an imposter at some rich people’s party. At the end of that party, in the early hours, Maryanne had confided in this couple and they in her. It was an earnest 3 a.m. conversation that Maryanne had never forgotten.
She could never get the couple’s plight out of her head. Somehow it made Maryanne think of the nuns and the home, of her parents tossing her away without a second thought. Maybe meeting the couple was meant to be, she often thought.
She wanted to do something for them. And she had waited years to be able to do it.
As she told me this, it was all I could do not to get on my knees and beg her for clarity. Maryanne’s story was coming together, a half-finished jigsaw. But still it wasn’t complete.
In return for helping the couple the rest of her own life would be comfortable – paid for. She knew her eyes were failing, and she knew one day she’d be blind. By helping them, she was ensuring that she’d be looked after – and looked after well.
The high-end home-help service confirms this part of the story for me.
And the knowledge that Alfie would be safe – the way this plan worked for Sonia, for Maryanne, for the little boy himself, suggests Maryanne is telling the truth.
But how on earth was it so simple?
Serendipity and chance meetings have plagued this story. And is that not what life is? Moments, meetings, chances carved from some vast and infinite chaos? Don’t we carve ourselves little paths through a never-ending miasma? Do we carve them for others – consciously or unconsciously? Did Maryanne carve one for a vulnerable little boy?
And what about the ‘psychic’ thing? It’s the one thing that still makes no sense to me.
Maryanne tells me that was a message – a message for Sonia. To let her know that Alfie was still safe. They couldn’t contact each other in the normal ways. If the authorities found out about their plot, Alfie could have been returned to Sorrel, who may have gained full custody of him. Neither Sonia nor Maryanne wanted to risk that outcome. So Sonia instead waited quietly for Maryanne’s ‘sign’.
I asked her how that could possibly have worked – all she said was that Alfie was in a ‘royal court’ – what was that supposed to mean? Was it a preagreed code?
I did beg then, I begged Maryanne to be clear, to finish this story. I admitted that, yes, I had been trying to solve this one all along. That it was the only one of my investigations that needed an end.
For me, for her, for Sonia, even for Sorrel. This needs an end.
Maryanne told me it would all become clear. We were nearly there. She said there were a few more people I needed to talk to. She gave me their numbers. Then she gave me this envelope.
She gave me The End.
‘Open it after you’ve talked to your last,’ she said. ‘You need him to tell this story. You’re the only one in this world who can get him to do it.’
We both knew who she meant.
Episode 6: The Monster
—I was a virgin when I met him. In my head, I thought the first person I ever slept with would be the person I would stay with.
He knew that. I told him.
We were fooling around. He told me to close my eyes. He told me he was going to do something and I’d like it.
It hurt. It hurt, and I cried but he kept going. He told me that I’d loved it.
I didn’t consent.
—He used to make me do th
ings I didn’t want to. I was young. I wasn’t experienced. If I told him I didn’t like it, he would get angry. He would say everyone else liked it and there must be something wrong with me … So I did it … I let him.
—I dyed my hair. He said he loved it. His exact words were: ‘When I’m doing you from behind, I can pretend it’s someone else.’
I told him I would dye it back and he told me I wasn’t allowed to. Not until he was bored of it.
—He wanted it six times a day. Whether I wanted to or not. The rest of the time he ignored me. I would just sit there wondering what I’d done, what was wrong with me, why he didn’t want me…
—I got upset with him, I got upset with all the other women he was flirting with, all the phone numbers and photographs he would leave lying around. I cried and shouted at him. I was furious. He put his hands around my throat and squeezed until I was quiet. He did that every time I spoke up for myself. He did it so many times that I never dared to speak up again.
—We had a signal. He would put his hand on mine. On the outside it would look like he was showing … love? Affection? Those words don’t even … they sound so wrong. When he put his hand on mine like that, it meant ‘shut up’. It meant ‘stop talking or you’ll pay later’.
I only ever paid once. That was all it took.
—He held the number of people I’d slept with against me. He mentioned it at every opportunity, whenever he wanted his way. He made me feel disgusting. He made me believe I was nothing, no one. It wasn’t long before I believed it too. I was nothing and so he could do anything he liked to me.
And that’s what he did…
—He made me sleep on the floor. He said if I behaved like an animal, that I deserved to be treated like an animal.
He woke up in the middle of the night and found me there. Then he … I’m sorry … I can’t…
Welcome to Six Stories.
I’m Scott King.
The voices you have just heard have all been digitally altered to hide the identities of the speakers. All I will say about them is that they are many. And they are all talking about the same man. None of them has ever spoken out until now. And there are many more I could have included.
When Sorrel Marsden’s seven-year-old boy vanished in Wentshire Forest on Christmas Eve, 1988, it seemed that the entire world sympathised with his plight. Rightly so. The world then empathised with the agony that Sorrel and Sonia must have felt when their only child vanished and was pronounced legally deceased in 1995. It is this case that we’ve been looking at, through six different pairs of eyes.
We have now reached our final account.
I want to warn listeners that what you’ll hear in this episode may disturb and may upset you. We’re heading down a dark path. So be prepared.
The outpouring of sympathy, the fundraising, the support that came the way of Sorrel Marsden in the wake of Alfie’s disappearance was tremendous. Alfie Marsden was a household name. He was even mentioned on BBC’s Comic Relief appeal in 1989. All of it, to no avail though.
And while Sorrel has been empathised with around the world, Alfie’s mother has been condemned. Sonia Lewis has been portrayed as a cold and uncaring alcoholic. Her behaviour and lifestyle have, in fact, been the subject of significantly more scrutiny than Sorrel’s claim about what happened to his son that night.
I want to get the story from the horse’s mouth, as it were, so let’s hear Sorrel speaking to BBC Cymru Wales in 1988.
—It was pouring down and it was dark. I just wanted to get Alfie somewhere safe. And it was safer to get out of that house and over to my place. I just wanted him to have a proper Christmas.
He was fast asleep for most of the journey, thank God. Then, about halfway into the forest, I heard this sound coming from the engine, this rattling. It didn’t sound mechanical though. More like a tapping. It was horrible. It was almost like something alive in there that wanted to get out! I had no choice but to stop. What if something had gone wrong and we crashed? I knew that that building site was nearby, so I pulled over. I didn’t know anything about cars, engines. When I went to take a look that was when … he must have got scared and run away … I couldn’t find him … I had no torch or nothing like that. I’ll never forgive myself…
Sorrel Marsden has stuck to this story since he told it to first-responders on Christmas Eve, 1988. He’s never wavered. And there has never been any evidence to prove Sorrel had anything to do with Alfie’s disappearance.
Sorrel doesn’t often mention the strange occurrences at the Great Escapes site. However, he, like anyone who lived nearby, must have been aware of the alleged haunting of the building site, and the whole of Wentshire Forest. This is all the audio I could find where Sorrel talks about the forest. It makes me wonder if there was a part of him that was trying to portray himself as a fearless hero.
—I knew all the stories about that place, but I had no choice. What if Alfie was there? What if something had happened to him? I didn’t even think about all that nonsense; all I wanted was to get help, to find my boy.
Thus Sorrel Marsden cemented himself early in the world’s psyche as a poster boy for the hardworking, grieving father. He attended every press conference and spearheaded every search, while Sonia was marginalised, driven away and then eventually forgotten. Even to this day, Sorrel’s annual pilgrimages to the site help maintain his carefully constructed character. Sorrel’s last television interview about what happened was for a rather tawdry documentary series in 2013 called Missing: UK.
Extract from Missing: UK – series 1, episode 1, 2013 (Down There Productions)
—Sonia moved on quickly after Alfie disappeared. She found it easier than me to forget about him. Without guidance, without help, she was vulnerable to, let’s say ‘outside influences’. Other men. There was a steady stream of them the minute I left, apparently. It showed how much she cared for Alfie and me, didn’t it? But people like Sonia can’t change. No matter how much we want them to.
It’s taken an inordinate amount of time to get Sorrel Marsden to agree to an interview. It was only when I told him I’d talked to Sonia that he said yes. I just want to point out that we only have Sorrel’s word about who Sonia saw after the two of them broke up. And if she did, I don’t see what bearing it has on, well, anything.
The interview took place on Sorrel’s terms. There would be no face-to-face. No Skype. I was to call him on a phone number that would be emailed to me. It was rather cloak-and-dagger and, I felt, unnecessary. However, he clearly wanted control over the situation, so we went ahead.
I’ll be honest, speaking to Sorrel conjured some strange emotions in me. I managed to hold myself together as we spoke, but it was difficult.
Sorrel Marsden exudes an energy and charm that I’ve never before felt about another human. Despite our interview being over the phone I feel myself drawn to him when he speaks. I hang on his every word. Despite everything. But I know that this is a skill he has spent years perfecting. I wonder whether it’s conscious, what he’s doing. Is he aware of his inflection, his power? Or is it instinctive, like a snake waiting to pounce? Unfortunately for Sorrel, he’s not the only one who has hidden venom.
—Do you know how many times Sonia came to look for Alfie? Less than the number of men who came to her door in the weeks after he disappeared. That tells you all you need to know about her, doesn’t it? I knew that’s what she’d be doing as soon as I left. Sorry to be so blunt, but it hurt to see how little she cared for me and for Alfie.
Sonia’s alleged promiscuity is something Sorrel never fails to mention when discussing Alfie’s mother. I wonder what it has to do with him, but I stay quiet.
—It was the same when he was first born and I was working all the hours God sends to earn enough money to provide for them; to keep him in nappies and her in booze. Sonia wanted to take the easy way out. But parenting isn’t easy. It’s a full-time job. All she could do, though, was laze around the house, drinking. She used to be so lovely, so bea
utiful, such a good person. It was a tragedy what Sonia became. I did everything I could, but ultimately it was her who was supposed to be looking after our child and our home.
And when Alfie went missing, I was out with every search party, and when they had stopped, I kept going. But did Sonia ever come to one? We both know the answer.
Sorrel’s right. Sonia was not present at the searches for Alfie. It was something I did discuss with her. In fact there is quite a lot I discussed with Sonia that did not make the cut of episode five. This was intentional, as I want to put some of Sonia’s claims to Sorrel. Not right now though. They can wait. There will be a time when I know I can spring not just Sonia’s words on Sorrel but the words of others. I need to choose my time carefully, though. I need to wait until he is in a corner, a place where he cannot back out. There is always the possibility that Sorrel will hang up. And I am more or less sure he is using a burner phone to speak to me. If he does hang up and slips away, I suppose that will say more about what’s being levelled against him. Let’s see.
Wentshire Forest was eventually bought by the Ministry of Defence in 1996, a little over a year after Alfie was declared officially deceased. The forest became inaccessible to the public, and it was clear that Alfie Marsden, nor his remains, were ever going to be recovered. Sorrel has the utmost respect for the military and does not resent the MoD for buying the forest.
I talk Sorrel along his well-trodden paths. We discuss his visits to the area, the shrine along the Forest Pass dedicated to his boy. I’ve been to visit it – an old bus-shelter, lovingly converted for free by a local craftsman. Inside it’s rather cosy, the walls lined with bunches of wilted flowers and soggy cuddly toys – donations from well-wishers. There are handwritten cards with religious sentiments and two battery-operated candles flicker atop a makeshift altar. In pride of place stands a framed school photograph of Alfie himself. It’s the one that everyone knows. The bus stop is technically on MoD land, but they turn a blind eye to its existence. A well-maintained barbed-wire fence looms ominously between the trees just behind it. When he comes for his annual pilgrimage here, Sorrel walks the length of the pass every day. Rain or shine. In the corner of the shed is a bucket containing umbrellas and a waxy, fleece-lined rain jacket hangs from a hook on the far wall.
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