‘We still don’t know exactly what happened that night,’ says Rachel. ‘I’ve spoken to other people with family members who have gone missing, and normally they have received a much fuller picture of the last known 24 hours of their loved ones. For us, though, even after all these years, there’s new information being revealed about the night Richard vanished. It was only after reading a magazine interview with James that we discovered the two of them spent time listening to new songs in the Embassy basement.’
It is not clear at what time, and for how long, Richey’s visitor, Vivian, was in his company that evening, or whether or not he left the Embassy with her.
The following morning, James waited in the hotel lobby for his friend. Richey, normally prompt and punctual, failed to appear. James became concerned when he received no answer from Richey’s room, and requested that a member of staff use a master key to unlock it. On entering, there was no sign of Richey. They found a bath full of water and a gift box that contained several items; videos, books, photographs and a note, simply reading ‘I love you.’
This was addressed to, and later passed on to, his former girlfriend, Jo. Wrapped like a present, the box was decorated with literary quotes and a collage of cryptic photographs which included everything from cartoon characters to decaying mansions.
Richey’s receipts show that the day before the box’s discovery, he had spent £9.60 at a Surrey printers. Might that have paid for some of the photographic decorations on the box? If so, for how long had Richey been planning to leave this parting gift for Jo?
Twenty-four hours later, band manager Martin Hall filed a missing person report at Harrow Road police station. Staff working at Hall or Nothing were granted access to Richey’s address book, and began phoning around his contacts. Nobody had heard from him.
Rachel recalls that Graham Edwards was initially reluctant to ask many questions. ‘My dad was of the opinion that the police are there to solve crimes, and he was a bit uncomfortable with it all. He put an article in the Daily Mail, saying, “Please make contact, Richard”, and went on Red Dragon Radio to appeal. My dad felt Richard was an adult and had made his own decision … but then he also knew he was ill, so was it his own decision?’
James travelled to the States alone, while Nicky Wire made calls to various British hotels to ascertain whether Richey had checked in. On 15 February, Cardiff Police issued a public statement appealing for information regarding Richey’s whereabouts:
Police are anxious to trace Richard James Edwards, a member of the pop group ‘Manic Street Preachers’ who has been missing from the London area since Wednesday 1st February, 1995 when he was seen leaving the London Embassy hotel at 7.00am.
It is known that on the same day he visited his home in the Cardiff area and is still believed to be in possession of his silver Vauxhall Cavalier motorcar. Registration – NO: L519 HKX.
Richard’s family, band members and friends are concerned for his safety and welfare, and stress that no pressure will be put on him to return if he does not wish to do. They stress that his privacy will be respected at all times.
Police are asking anyone who has seen Richard, knows of his whereabouts, or have seen his car, to contact them at Cardiff Central Police Station on 0222 22211 and ask for the Crime Desk or CID office.
Should Richard himself hear or see this appeal, his family and friends are anxious for him to contact one of them or the Police to let them know he is safe and well. They again wish to stress that Richard will not be urged to return or reveal his whereabouts if he does not wish to do so.
A few days later came the news that Richey’s car had been found. The Vauxhall Cavalier was discovered parked at Aust Services on the English side of the Severn crossing. Inside were photographs that Richey had taken of the family after the Christmas period. The ticket attendant who reported the car on 17 February claimed he had first noticed the abandoned vehicle three days earlier, on St Valentine’s Day.
It was reported there were signs that someone had been staying in the car for some time. Nicky Wire believed Richey had been sleeping in the vehicle. Its battery was flat and inside was an empty wine bottle, rubbish strewn everywhere, and, in the cassette-deck, a Sex Pistols tape.
The discovery of the car outside Bristol saw a third police force become involved. In addition to London’s Met and South Wales Police, the Avon & Somerset force also joined the search. Graham Edwards was told by the latter that it was his responsibility to pay for the car to be towed back to the family home. It seemed apparent that the vehicle was not viewed as crucial evidence.
‘The police didn’t want to know anything about the car,’ says Rachel ‘They never investigated the car; never looked into why it may have had a flat battery, or the circumstances around that. I don’t believe they took anything out of there to look at. What my dad brought back in the car was a hold-all bag, an empty bottle of wine, the photographs, Richard’s medication and a cassette tape.’
Richey’s passport, his Severn Bridge toll receipt and some spare change were found at his Anson Court property. Richey – or somebody else – must have visited and had placed the items in full view of anybody entering the flat.
A review of Richey’s bank statements and receipts from the days before his vanishing, showed that he withdrew cash in two further transactions after January 25. He firstly visited an ATM in Cardiff, taking out £200. A day before his disappearance, he withdrew a further £200 from a cash machine in Surrey. From the total amount, £44.40 was spent on new pyjamas and presents for the band, while he paid the printers £9.60. This would have left him with £346 – a substantial amount of cash to be carrying around in 1995. The money was never found or accounted for.
Three weeks after Richey had vanished, on 25 February, the Edwards family home received a surprise visit at 3.20am from the local Gwent Police, apparently at the behest of London’s Met. ‘They searched all through the property and out into the back garden,’ says Rachel. ‘My mam and dad were really disorientated and alarmed. The police didn’t really say why they were doing it; just that it was in relation to Richard going missing.’
Following the announcement of his disappearance, the sightings began to flood in. Rachel travelled to London to see the police file and made some photocopies. She brought back two statements given to the police, with two days separating them, detailing reported encounters with Richey in Newport, Gwent.
The first, dated 21 February 1995, was a witness statement by 19-year-old David Anthony Cross, a second-year student at Gwent College, Caerleon.
A friend of mine named Lori Fidler, an American girl is friendly with Richie [sic] James Edwards who is a member of the band called Manic Street Preachers. Lori has been a friend of mine for three years. In that time she has visited Britain on four occasions from New York in America where she lives. The Manic Street Preachers were or are Lori’s favourite band. When she has visited Britain particularly on the last occasion she followed their tour. Lori has often shown to me photos of the band as well as photos of Richie James Edwards taken with her. Although I do not follow the band I know what Richie James Edwards looks like having seen the photographs.
Cross relates how, on Sunday, 5 February, he caught a bus from campus to go to the gym. Arriving at Newport bus station at 10am, he turned towards a newsagent shop.
As I approached the newsagent’s shop I saw stood outside this newsagents Richie James Edwards. He did not appear to have come out from the shop. He was stood alone near to a silver grey coloured car, the make of which I did not know. It looked similar to a Vauxhall Cavalier. Although I did not know him I spoke to him, I said to him, ‘Hello Richie, I’m a friend of Lori’s.’ He said to me, ‘How is she? How is she doing?’ He looked at me and said, ‘I’ll see you later.’ I was about to enter the newsagents when I saw him get into the driver’s seat of the car and drive away in the general direction of the bus station. There were no other persons in the vehicle. I am positive it was Richie James Edwards from the phot
ographs I have seen. The only difference was that his hair was shaved very short. I recall he was wearing a dark blue coloured jacket which had a white pattern to it. When I spoke to him, although briefly I noticed he looked withdrawn and pale. I then went into the shop. I did not or have not seen him since.
An August 1995 article in the the Sunday Times reported that journalist Sue Reid was granted access to the police files on Richey’s case. Among the ‘15 slim folders’ she perused, she located information which showed an incorrect assumption by police that the box of gifts Richey left at the Embassy was not for Jo, but for the same Lori Fidler. Nobody knows how the journalist made that assumption.
Among Richey’s private collection of photographs, we find a picture that has also been distributed online among fans. In the online version, Richey and Lori stand side by side in late 1994. In Richey’s personal copy of the picture, Lori’s half of the photo is torn off and her image no longer present.
There was also a 23 February witness statement from a Newport taxi driver, Anthony Edward Hatherall. At about 7am on Tuesday, 7 February, two days after the David Cross sighting, he received a call to pick up at the King’s Hotel on High Street.
I parked outside and went into the reception area and asked at the desk for the person who had requested a taxi. The female receptionist stated that she would inform him and I returned to my taxi. A male person came out and sat in the rear nearside of the car. I would describe this person as being male, white, approx 5’ 10’ / 6’ tall, slim build, dark brown collar-length hair which was all one length, clean shaven, gaunt face, wearing a black polo neck top and blue jeans. He had a Walkman (personal stereo) attached to his jeans and he had headphones on. On getting into the taxi he said, ‘Can you take me to the Uplands in Rogerstone?’ I agreed and drove on. I noticed that he spoke with a cockney accent, but it sounded very much put on. He asked me if he could lie down in the back seat and I stated I had no objections.
This person did not appear to be drunk or under the influence of drugs. There was no conversation between us until we got to Uplands when I asked him where he wanted to go exactly. He produced some paper with directions on it which he said he had got from the hotel. He read from it stating he wanted the A4591 to Risca, Crosskeys and Cwmcarn. I stated that I could not go on a longer run until I had some money up front. He then handed me £40 in two £20 notes. I asked him for his exact destination but he stated that he did not know at the moment. He said he was looking for his boss who had driven a lorry to South Wales from London and had broken down somewhere in Gwent. I thought that this was extremely strange and if he had not paid would not have gone any further.
The passenger asked for a road map of South Wales and about various railway stations. The driver told him the nearest station was Blackwood bus station, and they drove there.
For the rest of the journey he sat quietly in the back until we got to Blackwood Bus Station. It would have been about 7:50pm at this time. As we entered the bus station he said, ‘No, this is not the place’. He asked again where the nearest Railway station was and I explained there was on in Newport and one in Pontypool. He then requested I take him to Pontypool Railway Station. At Pontypool station he got out of the car and asked me to wait for him. A short while later he returned and stated he had phoned the London office and been told to go to Aust Services which is on the English side of the Severn Bridge. He requested I go via the ‘scenic route’, not driving along the motorway because he stated he is always driving along the motorway.
There was very little conversation until we got to the Severn Bridge. At first he stated he wanted to be dropped in the motel at the Severn Bridge Services but then changed his mind. I eventually dropped him off at the café area of the Services. He paid me another £20 and then I drove away. Before I left he asked me for a receipt for the fare. The actual fare was £68 but he asked me for a discount which I gave him. I made the receipt out for £70 to Buster Haulage.
Hatherall later spotted a piece in the local paper about Richey going missing, and felt his photo looked familiar.
I thought he looked similar to the male person I drove to the Severn Bridge services. My suspicions were heightened by the peculiar events of that night and the strangeness of the person.
These statements conclude that two separate witnesses claim to have spotted Richey in the same location two days apart. Yet was the person in the back of Hatherall’s cab really Richey? How likely is it that somebody five foot seven in height could pass for somebody six foot tall? Then there is the hair. Richey recently gave himself a closely cropped crew-cut; was his ‘collar-length hair which was all one length’ a wig? Also, the issue of the London accent. Was there perhaps someone in contact with Richey from the south-east of England who fitted Hatherall’s description? A contact from within the music industry perhaps, or even an old friend?
If the person was Richey, perhaps he was searching between Newport and Blackwood, in disguise, for a missing contact crucial to his plans. That would explain the passenger’s furtive behaviour, lying low in the back seat and preferring less busy roads – plenty of local people could recognise Richey. But there is perhaps a likelier hypothesis which takes into account some of the detail of Hatherall’s statement and that of David Cross.
David Cross apparently saw Richey on Sunday morning, a stone’s throw from the King’s Hotel. Two days later, Hatherall picked up a passenger who was either staying at the King’s Hotel, or possibly seeking out somebody staying there. Was Hatherall a witness to the individual’s frantic search for a missed connection? Bearing in mind this was in the era before mobile phones, was Richey meant to have met someone but failed for some reason to make the rendezvous?
Years later, purported sightings of Richey were a lot further afield. In late 1996, Vyvian Morris, a 48-year-old musician from Swansea, was on holiday in India, when, as he reported several months later, he thought he spotted Richey mingling with others on the hippie trail and clothed in the generic uniform of the globe-trotting hippy.
We were on a visit that day to the hippie market in Anjuna. It was early in the afternoon, and we had just got there when we saw this group of hippies coming out of a cafe and getting on a bus. I immediately thought, that’s Richey Edwards. He looked a bit the worse for wear. He was very sun burned and had matted long hair, like it hadn’t been cared for. He was wearing a kaftan, jeans and had a tote bag, like all the hippies. He got onto the bus and I just managed to ask another of the hippies living in that commune, who the other guy was. He told me: ‘That’s Rick’. I asked him how long he had been with them and he said: ‘18 months’. It was too much of a coincidence. Then, they got on the bus and were gone. My girlfriend and I had got separated and she had the camera. I just wish I had got a picture of him. The full significance did not hit me until I got back home. I only told a few members of the band I am in, no one else. I did not want to go to the police then because of his family – they must have had their hopes dashed so many times, and I did not want to be the one who raised them up to be dashed again. Because of that, I tried to put doubts into my mind. Without speaking to the man, I could never be 100% sure it was Richey, but I do think it was him.
Morris, who was also a Media Studies lecturer at Neath College, later claimed to have regretted going public with the information, causing stress and palaver for Richey, who ‘had worked so hard to gain this anonymity’.
This remorse was too late. Inevitably, tabloid journalists flew out to Goa, hell-bent on a scoop and a photograph for their front page. However, they got little joy from Goa’s community of hippies, who doubtless viewed the hacks as emblematic of the kind of tawdry life they were escaping.
The Met in London said they would be relying on local police in the former Portuguese colony for help in following things up. For his part, the British Ambassador to India remarked how easy it is to disappear in that part of the world: ‘People do it all the time.’
In November 1998, a barmaid in Corralejo, Fuerteventura, r
eported seeing Richey at the Underground Bar where she worked. British-born Tracy Jones told a local Tenerife newspaper, the Island Sun, that one of the bar’s customers had stared at a man and shouted, ‘You’re Richey from the Manic Street Preachers!’ The individual he accosted ‘… just started to run towards the door and within seconds he was gone.’ It was a persuasive story, and Richey’s old friend and confidante from the Priory, Rosie Dunn, also flew out to Fuerteventura.
‘I went with my husband to check out the sighting, at this hippy commune,’ she recalls. ‘The Sunday Mirror sent us out there, and I spent a week trying to track him down. But I think it was a nasty hoax. We did extensive work with the family and media, followed tips and used investigators.’
After Christmas that year, the Edwards family received a letter from a Mrs Ambrosini on the neighbouring island of Lanzarote.
[On] Boxing Night we were returning to our apartment when we spotted a young man playing a guitar very quietly and singing to himself. It was a very quiet spot and we stopped to look, because we thought it odd that he should be sat on the floor and playing and singing in this manner. He did have another man with him; he was doing nothing but hanging around. This was down by the Old Port, opposite the Victoria Inn, in Calle. Above some Council buildings there is a paved area and he was in there playing. Lanzarote is just a short boat ride from Fuerteventura.
Several years later, in October 2004, holiday-maker Lee Wilde felt that he had spotted Richey, again in Lanzarote, on the island’s surfing hotspot Famara Beach.
I know people will find this difficult to believe and that they’ll think I’m some sort of crackpot, but I am convinced that is who I saw. Everyone I’ve mentioned it to just gives me that quizzical look with a raised eyebrow, but I know what I saw and I’m totally certain of it. He didn’t do anything very much, we smiled and chatted briefly – you know, just hello and some small talk. He was looking out across the water with half closed eyes because of the sun, but he still watched me approach. Before I could say hello back, he just said something like ‘It’s beautiful isn’t it?’ all while staring ahead. He was talking about the view obviously but I was more intrigued by his appearance. There was something quite different about him. He was incredibly thin, skinny would be a good description, a drawn complexion and greying hair. Then there were his arms. They were wrapped in leather bracelets and fabric that looked like rags – but in a fashionably untidy way, I don’t think they were bandages. But on the areas of his arms that weren’t covered you could make out scars which looked worse than they really were because of his tanned skin.
Withdrawn Traces Page 25