Village photograph triggers police murder hunt for missing teenager - 80 years late

The case of a servant girl who went missing is now being treated as murder by the police, 83 years after she went missing. 16-year-old Emma Alice Smith disappeared on the way home from work in Tunbridge Wells in 1926. She was reported as missing but no trace of her was ever found and everyone apart from her family lost interest.


Waldron village 'stool ball' team, Emma is top left

The case has come to light again after Valerie Chidson began to research into Emma's disappearance after seeing her in a photograph and she wrote a short film based on Emma's story called Finding Esther.

Afterwards Chidson was told by a relative of Emma that they had been told Emma had been murdered and the killer had made a deathbed confession to Emma's sister, who is now deceased. Chidson persuaded Emma's family to go to the police and they have now begun an investigation. Their main aim is to locate Emma's remains so Emma can finally have a burial.

Unfortunately as the deathbed confession took place in 1953 the investigation will be difficult but they think they may have been murdered near to Waldron or Horam and her body disposed of in a pond.