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Breakthrough in disappearance of Cheam teenager Lee Boxell as arrests made in connection with case

Summary:

The 15-year-old went missing from Sutton High Street in 1988.

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By Hubert MacGreevy

Four people have been arrested in connection with the disappearance and possible murder of a teenager in Cheam 26 years ago.

Lee Boxell was only fifteen years old when he disappeared from Sutton High Street in September 1988. Were he alive today, he would be celebrating his 41st birthday this week.

The suspects include two men, aged 78 and 52, arrested on suspicion of murder, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and indecency with children and another man, 41, arrested on suspicion of murder and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

The fourth suspect, a woman aged 42, is charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and indecency with children.

Scotland Yard believed Lee may have been murdered and his body disposed of in the churchyard of St. Dunstan’s in Cheam.

Police previously uncovered evidence Lee used to hang out at ‘the shed’, an outbuilding of the church, which became a target for sexual predators.

Despite an intensive archaeological dig, however, Lee’s body was never found.

The four arrests come a year after Crimewatch aired a reconstruction of what his abduction may have been like in February 2013.

At the time, Lee’s parents, Peter and Christine Boxell, described losing their son as a nightmare.

His mother, Christine pleaded: “We want somebody really to think about things and just come forward, put our minds at rest about what happened to him.”

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