22-year-old insurance clerk Helen McCourt was returning home from work in Liverpool before going out on a date with her new boyfriend that evening. She got off the bus on Rainford Road in Billinge - just 500 yards from her home - and went missing.

In December 1988, 22-year-old Lorraine Benson arrived at Raynes Park tube station after going to a work Christmas party. She'd arranged to meet her friend Peter, but he wasn't there as planned. Peter was due to move to Australia the following day. Lorraine called Peter's mother to ask where he was, and his mother told her that he wasn't back from meeting friends yet.

Young mother of three children, Natalie, was killed by her boyfriend Paul Hemming in their family home whilst her three children slept upstairs. He had a history of coercive control. Their 6-year-old son witnessed Natalie's body wrapped in a rug in the lounge and it was his evidence that was used to charge him.

On June 5, 1998, 11 year- old Wesley waved goodbye to his mother Liz and rode off on his bike to go to the local shop to get some sweets, he was a popular lad and well-liked by the community. Liz reported him missing to the police when he failed to return home and it was getting dark.

In June 1985 Carole Packman left a note to say she was leaving the family home for good. Sam Gillingham was 16 when her mother, Carole Packman vanished from the family's suburban home in the seaside resort of Bournemouth. She remembers running up the stairs to check her parents' room, as her father Russell looked on. Gazing at her mother's untouched belongings, he said: She'll be back.

School girl, Danielle Jones, aged 15, was last seen on the morning of June 18th, 2001 near her home in East Tilbury, Essex. Like hundreds of thousands of other children that day, she was on her way to catch the school bus. But Danielle never got on the bus and didn't arrive at St Clere's School.

Shafilea Ahmed was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, in July 1986, to Farzana, when her taxi driver father was still married to a Danish woman, with whom he had a baby son. He married Farzana, his cousin, after bowing to pressure from a relative in Pakistan - ironically his own arranged marriage. The family moved to Warrington, a town with a small but well-established Asian community.

17-year-old Jayden Parkinson met Ben Blakley when she was just 15 years old through her friendship with Ben's younger brother. Jayden and Ben started a relationship when she was just 16. She had been living with her mother Sam but moved to a hostel which provided emergency 24-hour accommodation for 20 homeless young people, aged 16-25.

Evelyn Lund's first husband Arthur, a successful businessman, had died of cancer, leaving her a wealthy woman. Within 18 months, she had fallen for the charms of Robert Lund, a divorced tree surgeon. Her three daughters disapproved of the match, not least because Lund was living in a caravan when they met, and they thought he was only interested in her money.