Sister of boy missing for 37 years believes he left flowers at their mother’s funeral
The sister of a boy who has been missing for 37 years believes he is still alive.
Speaking on true crime podcast The Missing, Alex Hicks spoke about her brother, Kevin Hicks, who was 16 at the time he went to his local shop in Croydon to buy eggs on March 2, 1986 and never came home.
While officers who worked on the case believe he was likely murdered, Ms Hicks, 52, from Hastings, believes he is overseas with the army or navy and that he left flowers at his mother’s funeral.
Ms Hicks said: “The police were good at the beginning and then they just started to slack off and not be that helpful.
“I’ve always said, when a young girl or a woman goes missing they get more publicity than what a male does. And I think it’s so wrong.”
Mr Hicks left his family home in Blackhorse Lane, Addiscombe, at around 8.30pm on a Sunday evening with just £1 in his pocket.
He was heading to Sperrings community shop in Lower Addiscombe Road, just a few minutes’ walk away, to buy eggs for his O-level cooking exam the next day.
By 10pm that night, Mr Hicks was still not home.
Ms Hicks said: “My bedroom was sort of like the first on top of the stairs and next to the stairs downstairs was the front room.
“And I could hear mum on the phone ringing up all of Kevin’s friends, ‘I don’t suppose Kevin’s met up with, so and so and gone back to yours?’
“And, ‘nope, sorry’… ‘Well, if you see him, let me know…”
In the episode Ms Hicks talks about cruel online trolls as she recalls somebody reaching out to her, pretending to be her brother. Or those who tell her to stop “wasting her time” and accept “he’s dead”.
Ms Hicks’ mother died from cancer in 1994. Since her brother’s disappearance, there has been just one occasion where Ms Hicks sensed he might have been close by.
She said: “My mum’s funeral, and I’ll never forget this. The church was packed inside and out. At the end of the ceremony, myself and my dad counted the flowers, not knowing one another was doing it, and there was an extra bunch of flowers there with no card. I think it was Kevin.
“He could have been and no one would’ve noticed. He could have changed his appearance.”
After her father died of health complications in 2003, Ms Hicks’ sole responsibility was to search for her missing brother.
More than three-and-a-half decades after her brother’s disappearance, Ms Hicks wants answers – something to give her the peace of mind that her mother and father were denied.
She said: “Someone somewhere out there knows what happened that night. If they know what happened, it’s time to come forward.
“Contact the police, contact Missing People, even contact myself. I need closure. I’ve got 15 years of memory and nearly 37 years of searching.”
West Norwood police have been approached for comment.
Pictured top: Alex Hicks (Picture: The Missing podcast)
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The flowers may have been left by someone who knew what had happened. A boy who used to ride around on a bike with Kevin said that a man who, with others, hanging around in Bingham Park, talking to young people, worked at the Co-op. The same Co-op that Kevin worked at the weekends.
A woman who also worked at the Co-op reported that shee had seen Kevin walking in the direction of his house at 10pm that night!
A women left a message at the police station years later saying that she knew what had happened, but she never phoned back. Coincidence?