Katrice Lee

Case background and investigation

Katrice Lee was born on November 28, 1979, in Rinteln, West Germany, where her father, Richard Lee, was serving with the British Army's 15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars. On her second birthday, November 28, 1981, she went with her mother, Sharon, and her aunt Wendy to the NAAFI shopping complex at Schloss Neuhaus, near Paderborn, to buy food for her birthday party.

According to Forces News and the Ministry of Defence's media summary, the shop was crowded because it was the last payday before Christmas. At the checkout Sharon Lee realised she had forgotten to pick up crisps, put Katrice down and asked her sister to watch the child while she went back for them. When she returned, in what she has estimated was less than a minute, Katrice was gone. Wikipedia records that she was wearing red Wellington boots and a turquoise duffel coat over a tartan dress, and that she had a squint in her left eye.

German police and the Royal Military Police searched the area and dragged the nearby River Lippe, working on the theory that she had wandered off and drowned. No trace of her was found. Richard Lee has always maintained that his daughter was abducted and has repeatedly criticised the way the first inquiry was run.

The case was re-examined in 2000, when an age-progressed image was produced and the BBC's Crimewatch broadcast an appeal. Forces News reports that a person was questioned at that stage and released without charge. In 2012 the Royal Military Police reopened the investigation and, together with a defence minister, apologised to the family for failings in the original inquiry. In February 2017 police released an e-fit of a man reportedly seen carrying a small child to a green saloon car near the shopping complex.

In April and May 2018 a Royal Military Police team excavated a stretch of the bank of the River Alme near Paderborn over about five weeks after a review of the evidence. Nothing relevant was found. On September 23, 2019, a former serviceman was arrested and an address in Swindon was searched. He was released without charge two days later.

Richard Lee, who lives in Hartlepool, has continued to campaign. Forces News reported that the prime minister agreed in November 2021 to meet him and that in 2023 he announced he would hand back his military medals in protest. A photographic exhibition about the case was held at the former NAAFI site in November 2024. In June 2026 he asked police to act against a woman who has claimed for several years to be Katrice although a 2020 test showed she is not, according to Rayo. Katrice Lee remains missing.