Police divers find shoes in missing woman search

Police divers searching two woodland ponds in a hunt for a woman presumed murdered who went missing 12 years ago have found footwear which may have belonged to her.

Detectives revealed the find a day after searches began at a pond the size of a football pitch in secluded woodland.

However, officers were unsure if the footwear was linked to the disappearance of Catherine Nee.

Ms Nee was aged 32 years when she was last seen by her family, from whom she was estranged, in 2002 and it was initially thought she had simply moved away to another area.

However police launched a missing persons investigation a decade later and a 48-year-old man from the Thames Valley area was arrested on suspicion of her murder last February, but was later released without charge.

The grandmother-of-six, who would now be aged 44 years, was originally from Reading, Berks., but was living in the Ilfracombe area of Devon at the time of her disappearance.

Police were expected to continue searching the woods at Burghfield in Berkshire after receiving a new lead in the case.

Detective Inspector Kevin Mahon said the newly-discovered footwear would have to be analysed to find out if it was relevant to the case.

Det. Insp. Mahon said officers were working to discover if the footwear was the same size as Ms Nee wore.

"I can't say if it's going to be relevant at this time," said the detective.

"It's very difficult to know what she was wearing at the time she went missing because we don't know at what point she actually went missing."

The officer said poor underwater visibility had made searching the pond a tricky task for divers but that they would remain in the area until he was satisfied it had been thoroughly scoured.

Det. Insp. Mahon refused to go into details of how officers were tipped off to search the wooded area.

"Our inquiries have led us to this area," he said.

He added that police were not given specific information about the ponds but that they seemed an obvious place to search.

"It's an area where there's a possibility that something could be disposed of," said Det. Insp. Mahon.

"We have still got some work to do to satisfy myself that we have followed up that line of inquiry."

The officer said no other searches were planned beyond the woodland but added: "If we get some new information coming forward we will see where it takes us."