Age: 19
Sex: female
Date: 16 Apr 1999
Place: Ealing Broadway
Elizabeth Chau was last seen on Ealing Broadway after leaving college and has not been seen since.
She had just left the Thames Valley University and was soon after seen in CCTV footage at 6pm walking along the Uxbridge Road near the police station. She was said to have been walking along briskly and was never seen again. She had lived in Ealing Broadway and was said to have been yards from her home when she disappeared.
The police later said that they suspected that she had been killed by a Polish man that was convicted of the murder another girl and sentenced in 2004 and who then later died in prison in 2009. The police questioned the Polish man, who had convictions for sexual assault in his home country, in 2004 but nothing more came of it. The Polish man had 17 convictions for rape in Poland and had absconded and come to the United Kingdom on false papers. He had initially been held in Campsfield House detention centre in Oxfordshire but was later released as he was being held on immigration and not criminal offences and nothing was known about his criminal background at the time.
The police have said that they had connected her disappearance with the similar disappearance of Lola Shenkoya who disappeared 8 months later in 2000. They also noted that they also thought that the same Polish man that they suspected of murdering Elizabeth Chau had also murdered Lola Shenkoya.
Her mother said that they had kept her bank account open for years in case she or her killer tried to use it.
She had been studying law and business at the Thames Valley University.
see Ealing Today
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see Murdermap
see Evening Standard
see Evening Standard