Who Drowned Johanna?

Upset by the recent termination of her relationship with her boyfriend, 14-year-old Johanna Young removed all the Christmas cards from her bedroom wall before she left her home in Watton, Norfolk, at 7.30 on the evening of DECEMBER 23rd, 1992. Her parents were unaware of her split with her boyfriend, and assumed she had gone to meet him.

She hadn’t, and when another friend saw her outside a local fish and chip shop and called out to her she ignored him. He told the police he concluded she was in a bad mood.

She was reported missing after she failed to return home, and her body was found on Boxing Day in a waterlogged ditch on the edge of nearby Wayland Wood. She was half-naked and the detective leading the inquiry told the media: “The indications are that she was sexually assaulted, although there is no evidence of rape. The man who did this is a brutal, unfeeling killer.”

The cause of Johanna’s death was drowning, and she was believed to have died on the night she vanished. Her parents said she would never have gone to such an isolated spot with someone she didn’t know, but her ex-boyfriend was eliminated as a suspect. There were no others, and the case remains open.