The mystery of the 8-year-old boy who disappeared on Lady Di and Carlos’ wedding day

The social effervescence that was in the UK on the day of Lady Di and Prince Charles’ wedding dampened the news of a missing child that day.

Vishal Mehrotra vanished in the twilight of an absolutely festive day. It was after the end of the royal procession, an event that both the eight-year-old boy and his seven-year-old sister Manta observed from a vantage point near Fleet Street.

That July 29, 1981, at the end of the procession, both remained at the head of their nanny. The father had fallen asleep and they were still lucid.

As the crowd dispersed, it occurred to Mehrotra to go and buy a present for her sister at a sweet shop a few meters from her house. For this, you asked your keeper for a special concession.

The nanny let him out with the promise that she would always keep an eye on him, but in the blink of an eye, like a magic trick, Vishal has disappeared.

Seven months later, the boy’s remains were found at Alder Copse, near the town of Rogate. Today, more than 40 years later, his death continues without finding answers.

abuse at school

A theory without so much force has been provided by Ben Hulm, Vishal’s best friend who stayed at the boy’s house the night before he disappeared. They both went to St. James Elementary together, which Hulme doesn’t have fond memories of.

It wouldn’t be crazy for him to think that his friend’s disappearance has something to do with what’s going on at his school.

Ben said the teachers they had were violent and cruel. “I think there were a lot of things happening at school that shouldn’t have happened,” he said.

Hulme revealed that she has often heard of abusive teachers and confessed that she has experienced firsthand the abuse of a teacher who liked to see him take a bath when no one was around.

The grandmother who saw it

The documentary In the footsteps of the killerswho in one of his episodes deals with the story of Vishal, offers the testimony of paige excelbya relative of a grandmother who claims to have seen Vishal with a mysterious man on a train on the day of the royal wedding.

At that moment, the grandmother called the police but no one came to question her.

The woman finished settling the loose ends a few years later, when she saw in the newspaper the portrait of the man she had seen accompanying the child.

The photograph of this person was there because he was nothing more and nothing less than a member of the pedophile gang Dirty dozendriven by Sydney Cook.

pedophile gang

The strongest theory, which was analyzed in the aforementioned documentary by emilia fox and the teacher David WilsonIt points directly to Cooke, a vicious criminal who is now 95 and still in prison.

Fox and Wilson highlighted a number of connections between Vishal’s murder and the Dirty Dozen murder of 14-year-old Jason Swift in 1985.

The evidence being sought is that the child may have been a victim of Cooke mainly for two reasons: why the criminal wrote the word “Goodwood” in his diary on the day of the royal wedding and why there was a carnival near the place where Vishal’s body was found. The leader of the Dirty Dozen had a booth on the fairgrounds and had already used his role there to commit another crime.

Cooke has been mentioned by The Guardian as “Britain’s most notorious paedophile”. He is currently serving two life sentences in prison after leading a gang of pedophiles suspected of murdering up to 20 children in the 1970s and 1980s.