When Nicola Thorp was growing up in Blackpool, the ‘kebab girl’ who had gone missing less than a mile away, aged 14, was spoken of as a cautionary tale. But what really happened to her? For the last three years, Thorp has been finding out
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t has been more than 20 years since 14-year-old Charlene Downes went missing in Blackpool. Last captured on CCTV on a Saturday night in November 2003, Charlene still hasn’t been found, and the truth of what happened to her remains unsolved. Nicola Thorp, an actor, writer and broadcaster, who grew up in the town, describes Charlene’s disappearance, considered to be murder, as “a wound for Blackpool”. Over the last couple of decades, the case has been clouded by rumour, far-right rhetoric and police failures. In a new podcast, she has set out to clear up some of the speculation, and expose how Charlene was repeatedly failed by those around her.
Many in the town, she says, still believe the two men who were first tried in 2007 – a retrial was ordered, which then collapsed amid “grave doubts” about the evidence – got away with murder. That in itself, she says, is an obstacle to finding out who is really responsible.
In that trial, it was alleged the men disposed of Charlene’s body by making her into kebab meat. That was the story that Thorp remembered from her teen years in Blackpool. “It was just this salacious, shocking story that people spoke to each other about, the ‘kebab girl’,” says Thorp. A few years ago, Thorp decided to look up the story to see if it had been true and was furious that Charlene had been reduced to such a lurid tale, a piece of meat.
