The case
Danielle Jones, 15, left her home in East Tilbury, Essex, on the morning of June 18, 2001, to walk to her school bus stop. She never got there. Witnesses saw a man in a blue van arguing with a girl in school uniform. Her uncle by marriage, Stuart Campbell, drove a blue Ford Transit.
Campbell was arrested within days and later charged. Mobile phone records undercut his account of where he had been. Searches of his home turned up a pair of bloodstained white stockings in the loft that carried DNA from both him and Danielle, along with her lip gloss and a diary showing his obsession with teenage girls. After she vanished, a text message was sent from Danielle’s phone to Campbell’s. It was typed in capitals, which she did not normally use, and both phones were near the same mast. Analysis of the message’s language supported the prosecution’s case that Campbell had written it himself.
On December 19, 2002, a jury convicted Campbell of abduction and murder. He was given a life sentence with a minimum term of 20 years and a concurrent 10 years for abduction. His appeal was dismissed in 2005. Danielle’s body has never been found. The Parole Board turned down his release in January 2023 and again in December 2025, citing his refusal to disclose where her body is among its reasons.
Case photographs
Where it happened
East Tilbury, where Danielle Jones was last seen