Inside case of missing Trevaline Evans who left work for ‘2 mins’ & vanished… before chilling message appeared on bench
ON June 16, 1990, Trevaline Evans left a note on the door of the antiques shop where she worked saying she’d be back in two minutes.
But three decades on the grandmother, then 52, has never been seen again.
Now her bizarre disappearance is examined in Channel 4’s In the Footsteps of Killers, presented by Emilia Fox.
The case left residents of Llangollan, the small town in north Wales where Trevaline had lived all her life, baffled – and residents still seek closure to this day.
It has piqued the interest of arm chair detectives across the country and sparked multiple theories.
And last year a cryptic message claiming her ‘remains’ had been ‘moved’ appeared on a nearby bench.
While there was speculation at the time that her 30-year marriage to husband Richard was unhappy and she’d run away to start a new life elsewhere, in tonight’s programme experts suggest the evidence indicates she was most likely murdered.
Criminologist Dr Graham Hill says: “To me it doesn’t look like a missing persons investigation, it feels more like a murder investigation.”
Trevaline arrived at Attic Antiques – a business she’d started up a year previously – to open up at 9:30am on June 16 as normal.
She had returned three days earlier from Rhuddlan, a coastal town roughly an hour away where she and Richard were renovating a bungalow they’d bought with retirement in mind.
On the morning before she disappeared, she came into contact with roughly 25 friends and customers, all of whom said she seemed relaxed and happy. She had even made plans to go out that evening.
When she left the shop, placing a note on the door saying she’d be ‘back in two minutes’, she left her handbags, car keys and jacket behind.
The last confirmed sighting of her in the area was around 2.30pm that day – two hours after she’d left the shop.
Richard returned from Rhuddlan that afternoon, and was seen shortly before her last sighting in the pub. He reported her missing at around 11pm.
Every household in Llangollen, as well as scores of people from further afield, were interviewed, but to no avail. There had been no movements from her bank account, and police were baffled.
‘Affairs’
Two years later in 1992, there were unconfirmed sightings of Trevaline in a small town in Australia, and more in London and France.
Rumours began circling the town that Trevaline had relationships with other men – one of whom left her an inheritance sum of £10,000.
In tonight’s show a friend of the Evans family, Linda, who met and started a five-year relationship with Trevaline’s brother Philip two days after she went missing, says she “wasn’t in a happy marriage” and seemed to point the finger of blame towards Richard.
“She wasn’t contented at all,” Linda says, adding that Richard “wasn’t well liked” in the town.
Linda claims Richard would come to the pub where she worked to talk to her.
Richard never told me how much he loved her, he never said ‘Oh Lin you don’t realise how much I miss her,’ nothing
Linda, ex-girlfriend of Trevaline's brother
She says: “Maybe I was naïve enough not to understand that maybe he was trying to find out about what was going on, with me being with Phil.
“[Richard] was always the same, the same hang-dog expression, his face never changed. He never said to me, ‘I don’t understand why she’s gone away, is it with somebody else, has she run away?’
“He never told me how much he loved her, he never said ‘Oh Lin you don’t realise how much I miss her,’ nothing.”
She claims Phil told her one night he’d seen carpets and furniture being carried out of Trevaline and Richard’s home.
“If he’s waiting for her to come home, she’s not going to be happy is she, that the furniture’s coming out the house?” Linda asks.
“It’s always in my heart that something comes of this… let’s have some sort of closure.”
Serial killer suspects
After her disappearance she became a grandmother – but Trevaline’s only child, police sergeant Richard Evans, died of a heart attack in 1999 in his late 30s.
The case was reopened in 2001, and Richard was arrested but later released without charge. He died in 2015.
There have been two other suspects in the case – serial killers Robin Ligus and Christopher Halliwell.
North Wales Police linked Ligus – who murdered three victims in Shrewsbury, one of which was an antiques dealer – to Trevaline’s case in 2011, but he was ruled out a year later.
Convicted double murderer Halliwell – currently serving a life sentence – was linked to the case more recently, in 2021.
He is thought to have been living in Lancashire around the time Trevaline disappeared and working in north Wales as a window fitter.
He began his criminal career in the 80s by scoping out houses while cleaning windows, looking for antiques to steal.
Halliwell’s murder victims – Becky Godden-Edwards in 2003 and Sian O’Callaghan in 2011 – were both in their twenties, much younger than Trevaline.
However, investigative reporter Tim Hicks suggests that Halliwell’s mother abused him as a child, and his “hatred” for her could have inspired him to attack an older woman.
He says: “Trevaline had a resemblance to his mother. Halliwell’s ex-wife said whenever he mentioned his mother or saw somebody that looked like his mother, he became absolutely enraged.
“I think that is the key to understanding why Trevaline Evans is a suitable victim for him.”
In tonight’s show a witness comes forward claiming to have seen a man matching Halliwell’s appearance in Llangollan on the day Trevaline went missing.
Bench mystery
While no body has ever been found, four years ago police dug up the bar at Rhuddlan Golf Club, acting on information from brothers Andrew Sutton, from Wrexham, and Lee Sutton, from Kinmel Bay.
They became interested in the case after coming across “new circumstantial evidence” that pointed to Trevaline’s remains being in Rhuddlan.
While waiting on a police response, they approached the golf club and used an underfloor inspection camera which they claimed showed human remains under the floor boards.
However the police carried out their own search and found nothing. The brothers are now concerned the remains may have been removed in the interim.
Bizarrely, a message written on a plaque on a bench 30 miles from her hometown appeared in 2021, accusing someone of removing the remains from Rhuddlan.
It read: “In memory of Trevaline Evans Vanished 16/6/1990. Found – Rhuddlan GC (Golf Club) 14/3/2019 Removed 19/3/2019 RIP.”
A similar message was discovered in May 2022 on a bench at an abandoned 200-year-old miner’s cottage on a hillside in Prestatyn.
The inscription read: “Justice awaits those responsible for the removal and disposal of Trevaline Evans (in this life or next) from Rhuddlan Golf Club on March 19, 2019 at noon. May the Lord have mercy upon their soul.”
The brothers deny either had anything to do with the plaques.
Lee said he’d been told that shortly before Christmas in 2021, a group of people held an all-night vigil alongside the first bench.
In the Footsteps of Killers airs tonight [February 16] on Channel 4 at 10pm.