A second man has been arrested in connection with the murder of Donna Keogh, the Middlesbrough teenager who vanished almost 30 years ago, as detectives pursue what has become one of Teesside’s longest-running unsolved cases.
Cleveland Police said a 62-year-old man was arrested in the Manchester area and taken into custody to be interviewed. It follows the earlier arrest of a 64-year-old man from the Leeds area, held on suspicion of murder on 31 March in a joint operation with West Yorkshire Police, who remains on police bail while enquiries continue. Both men have been arrested on suspicion of murder; neither has been charged, and both remain presumed innocent unless proven otherwise in court.
Donna, 17, was last seen in central Middlesbrough on Tuesday 28 April 1998, in the areas of Hartington Road, Aske Road and Bow Street, and is known to have travelled to Leeds at some point that year. At the time she was living with cousins in a flat at Kings House, Central Mews, in the town centre. She was reported missing by her family on 30 May 1998, after the regular contact she usually kept with them suddenly stopped. Despite an extensive investigation, her body has never been found, and police believe she was murdered a short time after she disappeared.
The case was formally declared a murder investigation in October 2016, when Cleveland Police launched Operation Resolute following an independent review of the original inquiry. As part of that renewed investigation, officers carried out a five-day excavation in 2018 at a disused allotment on Troon Close, on the Saltersgill estate, around two miles from where Donna was last seen, after the site was identified as one of several places of interest. The dig failed to find any trace of Donna, uncovering only human remains later dated to the medieval period. In recent months, detectives have been focusing their enquiries in the Leeds area, work that led first to March’s arrest and now to Thursday’s, made further afield in Manchester.
Deputy senior investigating officer Detective Inspector Evan Kirtley confirmed the latest development, saying: “This morning we have made a second arrest in connection with the murder of Donna Keogh. The man remains in police custody where he will be interviewed.” He said police remained in close contact with Donna’s family, who were being kept fully updated, adding that they had “lived with unbearable uncertainty for nearly 30 years” and deserved answers. “Somebody out there knows what happened and could tell us, in order to give the family some comfort and peace, after all this time,” he said, urging anyone with information to come forward, either directly or anonymously.
Chief among those seeking that peace for decades was Donna’s father, Brian Keogh, who led relentless campaigns to find out what happened to his “bubbly and ambitious” daughter, but died last July, aged 69, from a lung condition linked to his work, without ever learning her fate. A former soldier with the Green Howards, Mr Keogh had worked as a doorman before running his own plastering and damp-proofing business, retiring only shortly before his death. His wife, Shirley Keogh, told TeessideLive at the time that his death had caused her heart “to break into a million pieces,” but that she was determined to continue the fight for answers he had pursued to the end. “He was hellbent on keeping the fight going,” she said. “Even the day before he died he kept mentioning it — he just wanted a bit more time.”
Anyone with information is asked to contact Cleveland Police, or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111, where a £20,000 reward remains on offer in connection with the case.
