14 years after Claudia Lawrence vanished, her mother claims the BBC is still harassing her for her TV license payment and threatening legal action.
After she failed to show up for work in March 2009, Ms. Lawrence, a chef at the University of York, has vanished.
Despite the fact that no body has ever been discovered, detectives suspect she was murdered.
Yet despite her well-publicised disappearance, Claudia’s heartbroken mother Joan, 79, has revealed how letters are still being sent to her cottage several times a year demanding her daughter pay her licence fee.
Speaking to the Sun, she says the demands have caused her ‘untold heartache’ and has called on the police to stop the BBC from sending the letters.
Joan continues to maintain her daughter’s former home by herself after her ex-husband Peter died aged 74 in 2021.
She drives there from Malton, North Yorkshire, every two weeks.
‘There was a letter recently, threatening a £1,000 fine if the licence wasn’t paid. It’s unbelievable,’ she said.
‘I’ve written to them to tell them what’s happened, and the police are supposed to be sorting it out, but the letters still come.’
The continued harassment comes despite her daughter’s disappearance, and a public appeal from Joan, having featured on the BBC’s Crimewatch programme.
She added: ‘You’d think they’d know by now, after all the publicity, wouldn’t you?
‘They must have sent two or three letters a year in all the time this has been happening. One was nasty and horrible. It threatened that not paying could affect her credit score.
‘I’m not someone who has ever had any debts, I pay for things straight away, so it was an awful thing to read. It really must stop.’
More than 52,000 people were fined following TV licence prosecutions in the latest figures from 2020- An estimated 76 percent of which were women.
In January, BBC chairman Richard Sharp criticised the £159-a-year licence fee as a regressive tax which penalised women, pensioners and the poor.
He said: ‘In some ways it’s considered anachronistic because there are other countries that adopt other mechanisms.
‘And there are a number of issues in terms of how we collect the licence fee from pensioners and also issues arising from people’s failure to pay the licence for example, with respect to gender issues, so it is imperfect.’
The initial police probe into Claudia’s disappearance was widely criticised for focusing on her love life and the Nag’s Head pub in York where she worked as a chef, which was just four doors away from her home.
Five men were arrested on suspicion of murder, but nobody has ever been charged.
Detectives blamed a lack of CCTV, data and forensic evidence for their failure to solve the case.
A renewed effort to find her body took place in 2021 and saw teams of police experts, search dogs, divers and forensic archaeologists spend two weeks scouring a lake and nearby woods for potential spots where her body could have been left.
However, they failed to make a breakthrough and the search was eventually called off.
In a public appeal last year, Joan said she is continuing to try and solve the mystery for herself and is reviewing what happened ‘with a fine-toothed comb’ for ‘simple things that have been missed’.
A BBC spokesman said the letters should have stopped once Claudia’s mother contacted them about the issue in 2022, but instead only a temporary pause was put in place and the automated letters restarted in February this year.
‘We’re very sorry for the distress caused to Mrs Lawrence and we will be apologising to her directly,’ the spokesperson told Metro.
‘We have taken steps to ensure no further letter are sent to the address.’