[uneasy music playing]
[narrator] Every 90 seconds, someone is reported missing.
Many return to their families,
but for others, something has gone seriously wrong.
An expat British man living in a remote part of Southern France
calls his stepdaughter in Lancashire.
Robert called me and said, "Have you heard from your mum?"
[speaking in French]
[Roisin] She wouldn't just go off and put people through a lot of worry.
It just wasn't in her character.
[narrator] But a fresh start in a new country
becomes a 12-year mystery.
It was a little bit difficult to work out what the truth was.
[narrator] What happens in the police investigation that follows?
[John] When she was found, it was a massive game change.
[narrator] What happens to the family at its heart?
It was horrendous and I wouldn't want anybody to go through it.
[narrator reading]
[pensive music playing]
[Patricia] My mum was a lovely caring person.
When we were children growing up,
my mum was always the one who looked after everybody.
We had quite a few animals, horses and goats and dogs and cats.
[Roisin] Evelyn, she wouldn't suffer fools gladly
but she was good fun.
She was just a nice, lovely, genuine person.
[narrator] Evelyn is very happily married to Arthur,
a successful businessman.
My dad was the love of my mum's life.
Yeah, he was her soulmate.
When we were growing up, we were just a normal family.
Mum, Dad, three sisters.
We were just a normal happy family.
[narrator] But in 1991, family life is turned upside down.
My dad, um, got cancer and when my dad was ill, it did destroy her.
She was very strong, and she was strong for everybody,
but, and he died from cancer and then…
my mum put her brave face on for all of us.
Um, it was kind of like the hard front, like, she was all right,
but inside, we knew she wasn't.
[narrator] Arthur makes sure that his 44-year-old wife
is left financially comfortable,
but nothing can ease the pain of his passing.
It did, it did destroy her.
It was a hard time.
After my dad died, I don't think my mum was ever really happy.
And then she met Robert Lund.
[pensive music crescendos]
[Patricia] My mum was having a party.
She used to live in a farm house at the top of the hill.
There was a couple who lived in a cottage at the bottom.
Um, they had a lodger who had a caravan.
He was stopping on their land. He'd split up from his wife.
[narrator] Thirty-nine-year-old Robert, a tree surgeon,
was divorced after 12 years of marriage
and had moved out of his six-bedroom family home.
[Patricia] He asked if he could bring this lodger up.
My mum said, "yeah, that's fine."
He went to this party, and then after that,
he was up all the time. He was just never away,
and I think he just came into my mum's life at a vulnerable time.
[Roisin] I think that she met Robert possibly on the rebound
from, you know, she was still grieving
and I think that's how basically he came into her life.
[tense music playing]
[Patricia] My mum just wanted to be loved.
[narrator] From the very beginning,
Evelyn's family have misgivings about Lund.
I just found him to be very, very arrogant,
not very nice sometimes, very sarcastic to people.
I'm a big believer in "you follow your gut instinct."
Everybody had the same impression.
[narrator] Evelyn's family start to question Lund's motives
for his relationship with her.
[Patricia] I think Robert was motivated by money.
I think he just…
went up to my mum, saw the big house and all the animals and the cars,
and I think he just saw pound signs, basically.
When he met my mum, he didn't have very much.
He had a lot of credit cards.
I remember my mum saying one day she paid all his credit cards off for him.
He did seem to be money-orientated and that sort of thing.
[Patricia] He was very good at spending my mum's money.
She didn't have a lot of things.
She bought what she needed.
She didn't go out and spend silly money on clothes and jewelry.
She wasn't materialistic, whereas Robert,
he went and had to buy the designer wellies,
the designer jumpers, the designer clothes.
He used to be strutting up the drive.
Um, everything was for show, but it was all my mum's money.
[narrator] Despite her family not being keen on Robert,
Evelyn chooses to let things progress.
They seemed to have this idyllic little life with the, you know…
it was a beautiful cottage with gorgeous views.
She had the horses and the animals
and she seemed to be happy.
She had the girls around her.
She seemed to genuinely think that she'd found somebody
that she could share a life with after my uncle Arthur had died.
[narrator] Evelyn and Robert announced the next stage of their relationship.
Probably about 18 months from the date of them meeting,
that they got married.
Seemed to be quite a quick thing from her meeting him to getting married.
[narrator] With Robert about to become part of the family,
Patricia has a heart-to-heart with her mum.
The night before my mum and Robert got married,
I remember sitting with her and she was crying.
Her words were that he'd knocked her round the caravan
because his caravan was then on their drive.
He actually beat her up.
[menacing music playing]
I remember sitting with her and saying,
"You sure you're doing the right thing? Do you want to do this?"
And she actually looked at me and said,
"He's promised he'll never touch me again.
It was because he'd been drinking."
Apparently when he drank spirits, it turned him nasty.
I was angry, but my mum was a very-- she was strong-minded.
I did ask her if she was doing the right thing,
but she had her own free will.
[narrator] Evelyn is married to Robert Lund.
Her daughters fear she's on the rebound
after her first husband died.
All they see in Lund is a gold-digger,
after their recently widowed mother's money.
What happens next rings even more alarm bells.
[tense music playing]
[Patricia] When she said she was moving to the South of France,
we were all really surprised
because it was just so far away from us all.
Robert could never understand the bond that we all had with my mum.
And I think that's why he persuaded my mum to go, to get her away from all of us.
Um, but I just wanted her to be happy.
It was probably one of the most high-profile
and most interesting stories I covered during my whole time living in France.
Really was at the height of the sort of British exodus to France
where people were selling up in England and living the dream.
I really felt that this was a sort of little pocket of heaven
that she discovered.
Falling in love with the place, seeing a house that she really loved,
Evelyn felt very happy and she thought, "This is stunning, beautiful,
I could really settle in here."
She was all thinking then that we'd all go and visit
and she could have her family going out to see her.
My mum was all excited when she first went.
Just the prospect of a new beginning, really.
I just thought it was obviously something that they'd decided that they wanted to do
and that they discussed it, and possibly the girls were happy with it.
[narrator] For Evelyn, there's an immediate
and obvious challenge to overcome.
[Patricia] It was just country roads, very, very remote.
She found herself on her own in a country where she didn't really know anybody.
She couldn't speak to anybody because she couldn't speak French.
And she was just so far away from all of us.
It was just not right for my mum. She was just isolated.
[Helena] France, and especially very rural France,
and this is extremely rural, this part of France,
is very, very different to England.
It's not very easy to make friends.
I mean, I think that the friends that Evelyn did make
were within the expat community.
[Patricia] There was a few English people.
To be honest, a lot of them were odd.
They just drank too much, and to be honest,
there wasn't really much else to do out there.
There's one or two houses in the vicinity.
She made a very good friend, Marianne,
who Robert didn't like, and I think that was
because my mum had a close friendship with her.
[Helena] It's very, very scary, I think, being in a foreign country
where you don't speak the language.
She left her children, her grandchildren,
to start a life with a man that they didn't approve of.
[narrator] Loneliness and language
aren't the only things Evelyn's having to deal with.
He was driven by money.
Everything he did was driven by money.
Money didn't mean anything to my mum.
She just wanted to be comfortable and have her animals
and somebody who loved her, but that wasn't good enough.
Robert wanted everything.
I remember my mum saying to me that he was stealing money from her.
As soon as her money was going in the bank,
he was literally within a few days emptying her account
and then he was saying to her
that she was losing her marbles and that she was spending it
and turning it all back on her.
He'd been doing that for a long time.
[narrator] Robert's manipulative behavior
takes a more sinister turn.
Robert had started playing, all I can say is mind games, with her.
When people used to send Christmas cards and birthday cards,
he used to always go meet the postman and he used to take them away.
She used to say, "Nobody sent me any cards."
And I used to say, "Well, I have."
I discussed it with a lot of her friends
and they'd all sent cards and presents.
Said we didn't care and we didn't love her
and my mum used to telephone me at all hours saying that,
"Why have you said this about me? Robert said you've said that,"
and none of it was true.
[Helena] I'd heard about him treating Evelyn really badly,
like making her swim naked when she didn't want to,
just basically, you know, humiliating her
in front of friends for no real reason, just to show off.
You wonder what was going on in the house and what he was saying
and what he was doing and what she was having to put up with.
He'd taken her to the doctors
and he was speaking to the doctor in French
and the doctor was trying to give her antidepressants
and she said, "I don't know what he said to this doctor.
Um, I don't know what I'm taking.
I don't want to take them. They're making me ill."
It was as if he was trying to,
just trying to push her over the edge.
[tense music playing]
[narrator] The couple have been in France for two years.
Evelyn's realized enough is enough.
My mum asked him to leave quite a few times
and he used to always say to my mum,
"You'll have to give me half of your pension
and half of your income and you won't be able to afford to keep your animals."
The relationship wasn't as it had looked to be at the start.
He bullied her a lot.
[Helena] I think Evelyn's mindset at the time
was very much that she had to get out.
I think she was realizing that she'd made a big mistake
and I think she was probably prepared to make the choice to leave Robert.
In the run up to that Christmas, she'd rung me a couple of times
and she was just in floods of tears,
you know, not happy with the way things were.
[Helena] It was a wake-up call
when her children didn't come for Christmas.
She, I think she really realized that she needed to make a decision.
[narrator] Evelyn takes control.
[Patricia] My mum rang Divorce Line up in France,
and found out that he'd been spinning her a load of lies
and that she wouldn't have to give him half of her pension
and she wouldn't have to get rid of her animals.
And I think he knew that that was it. His number was up.
[narrator] But then, by a chance sequence of events,
Evelyn becomes more isolated than ever.
[Patricia] I spoke to her Boxing Day.
A few days after, that's when there was really bad storms.
Um, all the telephone lines were down.
[narrator] Patricia's next call from France isn't from Evelyn.
I think it was the 29th or the 30th after the lines had gone back up.
[narrator] And there's worrying news.
Robert had rang me and said, "Have you heard from your mum?"
I said, "What do you mean have I heard from my mum? Is she not there?"
He said, "No, no, she went missing."
[eerie music playing]
I was distraught. It was a really cold winter.
The ground was frozen. We'd had all them horrible storms.
And I was thinking the worst.
[dramatic music playing]
She went out to Marianne's and she's not back yet.
I wonder, she's probably gone to a hotel or something, to cool off.
I said, "Has she got a handbag with her?"
Thinking if she had a handbag, she would have money, cards.
And he said, "Yeah, yeah, she's got a handbag."
[narrator] Patricia asks him what happened before her mum disappeared.
Robert and my mum had a row
and my mum stormed out, drove to Marianne's.
[narrator] Marianne Ramsey is Evelyn's best friend in the area.
When she got to Marianne's house, she was very distraught.
She was crying that much all her glasses were steamed up.
Marianne had to give her tissues to clean her glasses.
They calmed her down.
They gave my mum a room to have a sleep in
but my mum didn't have a sleep.
And she decided to leave and left a note
saying she'd gone home to feed the animals.
[horse snorts]
[Patricia] Robert said she never went back.
[narrator] Evelyn and her red Toyota 4x4 have disappeared,
leaving her family confused.
I thought she wouldn't not contact the girls.
She wouldn't, you know, just go off and do something like that
and put people through a lot of worry.
It just wasn't, it wasn't in her character to do that.
Is she down a ditch somewhere? Has she come off the road?
Has she had an accident?
Is she freezing to death? Is she hurt?
[narrator] The immediate panic of Evelyn's family
is at odds with the way Robert seems to be behaving.
Most normal people, if their partner had gone missing,
they would be straight down to the police station.
They'd be trying to get people out to look for her.
He didn't.
He did the opposite of what a normal person would have done.
And in the end, I had to threaten him
that you ring the police or else I'm ringing them.
[narrator] Finally, three days after Evelyn's disappearance,
Lund contacts the police.
[speaking in French]
[Patricia] The French police were really good.
They searched everywhere for the car, car parks,
they searched all the local areas, they had the army in.
[Joseph speaking in French]
[narrator] While the French police and army
are combing the area for signs of Evelyn,
Lund's behavior is distinctly odd.
[Patricia] He was trying to get as much money as he could
out of the bank accounts, and we rang the bank up
and stopped all the cards.
He thought he could just sit there and access all the money.
I remember him saying that after seven years,
she would officially be classed as being dead
and then he would automatically get everything.
He was acting really irrational,
told me he was going to cancel her car insurance.
And I said, "Well, if she's still out there driving that car,
you can't cancel the car insurance."
[Joseph speaking in French]
[narrator] Robert Lund's immediate actions are clearly out of the ordinary
and French police's suspicions are further compounded
when they search the house.
[speaking in French]
[narrator] Police also make another discovery
regarding Evelyn's possessions.
[Joseph speaking in French]
[narrator] Police believe Evelyn hasn't disappeared voluntarily.
[Patricia] We went through a rollercoaster of emotions,
anger, frustration, terribly sad, trying to get on with your own lives
and keep your lives going for your children
and trying and keep it as normal as you could.
I can't explain it, it was horrendous
and I wouldn't want anybody to go through it.
It was just the not knowing.
It just had a toll on us all.
The worst thing is the not knowing.
It sounds awful, but good or bad outcome,
you just want to know one way or the other.
You want a solution,
whether it be the worst case scenario or the best case scenario.
You just want to know one way or the other.
They were heartbroken because they knew she was missing
but they had no answers.
[narrator] French police leave no stone unturned
in their investigation,
and ask British police for their help.
[John] A lot was coming out about domestic violence
and really sort of a tempestuous relationship
and that was the picture that that was being built, if you like.
[Joseph speaking in French]
[John] The type of questions that were being asked,
it was being run in pretty much the same way
as you would run a murder inquiry.
[narrator] Back in France, with so much evidence against Robert Lund,
French authorities decide to arrest him on suspicion of murder.
[Joseph speaking in French]
[narrator] Police question Robert for 36 hours and then release him
pending further investigation.
Despite strong suspicions of an unlawful killing,
their hands are tied.
French law at the time states that without a body,
no one can be charged with murder.
[Joseph speaking in French]
[John] He always maintained that she'd turn up soon,
she'd just gone off to clear her head,
and that's the line he took throughout,
and he stuck to that rigidly.
[menacing music playing]
[narrator] Twenty two months after Evelyn Lund went missing,
there's news.
[Joseph speaking in French]
[Helena] The car was only found because the water levels of the lake
happened to descend by 30 feet,
which was totally unheard of.
[Patricia] They just said they'd found my mum's car
and that they'd taken it out of the water.
[tense music playing]
[Joseph speaking in French]
[tense music playing]
A body had been found in the back of a car
in a lake not far from where they lived.
[Patricia] It was just all surreal.
We were holding on to false hope.
In my heart of hearts, I knew, but…
It was just that little bit of a dream, really.
[pensive music playing]
I was heartbroken because I knew
she was definitely never coming back.
Sounds really weird, but relieved
that you have an answer, but extremely upset
at the, you know, what the answer was.
[Patricia] It sounds silly, but I was just glad
we'd actually found her.
I couldn't imagine of going through the whole of my life not knowing.
[Roisin] If somebody's missing, and they're found
and it turns out to be a murder,
it's not what you want, but at least you have some closure.
A lot of people don't ever get closure.
[Helena] That's where the whole missing person investigation ended
and the murder investigation began.
[tense music playing]
[narrator] It's nearly two years after Evelyn went missing.
It's the beginning of the next chapter of the investigation.
[speaking in French]
When she was found in the car, that was a massive game change.
We knew really that along with
the recovery of the car and the body,
we would only get more evidence against Robert.
[Joseph speaking in French]
[Helena] There had been a case in, I think, the last previous few years
where somebody had got away with something similar
and they were just determined that this wasn't going to happen again.
[eerie music playing]
[Patricia] And he was arrogant.
He really thought he was going to get away with it.
I think they were pretty determined to make sure
he was convicted of her murder.
[narrator] But these meticulous investigations take time.
We were all getting really frustrated
because everything was taking so long.
[narrator] Finally, three years later, Robert is charged with murder.
The police arrested Robert, but they kept him on remand.
[Patricia] The judge was very thorough.
They actually, she actually had all the forensics done a few times.
The only issues that were outstanding really
were forensic issues to do with her and the car.
They were doing a lot of tests on my mum and on the car.
[Hazan speaking in French]
[narrator] Firstly Monsieur Hazan assesses the location.
[Hazan speaking in French]
Even if you were in the smallest car in the world,
to get round the bend, to get to where she was,
you have to do a three-point turn.
If you were upset and you were just going to contemplate things and have a think,
you would not have gone down a little track.
[speaking in French]
[narrator] Next Monsieur Hazan needs to assess
whether this was an accident or not.
[Hazan speaking in French]
[narrator] Monsieur Hazan now needs to establish
whether the car was driven into the lake.
[Hazan speaking in French]
[narrator] The idea the vehicle was pushed appears to be supported
by other facts about the state of the car
when it entered the water.
[Hazan speaking in French]
She didn't drive that car into the water.
[Hazan speaking in French]
Evelyn was slumped on the back seat. There was blood on the back seat.
There was hardly any water in her lungs.
They believe she was either dead or unconscious
when she was in the water.
That speaks for itself. You can't drive yourself
into a lake when you're unconscious.
[speaking in French]
[narrator] All the forensic analysis takes a further three years.
Robert remains in custody.
And finally, nearly eight years after Evelyn went missing,
the case will be heard in court.
[Helena] The court case didn't come about until very many years later
to make sure they had a really fast case,
that he wouldn't get away with it.
The trial really gripped the local community.
There were two very distinct factions at the court case
and obviously there were his supporters
and then there were the friends of Evelyn
who were distraught and just so upset
that there actually were people who believed him.
[John] And he seemed to get on well with the French.
They seemed to have a different opinion of him than the English did.
The English saw through what he was like.
They didn't particularly like him very much.
[Helena] So the trial was a week
and he denied everything throughout the whole thing.
I remember the way we were all sat at the front.
Every time, every single day and after every lunchtime
and every break, they actually walked him right past us.
It was awful to sit there and have him walking
right in front of you.
I really do think he thought he was going to not be convicted.
He really thought he was going to get away with it.
[narrator] Key to the prosecution
was gathering enough evidence to challenge Robert's version of events.
After Evelyn was at Marianne's that night,
he always maintained she didn't return home.
[Helena] It was a little bit difficult to work out what the truth was.
There was a lot of evidence presented, uh,
obviously mainly for the prosecution,
and they really had done their homework, and they'd got it all.
They'd got all their ducks in a row.
There's, like, a number of things that you would think,
if you put that to a jury,
then the chances are they would think the same way that we do
that she's gone home and something bad's happened to her.
She was actually wearing different clothes,
when they found my mum, to what she was wearing
when she was at Marianne's.
When she was found in the car, she was dressed
to go out and feed animals on a stormy night.
She had her jodhpurs on,
the little wellie boots that she used to put on.
They were actually on the wrong feet
as though somebody put them on quickly.
There was actually blood in her shoes.
If you bleed in water,
the blood would just disperse into the water.
It wouldn't settle in your shoes.
She'd actually bled before she got into the water.
Her handbag was back at the farm house
and it also had her glasses in, which Marianne distinctly remembers
her giving her tissues to wipe them.
[speaking in French]
It's the most logical explanation that she's gone home,
and the arguments continued.
[narrator] For Patricia, there's one moment
that triggered this fatal sequence of events.
The police have got recordings of my mum phoning Divorce Line.
She knew that she could leave him,
and I think he knew that that was it.
It was then or never.
[narrator] Finally, six years after Evelyn's body was found in the lake,
a French court is about to deliver its verdict.
There was nothing whatsoever to point towards anything
other than Evelyn going home and being killed.
There was always that,
what if there was the element of doubt and he got away with it and…
Our emotions were just running high.
It was surreal, really.
And that last day, when we were
just waiting for the jury to come back,
it was…
it was horrendous.
You didn't know what to do with yourself.
You were just pacing up and down and waiting for that phone call from them
to say the jury had gone back in.
We all went back in. They brought Robert out.
They gave him the verdict.
I remember him going white and actually physically shaking
and spilling his water.
And he was obviously found guilty.
He's denied it to this day.
In the end, he was actually convicted with manslaughter.
[narrator] Robert Lund is convicted of involuntary homicide,
a crime akin to manslaughter.
He got 12 years.
There was just this almighty uproar from the back.
It was just all the villagers and all these people
who originally said nice things about my mum,
then changed the story as Robert had befriended them.
And even when we're walking away, they're all shouting at us,
like we'd done something wrong. It was horrendous.
[narrator] Despite the court's decision, Robert Lund maintains his innocence.
The French had just brought this law in
that everybody could appeal and have a second trial.
So straight after that first trial, he appealed.
So we knew that was it. We were going to have to go through it all again.
[narrator] Robert's second trial concludes,
but he's able to appeal again due to a point of law.
This means there has to be another third trial after that.
Ten years after Evelyn's body was found in the car in the lake,
the case finally draws to a close.
Every time he appealed, he was basically told
to go back to jail where he belongs.
[somber music playing]
I'm glad he was convicted.
But I don't think he got long enough.
And I think he should have been convicted with murder
and he should have had a very long time.
He should not be out now walking the streets.
And we actually took her ashes to Burnley
where we scattered her ashes
at the same place we'd scattered my father's ashes.
Where my grandparents are buried, we use that as a memorial where we go.
There's this little message on the bottom remembering my mum.
My grandma and my grandfather were all victims of Robert.
The victims just spread out.
There was just too many of us.
He killed my mum,
and he didn't just destroy her life,
he destroyed all them years
that she should have had with her grandchildren.
They were robbed. They were robbed of their grandma.
Do you know what? I've just stopped being angry
because it destroys you. You've just got to move on.
[dramatic orchestral music playing]