The family of a missing teenager whom the convicted murderer Levi Bellfield claims to have kidnapped and murdered say they have lost trust and confidence in the police after a tense two-hour meeting with homicide detectives.
The family of Elizabeth Chau said their hopes of answers after 24 years were dashed after Metropolitan police detectives told them this week they would not immediately dig at a site where the serial killer confessed to burying her.
Bellfield, already convicted of the murders of three young women, claims Elizabeth, then 19, was abducted in April 1999 from Ealing, west London. It would make the computer studies student his first known victim, if his confession is true.
Bellfield confessed last Tuesday to the Met’s homicide detectives and, according to his solicitor, marked with a cross the spot on a map where he says she is buried and handed the map to officers.
Chau’s family had a meeting with Met detectives on Wednesday, which left them furious. They say police claimed the area Bellfield identified was too “vast” to dig straight away, according to three people present at the meeting.
It is a claim disputed by Bellfield’s solicitor and Chau’s brother and sister.
Minh-Vu, her brother, said: “We have lost trust and confidence in the police, because they are acting too slowly. They are being very vague, they have not done enough. They have enough to go to the site and to try and verify whether Elizabeth is there or not.”
Elizabeth’s sister Bic-Hang Chau said the family did not believe the area identified by Bellfield was “too vast”. “We don’t believe that is true. They are not doing anything because Elizabeth is not a priority.”
Police are understood to be consulting or due to consult with forensic experts and specialists in digging historic sites and told the Chau family any excavation could take months. They have not committed to digging the site and their investigation continues.
The family say they understand Bellfield may be manipulative and lying, but after 24 years they want urgent action taken to prove or disprove the claim their loved one is buried at the site identified.
The last known sighting of Elizabeth Chau was just after 6pm, captured by a CCTV camera close to Ealing police station in April 1999.
Bic-Hang said: “The meeting with police investigators was hard and disappointing and the pace of the investigation remains frustratingly slow and painful. We are not confident that finding Elizabeth’s remains is being prioritised.”
Theresa Clark, Bellfield’s solicitor, was present when he made his alleged confession to detectives. It was under criminal caution, was recorded and took place in Frankland prison in Durham.
Detectives showed a printout of a Google map to Bellfield, who marked with a ballpoint pen a specific area, Clark said.
She had physical sight of the spot on the map that her client identified to police. Clark told the Guardian: “I could see the area on the map. [He] circled it and put a cross within that circle with a Biro.”
“He said he might be 20ft out. It is an area he knew well. It was quite specific. It did not look vast.”
Bellfield has already been convicted of three murders: those of 13-year-old Milly Dowler in March 2002; 19-year-old Marsha McDonnell in February 2003; and 22-year-old Amélie Delagrange in August 2004. He was also convicted of the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy in May 2004. He is serving whole-life tariffs.
In March the family asked for a meeting with the Met commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley. They say they have not yet received a reply. Minh-Vu Chau said: “It is also disappointing that the Metropolitan police commissioner has not responded to our request to meet him despite the gravity of failures in this case. We cannot sit back and allow the same failures and obstructions to be repeated again.”
They have asked for a meeting with the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, who as police and crime commissioner for the Met, oversees the force.
The Chau family say the Met failed them from when Elizabeth disappeared and fear the same is happening now. They believe police first received word of a confession from Bellfield in October 2022. A source was alleged to be so frustrated by police inaction they contacted the Chau family in March 2023 to tell them of the confession.
The Met declined to comment on any issue raised by the Chau family after Wednesday’s meeting with detectives.
The force refused to say whether Elizabeth’s death was being treated as homicide or whether they were investigating an allegation of wasting police time against a man aged 54, whom the Met last week confirmed they had interviewed under caution on Tuesday 9 May.
