On December 28, 1992, 23-year-old Steven Clark went for a walk with his mother in Saltburn. They stopped at a public restroom, but Steven was never seen again.
Steven Charles Clark was born in 1969 in Colchester, England. His parents Charles and Doris were both police officers, and he had a younger sister called Victoria.
When Steven was two years old he was in an accident that left him in a coma and with a permanently damaged arm as well as a pronounced limp. He had followed his mother out of the house when she left to go shopping, and was hit by a truck.
At some point, Steven and his family moved to South Africa, before returning to the UK in 1990. They settled in Marske-by-the-Sea.
On December 28, 1992, the day of Steven’s Disappearance, his father Charles left home at approximately 2pm to go to a football match. After he left, Steven and his mother Doris decided to go on a walk at the beach in Saltburn.
According to Doris, on their way back home, Steven wanted to use the restroom so they stopped at the public toilets. Doris watched Steven enter the men’s toilets and then she went into the woman’s.
When Doris came out of the toilets, Steven wasn’t there waiting for her so she assumed he was still inside. After waiting for a few more minutes, she decided to start walking home, thinking that maybe Steven had already gone home, but she didn’t see him on her way back, and when she made it home Steven was not there.
At some point that afternoon, Charles returned home from the football match and Doris told him what had happened, so they both left the house to go and look for Steven. They reported him missing at 6pm that evening.
Doris told the police that she had seen two men and a little girl enter the toilets right after Steven had. These people have never been identified.
Police searched for Steven Clark, but they found no trace of him. They were even unable to corroborate Doris’s story that they had been at the public restroom that day.
Since his disappearance that day, Steven’s bank account has not been used and his glasses, wallet and watch were all left behind at the house.
At the time of his disappearance, Steven Clark, who was 6ft 3” with dark brown hair and blue eyes, was wearing a maroon crew neck jumper, blue denim jeans, grey trainers and a navy-blue parka with fur hood.
In the weeks following Steven’s disappearance several sightings were reported. A witness, who knew Steven, saw him near the Clark’s house at approximately 3:45pm the day he went missing.
Another witness claimed to have seen Steven from her window two days after he disappeared, he was leaving the beach with an older man with glasses, but given the distance between her window and the beach the police felt it was unlikely she would have been able to accurately identify him.
In January 1993, a friend of the Clark family, Stan Camaish, claimed to have seen Steven in Redcar, 10 miles from Saltburn. He said he had spoken to Steven but at the time he didn’t know he was missing. However, years later Camaish confessed that he’d lied. And the man he saw was not Steven Clark.
In 1999, police received an anonymous letter from someone claiming to know what happened to Steven. Detective Chief Inspector Shaun Page said:
“The letter is very precise in nature. The letter writer intimated that Steven was dead and that they claim to know the person responsible.”
In 2020, the missing persons case was reclassified as a murder investigation. In September of the same year Steven Clark’s parents Charles and Doris were arrested. A search of the Clarks home and garden was carried out, as well as a nearby wooded area but nothing significant was found.
In February 2021, Doris and Charles were cleared of all charges.
Victoria. Steven’s sister said there was no way her parents would have hurt Steven.
In 2022, the family released a statement:
“The constant painful limbo of not knowing is a horrible thing to live with. We still hope that he will walk through the door one day, but we appreciate that as each year passes it becomes more and more unlikely.”
Detective Chief Inspector Shaun Page said there are currently “no active lines” of enquiry. It is not known what happened to Steve Clark that day.
Sources:
https://www.missingpeople.org.uk/help-us-find/steven-clark-93-000106
https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/missing-steven-clark
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-64068137
https://www.itv.com/watch/accused-of-murdering-our-son-the-steven-clark-story/10a1073
