Husband fell for cop and lied about killing his spouse who has been ‘lacking’ for 34 years
Last month, land belonging to a Moravian Church was dug up by murder cops. The usually quiet suburb on the outskirts of Leeds was a hub of activity as specialist officers from West Yorkshire Police’s Major Investigation Review Team excavated the site.
They were searching in connection with a woman’s disappearance 34 years ago. Patricia Hall, an Avon Lady, vanished without trace in 1992. Her body has never been found, but an inquest opened earlier this year into her presumed death.
The dig was the first major update in the mystery since a cold case review into the mum-of-two’s disappearance concluded last year without establishing any new lines of inquiry.
Police at the scene in Pudsey last month(Image: Newsquest / SWNS)
Patricia was last seen on January 25, 1992, when family members spent the day in Ripon. There have been no sightings of her since, no suggestion that she was alive and she has made no attempts to contact any family member or social acquaintances.
Coroner Oliver Longstaff said in April’s inquest opening: “There is reason to suspect that Mrs Hall’s abrupt and complete disappearance is a consequence of her having died a violent or unnatural death.” The hearing at Wakefield Coroner’s Court was adjourned.
Her husband Keith was tried for her murder but was found not guilty in 1994. An alleged taped confession that he had strangled her was ruled inadmissible by a judge.
Keith Hall walked free from Leeds Crown Court in 1994(Image: Daily Mirror)
Hall told police she had got into her blue Ford Sierra and sped off into the night, leaving behind their sons Andrew, then nine, and Graeme, five. Her car was found abandoned a mile away.
On the same street the night she disappeared, a witness saw a man lifting something into or out of a Sierra on the same road.
He was charged with murder after he allegedly admitted on tape to an undercover policewoman. He had started a romance with the female PC and told her that he had strangled his wife and disposed of her body in an incinerator.
The couple lived in Pudsey, Leeds(Image: Daily Mirror)
But when the case went to trial, judge Mr Justice Waterhouse ruled that the tape was inadmissible as evidence. It was obtained after Keith Hall answered a “lonely hearts” advertisement in a local newspaper six month after his wife’s disappearance.
When detectives got wind he was dating again and meeting women from the lonely hearts ads, a female officer codenamed Liz befriended Hall and became his “girlfriend”.
He told Liz: “I strangled her. But it wasn’t that easy,” later adding he had dropped the body “into an incinerator”.
A jury was never allowed to hear the recorded “admission” at his trial and Hall walked from court a free man. But the judge later took the unprecedented step of publicly releasing the tape, sparking three decades of speculation.
Patricia and husband Keith on their wedding day
Hall finally told his story in a 2022 documentary in which he said: “I wanted the company of a female. That’s what I were missing.
“I wanted somebody that could take me as they find me, who maybe had kids of their own and we could get together and bring up the kids as a unit, all together.”
Hall, who maintained his innocence from the start, says the “confession” was a lie that he told to keep Liz after falling in love with her. He added: “It May sound funny but even though she was a policewoman, I’d fallen in love with Liz.
“She wanted to know why Pat wasn’t coming back. I said anything to please her. When I left that car, I was going to go back and say, ‘You know what I said is a load of ooish, don’t you? Made up entirely to please you?’ And I should have done, really.”
The judge ruled the evidence was inadmissible because Hall had not been read his rights when he started his “confession”.
Speaking after the inquest opened in April, Patricia’s sister Christine Weatherhead said: “Something untoward has happened to Pat and hopefully this inquest will give us that evidence about what may have happened.
“For 34 years, we have fought the judicial system to have Pat acknowledged not as missing, or just a number on a case file, but as a kind, loving, devoted mother, sister, and daughter who would never have left her sons, Andrew and Graeme, or her family.
“Pat was known for her warmth and generosity, always putting her family first. Her absence has left a void that has never been filled.”
The case remains unsolved.
