Annette Kilgore, 69, moved to Spain with her husband after the pair purchased a home via he Channel 4 reality show. She is now missing, presumed dead, after wildfires razed parts of Andalucía
A woman who appeared on the Channel 4’s reality programme A Place in the Sun is missing in the wake of horror wildfires that tore through southern Spain. Annette Kilgore, 69, is missing and is presumed to have died in the vicious blaze that tore through their village of Bédar and razed homes on Thursday (July 9).
She and her husband, Malcolm Timbrell, 70, moved to the small village in the autonomous community of Andalucía from Cornwall in the wake of their appearance on the reality programme in 2023. Annette is now feared to be one of the 13 bodies recovered from the town, located in the Spanish province of Almeria.
Blistering temperatures, parched terrain and fierce winds caused flames to tear through the area on Thursday afternoon; yet another day of weather extremes during a summer heatwave that saw the mercury soar to 44C across parts of Spain. Authorities are now attempting to identify those who couldn’t flee the inferno using DNA samples, with many of the bodies burnt beyond recognition.
Annette’s husband Malcolm has told the BBC of how he had lost contact with his wife and a dozen of their friends and neighbours as flames sped their way towards their homes.
“We have had an amazing life together, and now it’s stopped,” he said. “If we had done the sensible thing and gone the other way and let our cats die, we both would be alive. But when you’ve got animals, you don’t think like that.”
He added: “We are just waiting now for DNA clarification. And after that, I will probably just fall apart.”
A Place in the Sun presenter Leah Charles-King helped Malcolm and Annette find their dream home abroad in 2023, with Annette telling the host at the beginning of their episode that she was keen to embrace the Spanish lifestyle following her retirement after a long career in mental health. “We’ve started kayaking, which is great fun. I haven’t fallen in. I now know that I don’t panic when I fall in, so that’s a good thing,” she said on the programme.
Despite never having visited the Almeria region before, Annette and Malcolm were convinced it was the ideal location for them and their cherished cats, Charlie and Misty, to relax and unwind. At the time, Annette said: “It’s not as commercialised, it’s smaller areas of villages, so it just seemed the perfect place.” Malcolm added on the show: “It will extend our adventure.”
Annette continued: “So, to sit and have a glass of wine in our own property that we’ve thought about for so long and just have that lovely feeling, ‘This is ours, we’ve done it.'”.
The pair had a budget of £200,000 to discover their ideal Spanish home, which they located in Bédar. The stone cottage was priced at £215,746 during filming, and at the programme’s conclusion, Malcolm and Annette submitted a “cheeky” initial bid of £175,000.
The owner initially turned down their offer, but the negotiating sides ultimately settled on a purchase price of £200,000. Following confirmation of the sale, Malcolm declared: “I couldn’t be happier at the moment,” while Annette remarked: “We’ve just bought that Spanish beautiful stone cottage up on the top of a mountain. And that isn’t what we came for? It’s what we’ve bought, because it’s what we fell in love with.”
Annette is not the only Brit missing in Bédar. Expat couple Pete and Fran Gillam have already been confirmed as two of the bodies recovered from the burnt-out village. The couple vanished on Thursday, after Fran messaged her daughter Danielle Gillam-Kirton to say they were evacuating.
That message, sent at approximately 7pm Thursday, was the final time Danielle would hear from her parents. Contact was severed after that point, with texts and calls failing to reach either of her parents thereafter.
In a devastating update shared on social media, Danielle confirmed the news nobody had wanted to hear. “We are heartbroken to share that we have received confirmation from the police that Mum and Dad did not survive the fire. Thank you for all your love, support and prayers over the past few days. They have meant more to us than we can ever express.”
As well as the Gillams, a Spanish man and his British wife have since been named as victims killed in Bédar. A French woman and Belgian man have also been identified, as well as a 93-year-old British woman who later died in hospital on Sunday (July 12) after the fire.