When my brother and his girlfriend disappeared, we never imagined it would take nearly four decades to uncover the truth. By Penny Farmer, 63
As we bobbed about in our dinghy, I said, ‘We should turn back now.’
‘No! Come on,’ my brother Chris said, ‘let’s go
a bit further.’
We were on holiday in Anglesey and Chris was being his usual adventurous self.
Chris was a junior doctor, and his childhood sweetheart, Peta, was a law graduate.
But they had plans to take off to Australia before exploring the South Pacific.
‘I’ll miss you,’ I said.
‘I’ll miss you too,’ Chris replied.
Back home in Manchester, I started sixth form.
Weeks later, my family waved Chris and Peta off.
My mum, Audrey, fought back tears as she gave Chris one last hug.
‘Remember, it isn’t for long,’ he said. ‘Please don’t worry about me, I’m doing what I’ve always wanted to do.’
In the months that followed, Peta sent long letters to her mum Sammie, and Chris sent tapes with recorded messages.
‘We’re having a great time,’ Chris said. ‘It’s paradise.’
When my 17th birthday rolled around, he sent me a beautiful green sarong.
We looked forward to hearing about their latest adventures, from scuba diving off New Caledonia, to visiting white sand beaches in Fiji.
I thought, I wish I was there.
After they’d travelled to Oaxaca in Mexico, Chris sent a message.
‘We’re going to come home for Christmas,’ he said.
Although that was still months away, we looked forward to it.
'Please don't worry about me'
Then, Sammie received a letter from Peta saying they were in Belize, Central America.
They’d met an American who owned a boat, and they were sailing with him to Honduras.
But weeks passed without tapes or letters, and we grew anxious.
Finally, five weeks after Peta’s last letter, Sammie received a letter from Peta.
Mum breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Thank God,’ she said, ‘Where are they? Are they
all right?’
Sammie explained that they were still sailing with the American, named Silas Duane Boston. His two sons, Vince, 13, and Russell, 12, were also on board the Justin B.
Apparently Peta had said that it
was getting a bit cramped, and Boston was losing his temper with the two boys.
We felt puzzled, as the letter was dated 28 June,
but the postmark showed it had been sent from Livingston in Guatemala, on
18 July.
It was unusual for Peta to not update her letter with a postscript when she was unable to send it straightaway.
Weeks passed with no further communication, and our fears grew.
My dad, Charles, got in contact with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), and he wrote to the consuls in Central and South America.
Chris and Peta’s disappearance was reported in the media.
Dad wrote to the acting harbour master in Belize, who confirmed that Chris and Peta were on board the
Justin B when it left port.
However, there was no record of them on board when it next docked.
The FCO confirmed that days later, Boston and his sons had flown to Miami.
The British Consulate tracked Boston down. But he claimed he’d dropped Chris and Peta off in Guatemala.
The case was then taken up by Greater Manchester
Police. But without any bodies or hard evidence, it was hard to make progress.
Christmas came and went.
I would walk into a room and my worried parents would hurriedly wipe away their tears.
Then, a Belizean private investigator, working for both our families, discovered something shocking.
The bodies of two unidentified Westerners, matching Chris and Peta’s descriptions, had been recovered from the sea
off Guatemala the
previous July.
The bodies were exhumed, and dental records confirmed they were Chris and Peta.
They had been tortured, bound, and weighed down with engine parts.
Mum, Dad, my older brother Nigel and I, passed
a bottle of sherry round to
try to numb the shock.
We believed Silas Duane Boston was responsible for the murder of Chris and Peta.
The only question we had was why?
But, by now, it was as if he and his sons had disappeared into thin air.
The case ran cold, and years turned into decades.
In time, Dad passed away, and we feared we’d never know exactly what had happened to Chris and Peta.
A couple of years later, Mum and I were out walking the dog.
Mum was aged 91, and Chris would have now been in his 60s.
‘I wonder what Chris would look like now,’ Mum said.
And then a realisation suddenly hit me…
Chris had died outside of the digital age, and I’d never thought to look online for answers.
I rushed home and searched Facebook.
It wasn’t long before I found Vince and Russell.
Then, I found myself staring at the face of Silas Duane Boston, who was living in Sacramento.
I contacted Greater Manchester Police, and they agreed to reopen the case.
Shockingly, the original case file had been lost.
But I had a dossier of Dad’s investigations, and a former detective had kept a copy of the missing case file in his garden shed.
When the lead detective reached out to the Sacramento Police Department, she discovered that they were investigating the disappearance of
Vince and Russell’s mother, Mary Lou, after Vince gave a statement to say that his father had murdered her in 1968.
Vince and Russell had also informed police that they had witnessed the murders of Chris and Peta.
It turned out that both sons had made numerous attempts to report Chris and Peta’s murder. But because the case file was missing, the UK’s National Crime Agency had insisted they could find
no trace of Chris and Peta, and their accounts were dismissed.
Boston was finally arrested and charged with the murder of Chris and Peta.
'I wish we could have done something'
We looked forward
to facing him in court.
But three weeks before the court date, Boston, who suffered kidney failure, died after refusing his dialysis.
As I needed some form of closure, I travelled to America to meet Russell.
He looked stricken as he recounted the horrific details of what had happened to Chris and Peta.
Boston had been drinking heavily and had started beating Russell.
Chris had stepped in and Boston had tried to hit him, but ended up falling overboard.
Chris and Peta had laughed, and Chris had then helped Boston back on to the boat.
But Boston felt humiliated and, the next day, he asked Chris to raise the anchor. Then, he crept up behind him and beat him with a club, cracking his skull.
He threatened to
shoot Peta with a spear gun if she didn’t stay in the galley, and then he stabbed Chris in the chest.
Chris survived, and the following day, Boston told him and Peta he’d drop them at a remote point on a peninsula. He bound their legs, tied their hands behind their backs, and placed a plastic bag over their heads.
Boston reassured Chris and Peta that this was only so he’d have time to escape before they contacted police.
He promised to push them into shallow water so they could make it to shore.
Instead, he attached engine parts to the binds on their legs and steered the Justin B out to sea. Then, he tossed them overboard.
Tears ran down Russell’s face.
‘I wish we could have done something,’ he said.
But Russell and Vince
were helpless victims too.
Back home, my 17-year-old son Charlie said, ‘Mum, I want to go backpacking around Asia.’
His resemblance to Chris was startling. I instinctively wanted to discourage him, but I knew
I couldn’t clip his wings.
Charlie went travelling and returned with lots of stories.
Meanwhile, my book Dead in the Water was published as testimony to my family’s enduring love for Chris.
It took 37 years to find the truth. But now Chris and Peta can finally rest in peace.