Had things gone differently in 2001 when Hannah Williams went missing, she would be in 30s today. Instead, her disappearance and murder is still little heard of. Her case is not unsolved – her killer died in prison in 2015 at 71. He was arrested less than two weeks after her remains were discovered. Unfortunately, her remains weren’t recovered until nearly a year after she disappeared, and her killer had an extensive criminal history that should have kept him from being around her at all. Despite this history, her killer not only had access to her, but he is thought to have been involved in the disappearances and murders of up to 15 young girls (Smith, 2021) (Robinson, 2019) (Wikizero – Murder of Hannah Williams, n.d.).
It began on April 21, 2001, when Hannah, 14, left her home in Dartford to go window-shopping, as she did most Saturdays. She was well known to local shop keepers as a fashion fan, frequently perusing the clothing available at the shops. On this day, she wearing burgundy pants, a black sleeveless top with golden leaf designs on the front, leather boots, and a denim jacket, as well as a gold scrunchy, gold earrings, and a gold necklace. She would be found still wearing this outfit (Smith, 2021) (Robinson, 2019). Hannah never made it to the shops that April day. Investigators believe she received a phone call shortly after leaving from her soon-to-be killer. Robert Howard, who nicknamed himself “Wolf Man” or “Wolfhill Werewolf,” met Hannah through Mary Scollan, who had once been involved with Hannah’s father and had remained close with her. Howard was introduced to Hannah in 1999 while living with Scollan and began grooming her, though Scollan was notably unaware of his history or pedophilic tendencies or 35-year long record of sex crimes, including one attempted rape of a six-year old in 1965 (Robinson, 2019). It is believed Howard convinced Hannah to come to his house while his girlfriend was out, where he would attempt to sexually assault her. When she fought back, he strangled her with a blue rope that would still be wrapped around her neck when she was found on March 15, 2002 (Robinson, 2019).
After he strangled Hannah, Howard took a blue tarp and wrapped her in it before disposing of her remains in a tunnel at a disused Blue Circle Cement Works industrial site near his home. For nearly an entire year, Hannah’s case would go almost entirely unreported on, despite her mother’s efforts to bring attention to her disappearance. Investigators immediately assumed the 14-year old must have run away, despite her mother, Bernadette, informing them that Hannah regularly told her how she would never leave her. Few articles were written about her disappearance, most of the 62 articles found online at the time she was found were written after her remains were identified. Hannah Williams was likely a victim of “Missing White Woman Syndrome,” a phenomenon where middle-to-upper class white women get more media coverage than anyone else when they go missing. While Hannah was white, she came from a working class family, lived with a single-mother, and had a nose ring, all things that made her less-than-ideal for media coverage. Her mother never got to appear on television to ask for her return, as investigators apparently felt she was not “press conference material.” An anonymous investigator told a reported in December of 2002 that her background made it hard to build a campaign around her disappearance. Investigators would be rebuked in 2005 for how they handled Hannah’s disappearance and their treatment of her mother (Robinson, 2019) (Smith, 2021).
Hannah’s disappearance was quickly lost in the media when two more young girl went missing in unrelated crimes. In June 2001, Danielle Jones, 15, disappeared, and in March 2002, Amanda “Milly” Dowler, 13, also disappeared. Danielle Jones’ disappearance so soon after Hannah’s eclipsed her’s, as Danielle was from a higher class family and her disappearance was more “media friendly.” When Hannah’s remains were recovered on March 15, 2002, reports emerged speculating that the body found at Blue Circle Cement Works was Danielle Jones, Hannah practically forgotten by the media. Most of the articles written about her came after her remains were discovered and identified. At the time, there were a total of 62 articles written both before and after her remains were discovered. Even now, little more has been written on her case. Most of the articles written focus more on her killer, how the media treated her case, and even the cases that eclipsed her’s (Robinson, 2019) (Smith, 2021). 20 years later, Hannah Williams is still often forgotten by the media.
Things could have been different for Hannah Williams. While perhaps Howard killed her too soon for media coverage to have saved her life, it could have brought enough attention to her case to keep people actively looking for her. Had Howard been imprisoned for his many crimes for adequate sentences, he wouldn’t have been out to groom and attack her. His sentencing for previous crimes ranged times from nine days to 10 years, none of which seemed truly adequate for the crimes he had committed. At the time that Hannah was killed, he was known to have attempted to rape a six-year old and had been charged with unlawful carnage knowledge of a child under 17 in 1993. He’s known to have raped an older woman in 1974 and is the main suspect in the 1994 disappearance of Arlene Atkinson, 15. When he died in 2017, he was preparing to confess the location of Atkinson’s remains to investigators. He had been charged with her murder in 2005, but was acquitted due to insufficient evidence. Had the jury known his previous history, perhaps he would have been found guilty. If Scollan or Hannah’s father had been aware of his history, perhaps they would never have let him meet Hannah. As of now, we’re left with thoughts of what could have been had her case been handled differently and the knowledge that Howard may have been responsible for the disappearances of 15 young girls before he was arrested on March 23, 2002, and jailed for Hannah’s murder (Wikizero -Murder of Hannah Williams, n.d.) (Robinson, 2019) (Smith, 2021).
Smith, J., 2021. A 14-Year-Old Girl Lost Her Life To A Serial Predator, And Some Say The Media Is To Blame. [online] Ranker. Available at: <https://www.ranker.com/list/hannah-williams-missing-white-woman-syndrome/jodi-smith> [Accessed 6 August 2021].
Robinson, A., 2019. Forgotten murder of missing schoolgirl, 14, and how she was failed by police. [online] KentLive. Available at: <https://www.kentlive.news/news/kent-news/forgotten-murder-missing-girl-hannah-3564042> [Accessed 8 August 2021].
Wikizero.com. n.d. Wikizero – Murder of Hannah Williams. [online] Available at: <https://www.wikizero.com/en/Murder_of_Hannah_Williams> [Accessed 9 August 2021].
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