Sarah Wellgreen's sons plead with killer to reveal location of body

Why won’t he tell us where he’s hidden mum’s body? Murder victim Sarah Wellgreen’s sons plead with her taxi driver ex-partner to reveal the location of her remains after he killed her in a jealous rage

• Lewis and Jack Burdett are still looking for answers after their mother’s death
• Ben Lacomba was sentenced to 27 years for her murder but has kept his silence
• The brothers want to know where her body is and how she was murdered
• They have now requested a prison visit to see the man that killed their mother
• If Helen’s Law is passed, he will never be released unless he reveals her location 

Brothers Lewis and Jack Burdett have one New Year’s resolution: to find their mother, Sarah. Since the 46-year-old beautician went missing 14 months ago, their lives have been in complete turmoil.

They know she was murdered; they know who did it. But they don’t know why, where, how, or the location of her body.

All they have are the same terrible, never-ending questions: How did she die? Was she drugged or in pain? Did she put up a fight? Will they ever bring her home?

‘Until we can lay her to rest properly and say goodbye to our mum, there’ll be no end to this for us,’ says Lewis, 23, the eldest of Sarah Wellgreen’s five children. ‘But only one person knows the truth and he’s not telling.’

Sarah Wellgreen in 1999 with Lewis, four, and Jack (right), three. The 46-year-old beautician went missing 14 months ago

That person is taxi driver Ben Lacomba, 39, Sarah’s estranged partner and father to her three youngest children. 

He is the man Lewis and Jack used to call ‘Dad’. Today he sits, clinging to his corrosive secrets, in HMP Belmarsh — one of the few murderers convicted in the absence of a body.

Jailed for life on November 8, with a minimum term of 27 years, Lacomba was found guilty of Sarah’s ‘callous and chilling’ murder on the strength of compelling circumstantial evidence.

This is Lewis and Jack’s first interview since his conviction. Their relief that ‘justice was done’ is clear. They are incredibly thankful to the police and Crown Prosecution Service; also grateful to the volunteers from Sarah’s Kent village who are still searching for her.

But the case is far from over for them and won’t be until they have their mother back.

To that end, they reveal they have made the painful decision to request a prison meeting with Lacomba in the hope he’ll break his silence.

‘I want to look him in the eyes and say: “Just tell us where she is, for your kids’ sake and for ours,” says Jack, 22, a retail worker. ‘No feeling will be left unsaid.’

Jack wants Lacomba to hear about the hours he’s spent scouring the countryside near the home from which his mother disappeared, helped by volunteers and dog units, looking for any trace of her.

Jack (left) and Lewis Burdett made the painful decision to request a prison meeting with Ben Lacomba in the hope he’ll break his silence

Lewis, a soldier, adds: ‘People keep telling us “he won’t see you”, but I want to try. He’s the only person who knows what happened to Mum and the only person who can give her back to us.

‘I have just two questions for him: “Why?” and “Where is she?”. He might tell us, or he might sit there in silence, just as he’s always done since the day she went missing, but the truth will come out one day.’

Ben Lacomba is one of just 18 ‘no-body’ murderers jailed in Britain since 1954 when the ‘no body, no murder’ rule was effectively overturned.

If a new law is passed, he will never be released unless he reveals the location of Sarah Wellgreen’s remains.

The Prisoners (disclosure of information about victims) Bill, was included in the new Conservative Government’s agenda and is expected to progress through Parliament within weeks.

The bill is known as ‘Helen’s Law’, named after Helen McCourt, murdered in 1988 by Ian Simms as she walked home from work in the village of Billinge in Merseyside.

Jailed for life in 1989 with a 16-year minimum term, Simms, 63, has never revealed the location of Helen’s body.

Helen’s mother, Marie, has tirelessly campaigned for him to be denied parole unless he does. She described the confirmation that legislation will go through as ‘the best Christmas present ever’.

Ben Lacomba (pictured) insisted he was asleep when Sarah went missing

Lewis, whose family has been in touch with Mrs McCourt, says: ‘If that law is passed, then telling the truth is the only way Ben Lacomba would ever get out.’

Lewis and Jack can never forgive Lacomba for the lies he told during his four-week trial at Woolwich Crown Court in October.

Lacomba insisted he was asleep when Sarah went missing from the £300,000 home they shared in New Ash Green, Kent, on October 9, 2018, leaving behind her car, handbag, purse, bank cards, phones and jewellery.

The couple split in 2014, but Sarah had moved back into the family home in May 2018, to co-parent their three young children. They’d agreed to lead separate lives, sleeping in different bedrooms, but the arrangement was fractious.

With relations at breaking point, Sarah had secured a mortgage to raise the £50,000 needed to buy Lacomba out of the property. The day before she went missing, Sarah told him she’d landed a well-paid job as a business development manager, enabling her to support their children without him.

Faced with losing his home and kids, Lacomba — described as ‘angry, bitter and controlling’ — planned to ‘erase her from his life for ever’.

Switching off the CCTV which covered their property, he murdered Sarah and moved her body in his taxi to an unknown location while their children slept. Despite extensive police searches of more than 1,250 areas, Sarah has never been found.

Reporting her missing to police two days later, on October 11, 2018, Lacomba claimed he had no idea where she’d gone, telling officers Sarah led a ‘weird’ life and was seeing ‘quite a few blokes’.

Lacomba told the court he and Sarah were a ‘fantastic team’ and insisted ‘I definitely haven’t killed her’. He claimed a long-handled ‘gravedigger’s’ shovel found in his shed was a Christmas present for his frail, elderly mother.

Lacomba, pictured during interrogation, claimed he had no idea where she’d gone, telling officers Sarah led a ‘weird’ life and was seeing ‘quite a few blokes’

The jury took three-and-a-half hours to find Lacomba guilty after hearing an occupant in the house had woken in the early hours to find both Sarah and Lacomba gone from their separate beds. 

Only he came back. A red Vauxhall Zafira with taxi markings was picked up by CCTV at eight different locations between 2.13am and 4.27am at the time Lacomba claimed to be asleep.

Lacomba’s almost identical taxi was seen with mud under the arches the following morning, only for it to be ‘sparkly and clean like a brand-new car’ hours later. He threw his mobile phone in the Thames so police could not examine his text messages.

Sentencing him, Judge Christopher Kinch QC told Lacomba he’d carried out a ‘thoroughly wicked plan, executed for selfish interests without any thought of the dreadful consequences’.

The brothers were toddlers when Sarah split from their father, and aged nine and ten when their mother — a Lloyd’s TSB bank manager — met Lacomba on an internet dating site in December 2004.

Sarah went missing from the £300,000 home she shared with Lacomba in New Ash Green, Kent

Lacomba, the son of an English mother and Spanish father, had moved to Majorca in 2002 to train as a pilot after working in London for a TV and music post-production company. After a 12-month long-distance relationship, Sarah, who had two failed marriages behind her, decided to join Lacomba in Spain with the boys in 2005.

‘Mum had always been very hard-working and independent, but she just wanted what everyone else wants — happiness. She wanted to give us a proper family life with a mum and a dad,’ says Jack.

‘Mum really loved Ben and, to begin with, they were really happy together. We liked him, too. We were really excited to move to Majorca. What kid wouldn’t want to go live somewhere nice and sunny?’

‘He was the only father we’d really known as children and he wanted us to call him ‘Dad’ and take his surname, so we could be a proper family.’

Life in Spain, though, was not the dream they’d wanted.

Unable to speak the language, Sarah couldn’t get a job and missed her work, family and friends back in the UK. The boys struggled at school and had few friends.

Lacomba’s big ambition to become a commercial airline pilot failed to materialise and he had a low-paid airport job.

After the birth of their first child, the family returned to the UK in 2007 for financial reasons, eventually buying a house in New Ash Green, Kent.

Sarah returned to her bank job, while Lacomba — after six months as a stay-at-home dad — became a taxi driver. Two more children followed.

‘After his first child was born, Ben lost all interest in us. We felt pushed aside because we weren’t his flesh and blood,’ said Jack, who has reverted to his real father’s surname, as has Lewis.

‘Mum ran the house, looked after the financial side and organised family life.

Despite extensive police searches of more than 1,250 areas, Sarah has never been found

‘She paid for the loft conversion, conservatory and kitchen and all the bills, while he did nothing. They started bickering constantly. They’d argue over money, or if someone was going out, everything. Ben was very controlling and enjoyed being a pain, just for the sake of it. Mum was really fed up with him.’

Lacomba, the court heard, resented Sarah for having so many children and admitted he had ‘trust’ issues when she gave him two more, after she’d apparently agreed to be sterilised after their first.

The relationship was already more or less over when Sarah met someone new on holiday in Spain in 2014 and told Lacomba, asking him if he still loved her.

Lacomba responded by kicking her out of the house and changing the locks. A couple of days later, he booted out 17-year-old Jack followed by Lewis, leaving all three homeless. ‘I was at school when a teacher pulled me aside and took me to the office. Ben had just dumped two suitcases there with all my things in them and said I wasn’t welcome back,’ says Jack.

‘For weeks, we went from one B&B to another. It was terrible hearing Mum crying down the phone to social services saying she’d lost her three young kids and couldn’t provide for me. Ben always played dumb, but he was very tactical. He knew that if he was in the house with the kids and she couldn’t get in, then he would be the sole carer. He always had the upper hand.’

Locked in an acrimonious custody battle, Sarah fought tooth and nail to see her children. She gave up her bank job and retrained as a beautician, so she would have more time to spend with them. Her savings dwindling, and she moved back to her Portsmouth home — spending hours driving back and forth to collect or drop off the children who shuttled between their warring parents.

A potential new law, which will keep killers behind bars until they reveal the location of their victim’s body, has been named Helen’s Law in honour of Helen McCourt (pictured) who was murdered 25 years ago

Hostilities reached new heights when Sarah met new partner Neil James, 46, a divorced father-of-two, on a dating website. Lacomba was furious when Sarah moved into his flat with the children in Farnham, Surrey, in December 2016 after the central heating broke down in her own home.

‘Neil was a good bloke and wanted to marry Mum, but Ben seemed to have social services on speed dial,’ says Jack. ‘Mum was terrified he would take the children away from her again if she stayed with Neil or, even if she moved them back again to Portsmouth.’

Lewis was horrified when his mother told him she’d found a solution to the problem.

‘She phoned me up and said: ‘I don’t know how you’re going to take this, but I’m moving back in with Ben.’ I said: ‘Is this some kind of joke?’ I told her she was an idiot after all he’d put her through, but she thought it was the only way to keep the kids.’

The brothers are racked with guilt for not acting with more urgency when Neil James phoned the morning after she was last seen alive on October 9, 2018, to ask if they’d heard from their mother, who wasn’t answering calls.

Mr James had stayed in contact with Sarah and was one of the last people she spoke to by phone. She told him she’d gone to bed early because she couldn’t stand to be in the same room as Lacomba.

Jack says: ‘I was the one who said ‘wait another day’. I feel guilty about that, but Mum could look after herself. If she’d been reported missing immediately, who knows what the police might have found.’

Lewis adds: ‘After Neil’s call, I phoned Ben that night and said: ‘Is Mum there?’ He said he hadn’t seen her since yesterday. I said, ‘I’ll call the police’ and he said ‘I’ll do it because she lives here’. I didn’t suspect him for a second.

‘Next morning I called him again and said: ‘Have you heard from her?’ When he said ‘No’, I said ‘Call the police’, but it took him a couple of hours to get round to it.’

Now they know why.

Jack says: ‘Losing my mum is the most traumatic thing I have ever known, ripping a hole in my heart.

‘That is hard enough, but with no body, we have nowhere to say goodbye. Our younger siblings know Mummy is never coming back, but are too young to understand and it’s heartbreaking to hear them say ‘She’ll always love us and be there for us’, but not know where she is.’

Might Lacomba’s conscience be troubled enough for him to agree to meet Sarah’s adult sons and tell the truth now? Lewis and Jack are not holding out much hope.

‘I don’t think he’ll ever admit it, because as soon as he does, the whole world will know what he did and his kids will realise what he is,’ says Jack.

‘But until he tells us where Mum is, he’s not going anywhere.’

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