Police narrow down Leah Croucher's disappearance to a single square mile in Milton Keynes

And, on the anniversary of Leah's disappearance, the Citizen is appealing to everybody who was within the red line on our map on this Friday a year, between 8.10am and 9am.

You can download the map to study in more detail via the link here

We are urging you to look back at your social media, Facebook memories, calendars and diaries to Friday February 15 2019, then rack your brains to see if remember seeing or hearing anything unusual at that time..

It was the day after Valentine's Day and the last day before schools in the area broke up for half term. The news headlines that morning were all about runaway schoolgirl-turned-jihadi bride Shamima Begum.

Leah, 19, was walking from her home in Quantock Crescent, Emerson Valley, to her workplace at DFC in Knowlhilll. CCTV picked her up in Buzzacott Lane on Furzton at 8.16am, walking along dressed in a black coat, black skinny jeans, black converse trainers and carrying a black rucksack-type handbag on her bag.

Our video shows the actual footage of her walking, seemingly casually and without a care in the world.

At exactly 8.34am,Leah's phone suddenly left the network. Nobody knows how or why, but investigations show the signal disconnection happened at the northern end of the route around Furzton Lake, close to the Premier Inn hotel.

What happened during that 18 minutes has become the biggest and most baffling mystery Milton Keynes has ever seen.

The only certain fact is that something significant happened to Leah between 8.16am and 8.34am, somewhere along the mile-long stretch between point A, Buzzacott Lane, and Point B, Furzton Lake.

There are several different ways to get from A to B but it's still a ten or fifteen minute walk or a five minute drive. And each route passes houses and roads busy with school run and work traffic.

The streets Leah might have walked within the crucial square mile include Loxbeare Drive, Shirwell Crescent, Dulverton Drive, Lynmouth Crescent, Porlock Lane, Morebath Grove, Bilbrook Lane, Radworthy, Bickleigh Crescent, Radworthy, Pinkworhty, Wistmans, Exebridge, Swimbridge Lane and Shallowford Grove. The area is bordered by two grid roads - Chaffron Way (H7) and Fulmer Street (V3).

We are asking residents in all those streets to think back to a year ago. We are urging taxi drivers to check their records and car drivers to focus their minds. Did you see a brown-haired girl dressed in dark clothing get into a vehicle? Did you see any disturbance? Perhaps you thought Leah was a schoolgirl. At 19, fresh-faced and wearing no make-up, she could look younger than her years. She may or may not have had her glasses on.

Sadly local authority CCTV is not abundant in that area. Police have knocked on hundreds of doors asking for private CCTV but nothing significant has emerged, said the man in charge of the case, the Major Crime uUit's Detective Chief Inspector Andy Howard.

"We have undertaken a huge amount of work on this case, but we are unfortunately no further forward today than we were a few days after Leah disappeared. It is an incredibly unusual and baffling case," he said.

Over the past year police have received more than 550 reports of information and potential sightings from members of the public across the UK. They have ploughed through 1,200 hours of CCTV, visited more than 4,000 properties, carried out 1,200 investigative tasks and completed extensive land and water searches across Milton Keynes. and surrounding areas. Police appeals on social media about Leah have reached 10.3 million people.

Despite all this, not a single clue has been found and not a single person has come forward with evidence about what has happened to her,.

DCI Howard, who has a daughter himself, admits his frustration. "It is a case that is constantly on my mind. There is never a working day that goes by when I am not thinking of Leah.... I cannot even begin to imagine what her parents John and Claire are going through."

He said there are two theories. The first is that Leah vanished voluntarily and has deliberately started a new life here or abroad, somehow avoiding being recognised. It could be that that a third party has been involved in Leah’s disappearance either directly or through their influence, perhaps with the help of another person, he says.

Leah;s parents John and Claire do not accept Leah would plot to disappear on her own. Nothing could be more out of character for their shy and home-loving daughter, they say.

The second theory is that Leah was abducted against her will and killed immediately or held hostage for 12 long months.

"At present, we have nothing to support the second theory," said DCI Howard.

But he nevertheless "firmly believes" there is someone out there who has some information regarding Leah’s whereabouts and what happened to her.

" Please do the right thing and come forward," he said.

A previous £5,000 reward for information that directly leads to finding Leah has this week been upped to £10,000 in the hope that it persuades someone to talk.

Information can be left via the dedicated police website here or by calling 101 or visiting a police station, quoting investigation number 43190049929.

If you don't want to give a name, you can call Crimestoppers anonymously and free of charge on 0800 555 111.

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