Craig Fryer went missing in 1992, reappearing four times in the 29 years leading up to his death. His ex-wife, 55-year-old Wendie Evans, tells Missing in London about the impact that his disappearances had on the family.
“Craig and I met in 1987, through a mutual friend of ours named Dean. They were both renting separate rooms in a house in Kent and we started off as good friends. We ended up staying together for five years and had a daughter, who was six months old when he left. He had been brilliant during the time that we were together and we always had a great time up – that is, up until he began acting strange.
“There just became a point where he wasn’t acting himself, there was a huge change in the dynamics of our relationship. For example, he decided to give up his job – this was really strange as he worked so hard and he would say how much he enjoyed it. He worked on different projects like pub refurbishments, where he did all kinds of crafty things like making clocks. He was really clever, but he suddenly just gave that up. There were also moments where he would go out somewhere and he was very sneaky about it, I wouldn’t know where he was actually going.
“Naturally, after quitting his job he ended up with no money and then decided that he would go to auctions and buy machinery to make a living. We had also just bought a house and our mortgage was £900 a month, which was a large sum to pay in 1992. Our daughter was three months old at the time. He lived there with us for a few months, but he never paid anything towards the mortgage. Then he just left, I didn’t know where he went. I was left with no money, I think I had about five pounds to take care of our daughter as well as my other daughter from a previous relationship. His actions were a complete contradiction to what I thought he wanted in life.
“I don’t know what happened really, it was very odd. He came back to see me and give things another go soon after, but he was being very weird again. He wasn’t himself, it was really strange and I just knew that I wouldn’t be able to rely on him for support. Then he disappeared again and I had to apply for benefits to help me and the girls survive.
“In the house we bought, there was a basement with a kitchen, a bedroom, a hallway and another small room, which I had renovated into a bathroom. I made a separate flat out of these rooms and rented it out, so I could carry on providing for my daughters and pay the mortgage. It was extremely difficult as he had never paid anything – I was left to pick up the pieces. I had debt collectors come round, because he had apparently taken building materials from people within the area when he left. I told them to come in, there was nothing for them to take as he even took some furniture with him, I was left with nothing really.
“Three years after he disappeared or left, I still don’t know what to call it – he came back and began living with some mutual friends of ours called Claire and Angus. He would see my daughter on alternate weekends. Claire came to me one day and said that he wasn’t looking after her properly. She suggested that he was on drugs as he apparently had a duvet round him, was spaced out and not really present, so I stopped him from seeing the girls as he clearly wasn’t taking care of them properly. I trusted her to know that something wasn’t right. I went to him in person and said that I knew what he was doing and he couldn’t be trusted with the girls. Claire and Angus told me that he apparently just packed his things and left immediately.
“After three years, he did reappear to see the girls one day. He never acknowledged that three years had gone by, but he had stated that he had sorted himself out. Then he disappeared again, off the face of the earth. That was the last time I ever saw him. I was trying to get a divorce and my solicitor put missing adverts in the local papers in Leeds and Harrogate as I had no idea of his whereabouts, but nothing came of that and he was just gone. Although, when my eldest turned 13, he called my Nan. He said that his Grandad had died and he had inherited money, so there was some money given to the girls for their future. He had also got in touch with my eldest on Facebook in 2014 and met both of the girls once in a park, but then nothing was heard from him ever again.
“As the time goes on, the pain and the anguish sort of dissipates. You wonder if he is alright, whether he is still alive, if he will show up again and whether you could have done anything differently. It’s also hard to determine whether he was ever actually missing or just gone from our lives, because he decided to leave. He would pop back into our lives a couple of times over the course of 29 years, but there was no sense of stability at all.
“Out of the blue, the police turned up at my eldest daughters house at the end of March in 2021 and said that he had been found dead. It was a real shock, because you get this idea that they’re floating around out there in the world and they must be ok, they have to be. Although he had been in contact with my daughters in 2014, he was someone important to me, that I thought about from time to time. He wasn’t a bad person, he just had his demons to battle and some difficult choices to make I think. I didn’t know where he was at any time really, I had no idea. I don’t think I’ll ever properly know what happened.
“It’s just crazy, I look back and remember how we looked after each other before all of this happened. We were a team and then it suddenly became disjointed. I do believe that he must have been taking drugs during our relationship, which would explain the strange and unpredictable behaviour. The same pattern of behaviour from our own relationship had apparently happened with another partner of his, who got in touch with my youngest daughter years before he died to let her know more about her dad. She said he did have issues with addiction.
“The police confirmed this when they told me that he had been on a rehab program for heroin. He had a methadone allowance up until he died. He had been in his flat for six weeks before anyone found him, it was only because he owned a hairdressing business that people knew something wasn’t right and found him. The inquest was on the 17th of September last year and I didn’t want to find out what had happened, it was just too raw. However, my youngest daughter wanted to know to help her find some closure, so I did too. It turned out that he had been diagnosed with cancer whilst on this program. He was having morphine at the time for pain relief for the cancer, and he had taken about 3 times the amount that he should have taken.
“It’s been incredibly difficult for my girls and I, but we have supported each other as best as we can since finding out. At the very least, I know he’s not in pain anymore.”