24 Hours in Police Custody is back on tonight (Monday, April 8) and follows the police investigation of a man they had feared to be murdered in 2015. The No Body Murder episode will follow the case of missing Wisbech man Ricardas Puisys.
Farmworker Puisys disappeared without a trace in 2015, leading cops to suspect he’d been killed. He was last seen at Nightlayer Leek Company in Chatteris where he worked. Witnesses claimed he was last seen in the company of a small group of Lithuanian men before disappearing.
The alarm was raised when he failed to turn up for a shift two days later and his identification badge was found in a park. Police re-visited Puisys’ disappearance and treated the case as a murder investigation.
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Superintendent Adam Gallop, who led the murder investigation, said in 2021: “While I always hoped we would find Ricardas alive all the evidence led us to believe it was highly unlikely.
“Given the fact no one had seen or heard from him, our searches were focused on looking for his body and those responsible for his death. He had literally vanished and no one ever saw him again.”
Who is Ricardas Puisys?
Ricardas Puisys mysteriously disappeared in 2015 leading Cambridgeshire police to fear he had been murdered with his body being dumped in the woods, or forced into slavery.
He moved to Wisbech, Cambs, from Silute, Lithuania, a number of years before he vanished, although the exact date is unknown.
Puisys left behind a mother in Lithuania and has a sister living in Germany and cousins in Ireland. He was a casual land worker and lived from hand to mouth.
Police launched a murder investigation in November 2015 after believing Puisys was a victim of modern slavery. The probe was launched despite no body being found as officers had ‘genuine concerns Ricardas came to harm that evening’.
Police followed up a number of leads and tirelessly worked to unravel the disappearance. In December 2015, a man aged in his 30s was arrested on suspicion of murder but was later released with no further action.
However, when a Facebook profile of Puisys was set up and used an Asda supermarket to connect to the WiFi. the police closed in on what they thought would lead them to Puisys’s killer. However, Puisys was found alive in July 2020.
Where was Puisys found?
Detective Chief Inspector Rob Hall, from the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Major Crime Unit, said: “For almost five years Ricardas’ disappearance has been a complete mystery. That was until we received information at the end of June which led us to finding him.”
Puisys was found secretly living in a tent in the woodlands five years after he vanished. He had set up camp in undergrowth in Wisbech after cops received information he was still alive.
Police say he had ‘deliberately hidden’ himself away in woodland having previously been a victim of crime. The makeshift home in deep undergrowth in woodland off a residential street was described as ‘very well concealed’.
Upon finding Puisys, the police took him into the station as a safe space and to help him. They later found a safe house for him to stay in a different part of the country as a modern slavery case was launched.
Detective Chief Inspector Adam Gallop said Puisys had been forced into a form of modern slavery by a man with links to organised crime, according to Mail Online. Speaking to officers after he was found, Puisys said he was violently beaten with a set of keys and a barbecue on two occasions by a man after arriving in the UK for work.
The man reportedly confiscated Ricardas’ passport and bank card and took money from his wages at the farm where he worked. DCI Gallop said Ricardas had been “keeping himself a prisoner in the woods after fearing for his life”.
24 Hours in Police Custody airs on Channel 4 at 10pm
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