Ten years of not knowing what happened to my sister

DONALD Vaughan longs for the day he is able to place flowers on his sister's grave.

He longs for the day he is able mourn the death of a sibling like any other surviving relative does.

But he fears he will go to his own grave still not knowing what happened to his sister, Laura May Al Shatanawi.

She was 36, the mother of a seven-year-old boy and studying travel and tourism when she was killed by her Jordanian-born husband Hassan Shatanawi.

Police and Laura May's family can only guess why she was murdered and what became of her body.

But it is thought Shatanawi - a trained doctor in his homeland, and a property developer after marrying and moving to England in the early 1980s - killed her to hide his affair.

Tomorrow, Laura May's brother will say a prayer to mark the tenth anniversary of her disappearance.

Mr Vaughan, 43, who is married with two children and lives in Hartlepool, said: "I wish we could do more - but what can we do?

"There is no grave to visit, no grave stone to look at and nowhere to lay flowers. That's what really hurts.

"Until we get a body - until Hassan tells us what happened to my sister - it is always going to be like that.

"Laura was taken from us in the most horrific circumstances, but we are still not able to grieve properly."

The lives of the Vaughan family were torn apart in June 1993 when Laura May vanished after sitting an exam at Hartlepool College of Further Education.

Mr Vaughan was immediately suspicious about her disappearance, but Laura May's husband explained her absence by saying he thought she had taken a last-minute holiday.

As time passed, Mr Vaughan grew ever more concerned and eventually Shatanawi gave in to family pressure and reported her missing.

But by that time, he had bought himself a month to carefully cover his tracks and make the police investigation a difficult one.

It emerged a year later at his trial at Newcastle Crown Court that two-timing Shatanawi almost got away with the "perfect murder".

The jury accepted the prosecution case that Shatanawi, then aged 46 and with an extensive medical background in Egypt, Iraq and Jordan, had killed his wife in a garden shed that he had bought only days earlier.

Shortly after the murder, he paid a worker £10 to remove the hut from his allotment in Seaton Carew, and burn it.

The flaw in his almost perfect plan was that the joiner realised the shed was barely used and instead of destroying it, sold it to a friend in Middlesbrough.

And when, a month later, Shatanawi appeared in newspapers and on television pleading for his "missing" wife to come home, the tradesman recognised him.

He called the police, the shed was traced and detectives discovered evidence which would eventually uncover Shatanawi's grisly secret.

The floor had been partly gouged out and covered in creosote, but forensic experts were able to find four hairs from Laura May's scalp and several spots of blood which were matched to her through DNA tests.

Still protesting his innocence as he was led from the dock, Shatanawi was jailed for life.

He is yet to accept responsibility, and refuses to answer letters from Mr Vaughan.

He will be eligible for parole in only seven years, and Mr Vaughan dreads the day.

"I suppose I will be told by the authorities when he is released," he said.

"When his 16 years are up he will just walk, but he should not be allowed to until he tells us where my sister's body is.

"It cannot be right that he can keep that information to himself and still be freed from prison.

"That seven years will soon be upon us because the bulk of his sentence is over.

"Ten years has already passed since Laura was murdered and it still seems like yesterday.

"We have been serving a life sentence alongside Hassan, and now his time is nearing an end. All I wish for is that ours will too . . . but only he can do that by telling us what really happened."