New search fails to find missing student

7:00pm Monday 29th October 2001

RELATIVES and friends of missing student nurse Louise Kerton returned to Germany to continue their hunt.

Parents Phil, 56, and Kath, 55, from Lambardes, New Ash Green, organised a coachload of 20 people for a four-day trip to Aachen, where Louise went missing on July 30. This is their first trip back to Aachen since they organised a 50-strong search party for the 24-year-old in mid-September.

Mr Kerton said: “It seems most people in Aachen know about Louise but hardly anyone has seen her recently, so it looks like she has gone away or gone to ground.”

He criticised the German police for not doing enough to find his daughter and drew a parallel with the case of Louise's friend, Lucie Blackman, killed in Japan.

“If someone wants to disappear in Japan they can disappear. It is an exactly parallel situation we are dealing with in Germany in getting the police to move things,” he said.

The Kertons also went to Strassfeld, the village in which Louise had stayed with her fiance Peter Simon's family 80 km from Aachen

Mr Kerton said: “We talked to neighbours who said she had not been doing much, just sticking around the house and garden.”

Current affairs programme ITV Tonight, with Trevor McDonald, filmed the search.