What Happened To My Daughter?

Kate Osborne disappeared in Bali 15 years ago. Her mum Elizabeth reveals the impact it’s had on their family.

- Elizabeth Osborne

When I think of our daughter Kate, the image that abides is a happy one. She is coming through the garden gate at our farmhouse on the Cumbrian fells, home from her travels, her face lit up by her wonderful smile.

As she hugs me, she says just one word, ‘Mum.’ The scent of her – patchouli mixed with lavender and amber – seems to envelop me like her embrace. When I summon up that vision of her and the fragrance that stays with me even now, 15 years after her unsolved murder, I cannot stop the tears. Kate, the middle of our three daughters, was an intrepid adventurer who sought out remote, uncharted – and often dangerous – corners of the world to explore.

Sending home frequent photographs and letters, she introduced us to hidden parts of South America, North Africa, India and Indonesia that we could never have imagined existed.

She had an unerring capacity for homing in on unsuitable men. Above all, she possessed an idealism in the essential goodness of mankind and in her capacity to reform even the most wayward characters. And it was these traits that proved to be fatal. For Kate was murdered in Bali – a paradise that became, for our family, a vision of hell – in 2003, shortly before she was due to return to Britain.

From a loving family

Kate grew up in our loving, close-knit family with her father, my husband Patrick, 79, her elder sister Christian and Ruth, her younger sister by 10 years. She was already a seasoned traveller when she went to live in Bali in 2001, aged 33. It provided the tranquillity she craved.

Kate had rented a little colonial-style home there with a maid and acquired a beloved dog, her Weimaraner Maizie.