On the evening of June 11th, 2000, twenty-eight-year-old Kellie Pratt was last seen standing outside The Rose Inn pub at the junction of Queen’s Road and City Road in Norwich, England. She was talking on her Nokia 6100 mobile phone, a device that has never been recovered. Around eleven thirty p.m., she received a call from an associate and told them she was with a “punter”—slang for a client. That was the final trace of her. Neither Kellie nor her phone has been seen or heard from since. Friends reported her missing after she failed to show up for a pre-arranged lift home.
Kellie, a mother of two young boys from Newcastle upon Tyne, had moved to Norfolk in 1998 to be closer to her mother. Originally from Byker, she had a troubled later life marked by heroin addiction and involvement in sex work on Norwich’s red-light district. At the time of her disappearance, she was described as white, five feet four inches tall, of medium build, with fair hair shaved at the front and sides, and badly scarred arms from drug use. She was wearing a black mini skirt, black T-shirt, and light blue coat.
Norfolk Police launched a major investigation, taking over 270 statements and pursuing various leads, including searches with cadaver dogs in several areas. Nothing was found. The case is treated as a homicide, though no body has ever been recovered—leading to its classification as a “no-body murder” suspicion. Cold case manager Andy Guy has emphasized the challenges posed by Kellie’s “chaotic lifestyle” and her limited circle of contacts in Norwich, describing it as a “small bubble” of associates.
Over the years, Kellie’s disappearance has been linked—though never conclusively—to several high-profile cases involving violence against sex workers in the region, such as the 1992 unsolved murder of sixteen-year-old Natalie Pearman; the 2001 disappearance and subsequent murder of Hayley Curtis (for which killer Philip Stanley was jailed in 2005); the unsolved 2002 murder of Michelle Bettles; and the 2006 Ipswich murders by Steve Wright (the “Suffolk Strangler”), though no direct evidence connected him to Kellie.
Police reinvestigated these ties, particularly after Wright’s conviction, but ruled out links in Kellie’s case.
In appeals marking the twentieth and twenty-fifth anniversaries, police have urged those who knew Kellie—particularly from her small network in Norwich—to come forward. As recently as 2025, Andy Guy stated: “I believe the answer to her disappearance lies within the people she knew in Norwich… There are rumors circulating about what happened to Kellie, but in order to resolve this investigation, those with first-hand information would need to do the right thing.”
Kellie’s former partner, Michael Pratt (from whom she took her surname), has spoken of his ongoing anguish, believing she was murdered shortly after vanishing. Her mother, Gloria Carpena, passed away in 2015 without ever learning her daughter’s fate, describing the uncertainty as the hardest part.
Twenty-five years on, the case remains active. Rumors persist in the community, but no arrests have been made. The unknown client from that final night has never been identified, despite police tracing the caller. Norfolk Police continue to appeal for information, stressing that circumstances change over time and confidentiality can be assured.
Crime Immemorial 