Alex Batty, 19, lived an alternative lifestyle across France and Spain after his mother and grandfather failed to return him from a holiday abroad. He turned up out of the blue after six years
The case of Alex Batty, who was missing abroad for six years, received a major update today when Greater Manchester Police revealed their criminal investigation had been discontinued.
Alex and his family would not support a prosecution, the police force said, drawing their enquiries to a close. The teenager’s mum Melanie and grandad David failed to return him from a holiday abroad in 2017, instead embarking on an “alternative”, nomadic lifestyle, regularly moving around Spain and France.
On December 13, 2023, the teenager handed himself into a police station near Toulouse in Southern France after leaving the isolated farmhouse in The Pyrenees he was living in and being picked up by a delivery driver on a country road. He subsequently moved back to Oldham, Greater Manchester, with his grandmother Susan Caruana where he began to slowly readapt to life in the UK.
Greater Manchester Police today said the inquiry into his disappearance between September 30 2017 and December 13 2023 has officially concluded because there is no “realistic chance of criminal prosecution”. Alex, who vanished when he was just 11, later revealed there was a pivotal moment he had decided to escape – a major argument with his mother over their communal lifestyle.
“I had an argument with my mum and I just thought: ‘I’m going to leave because I can’t live with her’,” he told The Sun, revealing Melanie Batty was planning to relocate them to Finland. “I realised it wasn’t a great way to live for my future. Moving around.
“No friends, no social life. Working, working, work and not studying. That’s the life I imagined I would be leading if I were to stay with my mum.”
Melanie and Alex’s grandfather David Batty had “kidnapped” him after going on a pre-planned holiday in 2017. Both adults were prohibited from being with the boy at the time, because of domestic difficulties.
When they never returned back from Marbella after two weeks, police launched an inquiry. He was taken to live in a “spiritual community” first in Morocco and later in the Pyrenees before eventually turning up in France. Then on December 13 2023, the teenager turned up out of the blue along a rural road in Quillan, France, where he was picked up by part-time delivery driver Fabien Accidini.
Speaking to Good Morning Britain, Alex, and his grandmother Susan Caruana said he didn’t want his mum and grandad to face jail amid ongoing investigations into his disappearance. He previously admitted to lying to police and misleading them, telling them that grandad David had died.
He also lied to them, claiming he had hiked for four days through the mountains before he was found and outlined in the interview how he altered his walking path to claim he had been going for far longer than he really had, to try and throw authorities off the trail. Now he has revealed the moment when he realised he had to leave.
He said: “We stayed in a lot of caravans and a lot of houses, always up mountains and hours away from any village or anything like that. One day I just thought, okay I can’t take this any more. I knew that everything was kind of already in place for them to leave where we were, so if I were to have left they would be gone by the time the police arrived.”
Susan also told the show: “I used to think about Alex every single day and that was painful. But now I won’t think that way anymore.” She also shared that she did not want his mother or grandfather to face prison over his disappearance.
She said: “I don’t want them to go to prison, that’s the last thing that I want.” Alex replied: “That’s why I didn’t come home sooner. All I worried about was them getting locked up.”
Susan, Alex’s official guardian, previously said that her husband and daughter had taken Alex into an “alternative lifestyle”. She said: “They didn’t want [Alex] to go to school, they don’t believe in mainstream school.”
Alex celebrated Christmas back with his grandmother, getting his wish of 24 cans of Irn Bru and a couple of family-sized bags of crisps. Alex did not have any proper schooling during his time moving around Europe and is now preparing to start college in January. The whereabouts of Alex’s mum and grandad are unknown after she left a rented house in the village of Villefort in France.
