It has been more than 20 years since mum-of-three Michelle Gunshon was abducted, raped, and murdered, but her family still does not have proper closure because her sick killer kept a major secret
Michelle Gunshon was 38-years-old when she vanished without a trace, and now a new documentary is exploring the tragedy of what happened to the beloved mum.
The parent-of-three had travelled to the Birmingham area for a job working as a security guard at the Clothes Show Live at the NEC, and at first everything seemed normal.
It was a winter’s night when Michelle checked into the Dubliner’s Pub on 3 December 2004, where she and some colleagues were staying in the Digbeth establishment while the Clothes Show was going on.
The following day, the security guard phoned up her partner and her daughter and chatted with them, but it would be the very last time they ever heard her voice. Meanwhile, a woman vanished in car crash – then turned up months later with wild story.
Woman’s horror Jet2 flight as man groped her and asked ‘disgusting’ question Slain gangster Marc Webley filmed headbutting rapist brother for ‘harassing girl, 12’
On December 5, Michelle’s colleagues noticed her absence, and they went into the room she was staying in, only to find all her personal effects were still there – including her wallet.
Michelle was reported as a missing person, and an investigation quickly got underway. Within a couple of days, her Ford Escort had been found abandoned nearby, and inside were traces of her blood and a man’s DNA.
The police had a suspect thanks to CCTV that had caught Martin Stafford – who worked as a glass collector in the pub – driving Michelle’s vehicle in Birmingham city centre with something strapped into the passenger seat, after she had gone missing. But Stafford had himself disappeared seemingly without a trace.
He had fled back to his home country, the Republic of Ireland, and was lying low. Further CCTV is reported to have captured two figures approaching Michelle’s car the night she disappeared, walking very closely together, before the car drove off.
Stafford had a history of sexual violence against women and false imprisonment. However, Michelle’s family had to wait an agonising seven years for him to be extradited back from Ireland and brought to justice.
He was convicted of false imprisonment, rape, murder, and preventing the burial of a body in 2012, but despite the campaigning of Michelle’s brave daughter Tracy Richardson, he refused to ever reveal the whereabouts of Michelle’s body, leaving her family trapped in an agonising limbo.
The terrifying killer didn’t hesitate to continue to inflict as much pain on his victim’s family as possible: he flatly refused to reveal what he had done with Michelle’s remains until the day he died.
“My mum’s body has never been found because Stafford wanted to use that final bit of power and control that he had over us by keeping it a secret, even when he was found guilty,” Tracy previously told The Sun.
“How are you supposed to grieve when there’s no body? And there are all the other emotions too – anger and frustration.”
Tracy even admitted that she has been to Birmingham herself in an attempt to find her mother’s remains, without having much of a clue where to start, and revealed the police don’t have any leads either.
In 2015, at the age of 47, twisted Stafford died of liver disease and pneumonia behind bars where he was serving a 33-year sentence – taking his last secret to the grave with him.
Tracy told the Manchester Evening News of the moment she found out Stafford had died: “At first I was relieved, but within a minute I thought, but what about my mum?”
She added: “I went to Birmingham and sat outside the pub, the last place my mum was seen, I sat there and said, ‘Mum he’s dead now. I don’t know what to do.'”
Tracy has previously said that documentaries like the new Channel 5 offering about her mum’s case – Murdered at First Sight: A Mother’s Absence – give her some hope that new information might be brought to light, with the potential for someone’s memory to be jogged by watching.
“Documentaries like this take us back to that day she was killed,” Tracy told BirminghamLive. “She is still out there and we don’t know where – we’ve never had any closure.
“My mum has nobody apart from us, and the only way we can get her name out there is by doing these documentaries – and maybe one day someone might watch it who has information. You never know.
“In my head I know it’s unlikely she’ll be found, but in my heart I think ‘what if?’ We want to give her a place to rest – we don’t want her out in the cold. How can you grieve somebody when no-one is there?”
Criminologist Alex Iszatt explains exclusively to the Mirror that Stafford’s refusal to admit where Michelle’s remains are was a “last vicious twist of the knife,” and a sick power play even from behind bars, and in 2015, when he died in prison, his secret went with him.
“Martin Stafford’s refusal to reveal Michelle Gunshon’s resting place, even on his deathbed, was a final act of control,” the expert explains. “It was a last, vicious twist of the knife. This was never just about concealing a body, it was about using silence as a weapon to prolong the family’s grief.
“For offenders like Stafford, withholding information is the ultimate power play. It proves that even when they are locked up and stripped of freedom, they can still inflict pain. There are different reasons why men like this stay quiet. Keeping the secret means Michelle’s family remain trapped in uncertainty, still forced to live on his terms.
“Admitting where the body lies might also have risked further forensic scrutiny or even exposed other crimes. And for some killers, there is a deep narcissism in being the only one who knows the truth. It allows them to remain at the centre of the story long after they should have faded into nothing.”
Murdered at First Sight: A Mother’s Absence airs on Channel 5 on Tuesday at 10pm
