Genette Tate

Status:

Open

Jurisdiction:

Devon And Cornwall (POLICE)

Missing From:

Aylesbeare, Devon, England

Summary:

Genette Tate was a 13-year-old girl who vanished while delivering newspapers in Aylesbeare, Devon, on 19 August 1978. Despite extensive searches, her body has never been found and the cause of her disappearance remains unknown. The case has been described by Devon and Cornwall Police as a murder investigation.

Vital Statistics

Circumstances of Disappearance:

Tate disappeared while delivering newspapers shortly after 3:30 pm (BST) on Saturday 19 August 1978. At approximately 3:28 pm, two schoolfriends saw Tate walking along Withen Lane, pushing her bicycle. Tate had delivered fourteen newspapers by this point, and conversed briefly with her friends as they ascended the lane. At the top of the hill, Tate mounted her bicycle and rode ahead as her friends paused to read an article in the newspaper they had been given. Seven minutes later, the two girls discovered Tate's bicycle lying in the middle of the road. Tate was wearing a white cotton T-shirt with her name embroidered in red letters on the left shoulder, light brown trousers, and white plimsolls. Approximately 25 minutes after the discovery, Tate's parents returned to Barton Farm Cottage from a shopping trip to Exeter. The girls had Tate's bicycle with them, and asked if she was at home. When Tate's father said that his daughter was not at home, he and her mother, assisted by several friends and neighbours, began a search around Within Road for Tate. At 5 pm, John Tate reported his daughter missing to Devon and Cornwall Police.

Additional Details:

Within hours of Tate's disappearance, police mounted an extensive search. Seventy uniformed policemen and fifty detectives from Devon and Cornwall Police, assisted by mounted officers from Avon and Somerset Police, were assigned to the search. All ponds in the Aylesbeare area were searched by underwater search units, and search dogs assisted police in their search of surrounding terrain. For the next six weeks, more than eighty officers combed the fields and woodlands within a five-mile radius of the village. They were joined by Royal Marines and, during one Saturday afternoon, more than 7,000 members of the public responded to an appeal for help in searching nearby Woodbury Common. Devon and Cornwall Police discounted the possibility of Tate running away from home, as at the time of her disappearance she had no personal possessions with her beyond the clothing she was wearing. She had also left behind in her bedroom money she had been saving for an upcoming family holiday. The money collected from the customers on her newspaper round was still in her purse on the bicycle. Eyewitnesses reported seeing a maroon Triumph (or vehicle of very similar appearance) in the lane at around the time of the disappearance, and police issued a photofit picture of a man they wanted to question in relation to the abduction. This individual was described as being a "very handsome man" in his early 20s with a pale complexion, short dark hair, who had been wearing a light-coloured shirt. Robert Black, a serial killer convicted in 1994 for similar crimes involving the abduction and murder of young girls, was questioned by Devon and Cornwall Police in connection with the Tate case. In 1996, an eyewitness claimed to have seen a vehicle of the model Black is known to have driven in 1978 at Exeter Airport on the day of Genette's disappearance. The police inquiries were unable to establish that Black had been in Aylesbeare on the day of the disappearance. The Crown Prosecution Service decided in August 2008 that insufficient evidence existed to charge Black with Tate's murder. Devon and Cornwall Police reviewed the case in June 2014 in the hope of finding sufficient real evidence to prosecute Black. At the time of Black's death in January 2016, Devon and Cornwall Police were five weeks from submitting a file to the Crown Prosecution Service in which they sought a new decision on whether to prosecute him. The file was submitted in April 2016, and the Crown Prosecution Service said that due to Black's death, there would be no posthumous decision to charge him with Genette's murder. In August 2018, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of his daughter's disappearance, John Tate made a further plea for information about the case, saying, "I am not even 100% sure Black did it. I need proof that Black killed her." He said that his rapidly declining health meant that he could no longer make his annual trip from Manchester to Aylesbeare, and that his final wish was to give his daughter a dignified Christian burial and to be buried alongside her. He died in April 2020, aged 77, with the case still unsolved. In 2002, DNA belonging to Tate was found on one of her jumpers kept by her mother, which would allow her body to be identified if discovered. Police have amassed more than 20,000 index cards in a filing system related to the case, which is stored at the Devon and Cornwall Police headquarters in Exeter.

Case Last Updated:

Apr 27, 2026