Has anyone heard any recent updates?

For me this is highly unusual and deeply open-ended cold case from the 90s that leaves more questions than answers.

Ruth was a popular local babysitter, choir member, and sixth-form student from Betchworth, Surrey. On the rainy morning of November 27, 1995, she left for school as usual but never boarded the school bus. Instead, she hung out at a local library, ordered a bouquet of flowers to be delivered to her stepmother later, and then took a taxi in the pouring rain to the top of Box Hill. The taxi driver was the last person to see her alive, standing alone in the rain on a quiet bridleway as darkness fell. She has never been seen since.

Not long before she went missing, Ruth discovered a dark family secret: her biological mother hadn’t died from an accidental fall down the stairs as she was led to believe, but had actually committed suicide. Friends later revealed she had been talking about running away to start a new life.

The runaway theory gained massive weight exactly one year later, when a girl matching Ruth's description perfectly was caught on CCTV. The girl was highly distressed, demanding copies of every local newspaper—which featured articles about the anniversary of Ruth's disappearance. Ruth’s own parents later viewed the tape and stated they firmly believe it was her. Yet, her family has since heavily withdrawn from the spotlight, even refusing to participate in a major documentary.

Does anyone have any recent updates regarding this case, or know if Surrey Police have utilized any modern age-progression techniques or looked into new tips lately?

I also covered this case on my podcast. Listen to the episode here.

In July 2026 Colin Layfield (University of Malta) and Lisa Fagin Davis (Medieval Academy of America) published "Singulion Structure and the Voynich Manuscript" in Digital Medievalist (open access, CC BY 4.0). Their argument is that the book began as a stack of separate folded sheets, each meant to be read as four pages in a row, and that its first binding nested them out of order.

What the paper does not claim matters just as much. Only two sections were reordered, some sheets may have no recoverable correct order, and nobody has read a word of the text. It says nothing about whether the text is a real language.

Paper: https://journals.openedition.org/digitalmedievalist/2331

I made a video of about 11 minutes that follows the story from Marci's 1665 letter, through Newbold's 1921 "decipherment" and the 2009 radiocarbon date, to this paper: https://youtu.be/VJ2Pf4SlWIw

It's my own channel, so take it as such. I'd like to hear what you make of the "bound wrong" idea, and I'm happy to be corrected on any detail.

On March 8, 1966, Wendy Wolin was waiting outside a fire station on Irvington Avenue in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Her mother had gone around the back to get the car. They were going shopping, then picking up Wendy’s older sister from Hebrew school.

A tall man in a dark green coat walked toward her, bent down and stabbed her through her coat with a small hunting knife. Then he kept walking.

Wendy thought he had punched her. So did the people who first helped her into the fire station. It was only when two patrolmen opened her coat that they saw the blood. They took her to Elizabeth General Hospital, where she died at 5:15 that afternoon.

The next day, police found a hunting knife still in its sheath, in a gutter where a truck had been parked. They traced the model to a shop two blocks from the fire station. The owner had stocked six and sold all of them in May and June 1965. Police tried to find the buyers but the search produced no name.

Investigators questioned more than 1,500 men, checked psychiatric patients and troops aboard a ship bound for Vietnam, and searched trains and buses. Witnesses had seen the man walk away. A patrolman had even chased him through a bank parking lot.

With several witnesses, a recovered knife and a shop that had sold only six of that model, why were police unable to identify him?