The sister of missing Scottish expat Lisa Brown has revealed the physical toll of her sibling’s decade-long disappearance.
Helen Jordan, 59, told the Spanish Eye today that the seemingly never-ending search for the truth is ‘exhausting’.
It comes just days after the 10th anniversary of Lisa’s disappearance from Guadiaro, Cadiz, on November 4, 2015.
‘It’s a bit of a milestone, I never thought we would still be looking for answers after all this time,’ Helen told this paper.
‘Some days it feels like yesterday, other days like a lifetime ago. It is exhausting, it takes a toll on your mental health but also physically, on your body, it’s so tiring.’
Lisa was reported missing after she failed to pick up her then-eight-year-old boy from school.
Her boyfriend and since convicted drug trafficker Dean Woods, who used the alias Simon Corner, was arrested on suspicion of being involved in her disappearance, but was never formally charged.
Helen and the family are convinced that Lisa was murdered and disposed of.
Helen told the Spanish Eye: ‘It’s sometimes like you don’t want to think too deeply about what happened, you try to put it to the back of your mind.
‘There are people out there that know what happened, more than a few of them, whether they were involved or heard it through word of mouth, we can only hope that one day their conscience gets the better of them.’
Helen said people connected to the criminal underworld have contacted the family in the past to tell them who was involved in Lisa’s disappearance.
‘I can’t physically do anything with that information, I just pass it onto the police,’ Helen said.
The sibling said she is still just as motivated to find the truth, revealing that Lisa’s son, now 18, is also wanting answers.
‘He still lives in Spain with his dad, he’s 18 now,’ she explains, adding that she has just returned from a trip to visit him.
‘It’s been very difficult for him,’ Helen added, ‘It’s bad for us, for him I can’t even imagine.
‘He’s a very quiet boy, like most teenagers, he doesn’t say a lot, but we try to keep her memory alive as much as possible. He, of course, really wants to find the truth.’
However, Helen and the family have worked hard to give him a normal life.
‘He has to live there and live with what’s happened,’ she said.
‘I know he ‘s an adult now, but we kept him and my mum out of this as much as possible, we’ve never put pics of them online, so that his life was as normal as we could give him.’
Helen said the family are desperate for closure.
‘We know Lisa is no longer with us, but we’ve never being able to bring her home, we don’t have that closure, you wonder where she is, everyone deserves a decent burial, not tossed away like a bag of rubbish, she certainly deserved much better than that.’
Lisa’s boyfriend and since convicted drug trafficker Dean Woods, who used the alias Simon Corner, was arrested on suspicion of being involved in her disappearance, but was never formally charged.
He was later handed a 12-year sentence in the UK for his role in an £8million cocaine ring in February 2020. In 2022, Woods absconded when he failed to return to HMP Sudbury in Derbyshire after being on day release.
He was arrested again in Germany in 2023 and ordered to serve the remaining 10 years of his sentence in a Category B prison, and has faced no further charges relating to Lisa. He has always denied any involvement.
In an online appeal on Monday night, Lisa’s sister Helen said: ‘Lisa my sister is still missing/murdered from 4th November 2015.
‘She lived in Pueblo Nuevo Guadiaro. She left an eight-year-old son who was her whole world behind and who sadly waited on her at school gates for her not to pick him up.
‘Many in the area of Gibraltar know what happened to her either by covering up her murder or disposing of her and after all this time still remain silent.
‘If anyone has any information please contact the Guardia and end our pain of not knowing, and give Lisa a decent place to rest.
‘Our mother sadly passed away not knowing where Lisa was and we would like them to be together again.’
Woods was interviewed by police in Cadiz over Lisa’s disappearance, which was first reported when she failed to pick up her son from school.
He fled to Europe but was detained on a European Arrest Warrant at Heathrow Airport for ‘conspiracy to murder’ in April 2018.
He was extradited back to Spain, but police said they had a ‘lack of concrete proof’ and dropped the investigation into him.
Lisa’s family fear she was murdered and dumped at sea, but her body has never been found.
