Police change tactics in dig for tragic Sheffield woman Teresa Shephard at remote Rotherham pond
“It’s made me feel a bit eerie. He’s kept his silence all these years and now the police are searching that copse.”
Police searching a remote copse for the remains of a woman who disappeared 31 years ago appear to have changed tactics after an agricultural digger was brought in to excavate the site.
Officers searching for Teresa Shephard supervised as the machine removed tons of earth from a small wooded area at Wood Farms on Piper Lane, Aston, Rotherham.
Ms Shephard was 26 when she disappeared in 1995. Her boyfriend Peter Turner was convicted of murder the following year and remains in prison. Her body has never been found.
On Monday a forensics tent and 11 vans were at the site. On Tuesday officers were digging with spades, using buckets to remove mud and employing a sniffer dog.
Today, Wednesday, September 16, excavations were significantly expanded when a farm digger was put to work.
Julie and Trevor Ashton, of Aston, said they had been walking in the area since 1970s and never felt unsafe.
Julie said: “It’s made me feel a bit eerie. He’s kept his silence all these years and now the police are searching that copse.
“It puts me off walking around on my own.”
The site, a small pond surrounded by bushes and trees, is in a dip in a 50-acre field not visible from a farm track, which has a small exit off Worksop Road in Aston.
Julie said: “It’s not obvious that there is any public access down here.”
Two footpaths skirt the field some distance from the pond.
There are also two telecoms masts and an electricity substation occasionally visited by engineers, she added.
And a paid pheasant shoot used to take place in the field.
South Yorkshire Police this week announced the search for Teresa Shephard had resumed. Officers have not said where the fresh information that led them to Wood Farms came from.