Judith Holliday inquest: Retired gymnastics coach, 73, likely to have died of hypothermia on railway line after leaving Yorkshire care home

Judith Holliday, 73, was missing for nearly two weeks after signing herself out of Harcourt Gardens on August 27 last year, claiming she was going to meet her niece.

Her body was found in a state of decomposition beside the Leeds to Harrogate railway line at Weeton on September 10, by which time it was not possible to say exactly how she had died.

However, a postmortem ruled out that she had been hit by a train, as she had no traumatic injuries, and the pathologist believed it most likely she had developed hypothermia, as she appeared to have removed some of her clothing. She is thought to have died not long after she was reported missing.

The inquest at North Yorkshire Coroner’s Court heard that Miss Holliday was born in the then-British colony of Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, but her parents and sister returned to the village of North Rigton, near Harrogate, in 1951. She trained as a PE teacher before taking up administrative roles at both the Ministry of Defence and the North Yorkshire Police training college, retiring in 2007. She coached dance and gymnastics throughout her life.

She did not marry or have children, and lived alone after the death of her long-term partner in 2005. She later moved in with a new partner in Wetherby, but in 2015 suffered a bleed to the brain and was diagnosed with a degenerative neurological condition. A further bleed in 2017 left her speech impaired and she struggled with daily tasks.

In 2020, she went missing from home and was found near the River Wharfe in Wetherby, having taken tablets with the apparent intention to end her life. She disappeared again in 2021, and was found in the Crimple Valley. In April 2022, her partner died and after a brief spell living with her sister, she moved into Harcourt Gardens.

She settled at the home and made friends, and on August 26 her family saw her for the last time when they went for a day out at Fountains Abbey. The next morning, she signed out of the care complex, as she was permitted to do, and staff contacted police when she did not return for her evening meal.

Angela Randle, the head of care, kindness and quality for the home’s owners Springfield Care Villages, said staff and residents had been left ‘devastated’ by Miss Holliday’s death, as she had formed friendships with two other women who would go walking with her. One of these friends, Dr Susan Hilliam, had no concerns about her welfare and described as as a ‘kind, gentle soul’.

Police appeals on social media led to sightings being reported, including the most significant confirmed contact by Fiona Grisdale and her family. She, her husband and mother had been leaving their home in Harrogate on the 27th at around 2.40pm when they saw a woman standing on their street, indicating for them to stop.

Mrs Grisdale told the inquest: “She said she had made a terrible mistake and had got off the bus too early, and needed help. She asked us to take her to North Rigton as she was meeting a friend, so we drove her there. She was quiet, calm and composed. We asked her if she was going to the village pub and she said yes. She did say she was going to meet her grandparents, which I thought was strange, and when I asked where she was from, she said Zimbabwe. At about 3pm she went into the pub. She seemed determined to enter and was in no discomfort or confusion.”

A barmaid at The Square and Compass confirmed Miss Holliday had entered the pub, done a ‘lap’ of the room and then left quickly. An employee at Harrogate Bus Station also sent police CCTV footage of her in the town centre that morning.

At around 6.20pm that evening, a passenger on a train from London to Harrogate saw a woman sitting on the embankment beside the railway in a wooded area, and thought she may have been picking blackberries. Passengers on another train on September 10 saw Miss Holliday’s body, which British Transport Police officers recovered near the Dunkeswick Lane crossing.

Evidence was given by PC Dan Preston, who co-ordinated North Yorkshire Police’s search operation. PC Preston said that officers worked to a radius of 5.7km, a ‘large area’ based on statistics from past missing persons cases.

They received the footage from the bus station on the 28th, offering them a ‘breadcrumb trail’, and their focus moved to North Rigton on the 31st after Fiona Grisdale’s report.

PC Preston said: “The social media appeals were very important and everybody saw them. It is difficult to find someone who doesn't want to be found once they’ve left a city. We need intelligence from people. Missing people do tend to go to places they are familiar with, but with our resources of around 12 officers, it would have taken weeks.”

Some sightings which turned out to be unreliable had to be investigated, and there was no CCTV or Ring doorbell footage available from North Rigton to give an indication of Miss Holliday’s direction of travel.

When questioned by family members why the railway line had not been searched earlier, PC Preston said: “There was an agreed boundary for the search area. We have to draw a line somewhere and we drew it at that point. It’s frustrating that we got so close, but I don’t think it would have changed the outcome. We would have progressed the search further, but we were working with the last confirmed sighting at the pub.”

Recording a narrative or open conclusion, assistant coroner Jonathan Leach said: “It is clear that Judith had a loving and supportive family. The reason she left the care home will never be known. By 6.20pm she had been seen near the railway line, but this information was not passed to police until much later. She was graded as a high-risk missing person. North Yorkshire Police committed considerable resource to finding her, but it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. The trail went cold quickly.”