Parents of missing Leah Croucher reveal her bank account is empty two years after her disappearance

The devastated parents of missing Leah Croucher revealed her bank account has been emptied due to direct debit payments, despite her disappearance two years ago.  

Leah was just 19-years-old when she was last spotted shortly after leaving her house in Emerson Valley, Milton Keynes a day after Valentine’s Day in 2019.

Leah’s parents, John and Claire Croucher, remain steadfast in their belief that their daughter did not disappear of her own will, and remain hopeful she will one day contact them. 

The pair revealed that their requests to stop Leah’s direct debits coming out of her bank account, including a monthly phone bill, fell on deaf ears. 

Now, all of the money in her savings account has gone.

Claire told the MK Citizen: ‘The bill we were trying to protect is no longer being paid. There is now no way that any of us can contact her.

‘All we know is that the bank wouldn’t help us to stop her direct debits, and now all her money has gone. Paying bills that didn’t need to be paid.’ 

Leah Croucher, 19, was last seen in Furzton, Milton Keynes just after 8.15am on February 15, 2019, (right). Her family last saw her at around 10pm the evening before

John and Claire Croucher have since revealed Leah’s bank account has been emptied two years after her disappearance. Pictured: The pair speaking to media at Milton Keynes Police Station in 2019

Leah was last seen on CCTV down Buzzacott Lane in Furzton, Buckinghamshire while on her way to work before she ‘effectively vanished into thin air’.

Despite a wide-scale investigation in which police visited 4,000 properties and reviewed 1,200 hours of CCTV, no trace of her has been found and no one has been arrested in connection with the case.

Earlier this year, Thames Valley Police revealed there has been ‘no significant lead’ two years after Leah’s disappearance in Milton Keynes – and said that the young woman is potentially ‘no longer alive’. 

In March of this year, the reward for information that helped find the missing teenager doubled to £20,000. 

Detectives described Leah’s case as ‘bewildering and frustrating’, and said they retained an ‘open mind’ but ‘the potential that Leah is no longer alive has to increase’.

Leading the investigation for Thames Valley Police, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Howard said ‘we’ve had no confirmed sightings of Leah’ since February 15, 2019.  

He said police had received ‘in the region of 600 pieces of information – be that information about what’s possibly happened to Leah or reported potential sightings’.

Detective Chief Inspector Howard also said that friends had spoken to police about anxiety issues Leah was having at the time.

He suggested it is ‘possible that Leah has made a conscious decision and she’s acting of her own accord’, but refused to ‘preclude the role of a third party being involved in Leah’s disappearance’. 

The night before she went missing, Leah left her home in Milton Keynes between 6pm and 7.15pm, telling her mother Claire Croucher she was seeing a friend. 

The police found out she never saw the friend and they do not know where she went or who she was with – or whether she met anyone that night. 

Her parents last saw her when she went to bed at around 10pm, with her mother Claire previously saying it was ‘the last time I got to say goodnight’.

Leah (pictured) disappeared the day after Valentine’s Day on February 15, 2019 and despite a widespread public appeal to find her, nobody has come forward with information

Miss Croucher’s parents John and Claire Croucher held an emotional press conference in February 2019 appealing for information

Leah’s family are more determined than ever to find out what happened to their beloved daughter, with a statement from the family in February saying: ‘It’s now been two years since our beautiful, wonderful daughter Leah, left for work and vanished without a trace. Missing. Gone.

‘To say they have been a hard two years is an understatement. They have been the longest and toughest two years of our lives.’

Her family have since revealed they believed she was in a relationship with a man who was engaged at the time of her disappearance.

Officers searched the Blue Lagoon lake in Milton Keynes in their investigation into her disappearance

However, police have since spoken to him and say they have no suspicions about him because it is thought he has an alibi for the time that Leah went missing. 

Last year Claire and her husband John Croucher said they feared someone may have taken Leah as they questioned why she would ‘just disappear’.