A busy supermarket
The NAAFI was housed in the former stables of Schloß Neuhaus and served soldiers and their families from several bases around Paderborn. It was particularly busy that morning.
Missing since 28 November 1981
Katrice’s story
Katrice Lee disappeared on her second birthday from the NAAFI in Schloß Neuhaus, Germany. More than four decades later, her family are still waiting for answers.
Read her story
28 November 1981
A birthday that changed everything
On 28 November 1981, Katrice Lee’s second birthday, the lively two-year-old, with hazel eyes and a smile that could brighten the gloomiest day, disappeared without a trace.
Sometime mid-morning that Saturday, her family, including the little girl, went shopping to a nearby British military supermarket, the NAAFI, in Schloß Neuhaus, near Paderborn in what was then West Germany. It was a day meant for celebration.
At the checkout, inside the crowded supermarket, Katrice's mother Sharon realised she had forgotten to pick up some crisps. She asked her sister Wendy to watch Katrice while she headed along an aisle to get the snacks. Seconds later Katrice toddled through the jam-packed supermarket to follow her mother. She couldn’t have gotten far, but when Sharon returned, Katrice was gone.
Katrice was never seen again.
The place
The NAAFI
If you have reached this website by scanning the QR code on the plaque dedicated to Katrice, you are standing at the former NAAFI where she disappeared.
More than four decades have passed. Despite searches, appeals and repeated investigations, what happened to Katrice remains unknown.
Before she disappeared
Family life
In 1981, Katrice’s father Ritchie, was posted from Bovington in Dorset to Paderborn garrison in what was then West Germany. A staff sergeant in the 15th/19th King’s Royal Hussars, at that point he had served for more than ten years. The Army was his life.
Ritchie and his wife Sharon had met at Fallingbostel, where she was working for the NAAFI and he was based at Wessex Barracks. They married in 1972 two years later, their first daughter Natasha, was born.
Around five years later, the family moved into a three-bedroomed flat at Am Wilhelmsberg, on the outskirts of Schloß Neuhaus. The privately owned flats were leased to the Army. They were known to everyone as ‘Legoland’.
Ritchie, his heavily pregnant wife Sharon and Natasha settled into their new home. A few months later, another daughter was born at the British Military Hospital in Rinteln, about an hour from Schloß Neuhaus – she was named Katrice.
The girls loved each other. Natasha would arrive home on the school bus, sparking Katrice to launch into her favourite game of hide and seek, giggling behind the curtains with her toes peeking out below the hem.
Halfway through November 1981, Ritchie came home from a three-week military exercise to find two excited children waiting for him. He jumped in the bath and was joined by Natasha and Katrice, who perched on his leg. He bounced Katrice down into the water and she screamed.
She hated water, something Ritchie would bitterly try to explain later.
That Saturday
The first hours
Ritchie drove Sharon, Wendy and Katrice to the NAAFI to collect last-minute birthday items. Natasha stayed at the flat with her uncle Cliff.
Katrice disappears
Sharon went to fetch the crisps she had forgotten and asked her sister Wendy to look after Katrice. But Katrice followed her through the crowd. When Sharon returned to the till queue, Katrice was missing.
The search begins
Family members and soldiers began searching inside and outside the store. The Royal Military Police arrived, and the search expanded into the surrounding area.
A family’s search for answers
The search continues
In the years that followed, Ritchie and Sharon campaigned, appealed, wrote to politicians and pressed the authorities to look again at what had happened inside the NAAFI. Possible sightings brought repeated hope and disappointment, but none led to Katrice.
In 2000, the Royal Military Police revisited the case. A new investigation, Operation Bute, began in 2012, reconsidering original evidence and tracing witnesses. A major search took place in Paderborn in 2018. No trace of Katrice was found.
In 2020, active investigation ceased, with the case moving to a reactive state pending new information or evidence. The family’s search continued.
On 31 May 2024, Ritchie, accompanied by supporters, travelled to Downing Street and returned his military medals in frustration at the lack of answers.
More than four decades later, her family are still asking: