Police didn’t act when they heard the apparently outlandish claims of a psychic medium who saw the vision of a man lying face down in water… yet a month later that is exactly what they found.
Alex Holland, 27, was a young dad of two who went missing from his parent’s home in Deal, Kent.
On November 28, 2021, he casually told his mother Rachel Holland, 54, he was popping outside for a cigarette. That was last time she would see or speak to her son.
Three months later on February 18, 2022, his body was found in a water-filled ditch by dog walkers.
Following a post-mortem, Alex’s death was given an open conclusion and to this day, no one really knows what happened the night he went missing.
Pictured, Rachel Holland who believes that her son was murdered and body dragged to his last resting place
Father Alex Holland, 27, went missing from his parents home in Deal, Kent – before being found dead after a 12-week police search
Alex Holland was found in a ditch nearby a pumping station in Hacklinge, near Deal
In a bizarre twist of fate, the young dad of two’s body was found face down in water just as a psychic medium has foreseen
There were no obvious signs of violence and it wasn’t shown he had taken his own life.
But Mrs Holland believes she knows how her son died and is convinced that her son was drugged and murdered.
Speaking to Mail Online, she said: ‘I need to get the story out there. I really need to do it.
‘I don’t have proof but I believe my son was murdered.
‘This whole situation, it just feels like I’m in a film or something. It doesn’t feel real.
‘It’s a nightmare and it just never ends. But I feel like I just have to keep going.
‘Kent Police have been awful and I’ve got absolutely no trust in any of them anymore.’
Within 24 hours of Alex going missing, his mum officially reported it to the police.
Alex told his mother Rachel Holland he was popping outside for a cigarette – that was last time she would see or speak to her son.
Mrs Holland has been relentless in trying to find answers to her son’s disappearance and sad passing away
This was the same time that Alex was using a courtesy car, having crashed his own vehicle a few days before.
But it would take the police 81 days before he was found despite a major police operation involving sniffer dogs and a helicopter to find the area.
Alex’s body was found approximately a mile and a half away from where his car was found, in the village of Worth – which is also 5.2 miles away from his home on Delane Road.
But, the police had previously decided not to search the field where his body was discovered.
Desperate for answers, the family even turned to a psychic medium Mary Lawton Johnson to help in the search.
Eerily, the psychic had told police in January to search in four waterways after having a vision of Alex lying face down in water, but the police didn’t act on the psychic’s predictions and he was undiscovered for another month.
The US psychic tweeted: ‘Kent Police, if you had listened to me you would have found Rachel’s son sooner.
‘She and I both told you where his body was and it was in the area you never searched. I did your job for you.’
It has echos of the Nicola Bulley case, the missing mum who was tragically found dead the river near in St Michael’ on Wyre – exactly where psychic Jason Rothwell had claimed to have foreseen.
Mrs Holland felt as though the Kent Police investigation into her son’s disappearance was handled badly in both the investigative work and the way officers liaised with the family.
She launched a formal complaint against Kent Police, listing 20 allegations of which the force accepted 10.
For example, when Alex initially went missing, Kent Police put out a missing persons appeal but with the wrong details about the clothes he was wearing.
Mrs Holland believes this could have potentially helped find her son sooner, but Kent Police argue it wouldn’t have changed the outcome.
Alex’s family also suggested several areas for the police to search but they were ignored and generally, she felt she was frequently ignored, patronised and brushed off by investigating officers.
There were also several strange occurrences which the police chose not to act on.
For example, Mrs Holland flagged to the police a strange Facebook message from someone calling themselves ‘Phil Coup’ sent to Alex’s sister which said: ‘M8 was told Alex is alive and well cant say anything but the person or myself cant be named please I don’t know why Alex can’t just ring I no its not much but hope puts your parents at ease.’
The account was later deleted and the family believe it could have been created by someone to throw them off the scent or to stop them from looking into his disappearance.
But Kent Police did not look into this suspicious account.
Another strange incident happened when the family received an anonymous phone call in which someone claimed Alex was killed by travellers and fed to pigs.
But again, when the family raised this to the police, they were told the phone call could not be traced and it was not investigated.
There were other strange details too, such as a packet of Benson and Hedges cigarettes found in his vehicle despite his mum insisting he only smoked roll-ups.
Mrs Holland also complained about the insensitivity of some of the officers.
On the day her son was found, Alex’s sister asked an officer if there was anything suspicious.
The officer replied: ‘There weren’t any knives in his back if that’s what you mean.’
There are also several other questions that remain unanswered.
The day after he went missing, Alex had a dental appointment and was planning on going to work.
When he went for a cigarette, he had no coat and was wearing slippers.
Mrs Holland believes that he wasn’t suicidal and he wasn’t on drugs or drink at the time of his disappearance.
Alex’s body was found in a ditch – after a psychic medium claims she had a vision of him lying face down in water
Alex also left the home with his wallet and a substantial amount of money, which was around £300.
His phone was found in the car near where his body was discovered, but the wallet was never found and police didn’t seem interested in finding it.
When the Holland family asked whether the water in which Alex’s body was found would be searched, the police said: ‘No, why would we?’
The family believe the missing wallet could hold clues to Alex’s disappearance and the family even entered the water themselves in an attempt to locate it, but to no avail.
Another strange occurrence happened when the family was looking in the ditch where Alex was found, near a pumping station.
‘We were looking in the water,’ said Mrs Holland, ‘and these people came over and said, ‘oh, they found a dead body in that water the other day’.
‘I said, ‘yes I know, it was my son’.
‘Then they told me that on the night my son disappeared, his car was reported to the police as having the engine running, the lights on and the doors open and I told the police this.
‘These people who spoke to me also said that there was the sound of a commotion on the night he went missing.
‘But the police said, ‘no, no, the car was not on, or the lights and all the doors were shut’.
‘I mean, why would they tell me that if it wasn’t true?’
Mrs Holland also believes the police were too quick to judge her son and started pursuing theories which she felt were highly unlikely to be true.
When the police searched his room, they found three small bags of cannabis and it was initially thought his disappearance could have been drug-related or that he was suicidal.
But Mrs Holland said there was nothing about his behaviour that night that led her to believe either of those things.
He was a young dad with two girls who he loved and he would never abandon them, Mrs Holland believes.
She also found it unlikely that he would just leave the house so abruptly in just his slippers in order to end his life.
‘The police were painting all these scenarios,’ she added, ‘when they said he might have taken his own life, I told them that they didn’t know my son.
‘I do though and he would never do that to those girls.’
In June 2022, there was a coroner’s report into Alex’s death which reach an open conclusion.
There was no evidence to suggest violence or third-party involvement and no evidence to suggest suicide.
Mrs Holland added: ‘There was no water in him at all. He was found in water which means he must have died before he was in there.
‘I asked pathologists and they couldn’t explain how he died,.
‘But I believe that he was placed in the water.’
Perhaps the biggest unanswered question of the whole episode is why Alex was found with only one shoe.
His other slipper was found near his car, which meant if Alex walked to the ditch he would have do so with a bare foot.
Yet, despite being in the countryside, there were no cuts or abrasions to his feet, despite the distance from his car and having to track through wild growth with branches and thorns which could have easily left a mark.
‘I know why he only had one shoe,’ Mrs Holland continued, ‘I think his body was dragged to the ditch.
‘It is my opinion that my son was lured to that location.
‘His body was found with a sheet and some planks of wood in the water.
‘I believe that my son was wrapped up in those before his body was dumped after he was murdered.’
What surprised the Holland family too was the police’s apparent ignorance of the area.
When Alex’s mother mentioned that there could be CCTV around the area of Alex’s disappearance, such as at the nearby pub and also a campsite, the police were allegedly unaware that there was a campsite located close by called Lillyroos.
Mrs Holland said: ‘When our son went missing at first, we went door knocking – ringing people’s bells to see if they had seen my son driving past at a certain time.
‘This was because the police gave us an Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) for Alex driving around that area.
‘An ANPR is when a camera picks up on a car’s licence plate and can tell you when it was driving at a certain time.
‘But because the police were initially treating the family as suspects, they deliberately gave us the wrong times.
‘Every time we were asking if people had seen my son, they said no, but they were given the wrong time anyway.’
The family launched a complaint against Kent Police in April 2022 before launching a further appeal to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) on November 2022.
The conclusion of the final appeal found that the outcome of the ‘Kent Police investigation into the complaint was not reasonable and proportionate’ therefore, the application for review was ‘upheld’.
The IOPC also recommended that Kent Police ‘issue an apology to you acknowledging the communication failings identified in the IO report’.
However, it also found that the CCTV around the nearby pub and glamping site were not near the walking routes of the location where Alex was found.
But the Holland family have yet to receive a letter of apology from Kent Police.
‘I just think the police are useless,’ Mrs Holland concluded, ‘I just feel like they didn’t care.
‘Whenever I contacted them they either ignored me or patronised me.
‘It’s my son. He was a human being and it just felt like they were talking about him like he was an object.
‘The police’s attitude was, “found him, don’t know how he died, case closed”.
‘It was a complete cock-up the whole way through. I mean, what are we paying the police for?’
An IOPC spokesperson said: ‘In November 2022 we received a review application of a complaint investigation by Kent Police into its handling of the missing person’s investigation for Alex Holland.
‘In March we upheld the review as we concluded the outcome of Kent’s investigation into the complaint was not reasonable and proportionate.
‘To address this, we recommended that the force apologise to the complainant, acknowledging communication failings identified in their investigation into the complaint.
‘We also suggested to Kent that they should ask for the now former officer’s account in relation to allegations that the complainants were given the wrong ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) time for a vehicle their son was driving; and a comment made by the officer following his body being found.
‘However we’ve advised the complainant that the force are not obliged to comply with our suggestion.’
