The dream that led to a brutal death

At 12.51pm on a humid Saturday at the end of July a motorist pulled his car up on the grassy verge of a narrow country lane in Buckinghamshire. Jumping out, he headed into the woods intent on taking a quick pee. He saw the smoke before he saw the charred body. It was lying in the undergrowth a few feet into the woods and still smouldering.

The remains bore little resemblance to a human form. The skull was smashed in several places, the clothing had dissolved with the heat of the flames, and the skin was blistered and burned. Pulling his mobile phone from his pocket, the man punched in 999.

Maria Bryl did not know it yet, but finally, after two months of searching, the unemployed divorcee from Gliwice in Poland had found her missing daughter.

It was to be a further four weeks before dental records provided the initial confirmation of what she had been dreading. And it was only yesterday that British police visited Mrs Bryl in Poland to take the DNA samples which will confirm the identification beyond any doubt.

The story of the terrible death of 23-year-old Beata Bryl, a young woman drawn like hundreds of thousands of other Poles to the glamour of London and the promise of a better life, is an example of what Polish charities are warning is the other side of the dream.

It comes as the Polish-based Itaka Foundation launches a campaign throughout Poland to raise awareness of the dangers lurking for young migrants, and as charities reveal they cannot cope with the number of eastern Europeans living rough on the streets of London after discovering, to their cost, that they are not paved with gold.

After the unidentified body was discovered, a murder investigation interrupted the summer tranquillity of the countryside outside the village of Wooburn Green.

Teams of forensic officers in white suits began a fingertip search of the woods, senior detectives sealed off the scene, and a Home Office pathologist was called in to begin the difficult process of identifying the victim.

The body was that of a young woman, perhaps in her early 20s, who had suffered repeated blows to the head with an unidentified weapon. She had been doused in accelerant before being set alight. The only clues to her identity were a Pegasus tattoo still visible on her right upper arm and a ring on her left middle finger which was shaped like a snake.

The brutal murder briefly sent ripples through the bar at Wooburn working men's club, and featured for a few days in the local newspapers. But soon the conversation moved on and the local reporters found other stories. Meanwhile, detectives were wondering why no one had come forward to claim the victim as their relative.

Forensic experts used an advanced isotope screening process on the bones to establish her race, and facial mapping techniques were used to create an image of what she might have looked like.

Breakthrough

Eventually, detectives in the Thames Valley police murder incident room made a breakthrough: a picture of a young woman matching the description of the victim, looking thin and dishevelled, had been caught on CCTV cameras at Leytonstone tube station in east London on July 28, the night before the body was discovered.

All this time, detectives were unaware that thousands of miles away in a small flat in the impoverished southern Polish mining town of Gliwice, Maria Bryl was desperately seeking help from the authorities to find her missing daughter.

For nearly a year, Mrs Bryl, 46, said she had been struggling to prise Beata from the clutches of a man she believed had taken her to the UK two years ago to exploit her.

"Beata thought he loved her, but he was so much older," she said. "He promised he would set her up, find her a good job, but I believe he may have been using her. I believe she may have been selling herself for him. I think the whole thing was planned that way."

Born in Gliwice on February 27 1983, Beata was brought up in the fold of a Catholic family and took her first communion at the local church aged eight.

By her early 20s, Beata, who spoke fluent English, talked of little but travelling to Britain. And when she first arrived in Britain in 2004, everything seemed to be working out. "She rang me all the time, she seemed happy," said her mother. "She was working in the catering business and doing some security work, and she even went with the boyfriend to France on holiday."

To keep her in touch with home, Mrs Bryl sent her daughter regular food parcels from Poland, and in turn she received money sent by Beata, who knew her mother was out of work and struggling.

Over the months, she moved to different addresses in east London, but Mrs Bryl began to realise that her daughter could be in danger.

"After about a year things changed. I realised something was very badly wrong. She told me she was being molested and beaten. I suspect this older man may have been using her for sex with other men. She would run away, but he would always find her. She would ring me up, sounding terrified, saying she was being threatened."

Her daughter's mental health deteriorated, until in August last year she suffered a breakdown and spent a week in a London hospital. While she was there, her mother contacted the Polish consulate and demanded that it help her daughter to return home.

"I wanted to go to London and bring her home myself, but I had no money, so I had to rely on the consulate," she said.

In October last year, her daughter arrived at the front door of the flat, looking painfully thin, exhausted and scared.

"She stayed a few months, but then this man began to call again, insisting she must return to London, calling every day, luring her back," said her mother. "There was no talking to her then, she refused to listen, and she returned to this man and to London."

Anti-trafficking charities believe Beata's story contains evidence that she was trafficked into the UK, even though at first she may not have realised she was being treated as a commodity.

"Often girls who have dreams to go to wealthy western countries are lured by older men, who persuade the girl they love them and take them to the UK," said Stana Buchowska, from the Polish anti-trafficking organisation La Strada. The group believes there has been a short-term surge in the trade in people since the opening of EU borders in 2004, because it is now easier to move across frontiers without detection.

"The victims of trafficking are a bit like victims of domestic violence," said Ms Buchowska. "They often return to the abuser. In this case this girl had emotional ties to this man; she perhaps did not realise how she was being exploited."

Desperate

Grahame Maxwell, head of the British police's new national trafficking unit, said more training was needed to help police and the authorities identify victims of trafficking. "People often come to this country voluntarily - often, in the case of young women, with an older man; often on the promise that they will be found a good job.

"Sometimes these men then begin to abuse them. They use the emotional hold they have; they may say, 'Have sex with my friend to show me you love me. Strip for my friends to prove your love.' And the woman does not realise he is being paid for her services. It is the total exploitation of trust and innocence."

On Beata's return to the UK in February this year, the evidence mounted, according to her mother. "Sometimes she would call in the middle of the night, crying and desperate. She once said she was being taken somewhere in a car against her will by this man. She said she was being kidnapped."

In her flat, where pictures of Beata adorn the mantlepiece, Mrs Bryl has two folders of letters and documents testifying to her attempts to save her daughter from the danger she believed she was plummeting into. The documents are mostly negative responses from the Polish consulate in London, the Polish police, Interpol, and other groups which she approached for help.

Her last attempts came early in June when phone calls from her daughter abruptly stopped, prompting Mrs Bryl to contact the Polish consulate once more and report her daughter as missing. She received a reply a few days before Beata's charred remains were found. "Re your missing daughter," the letter read. "We are not able to help in this matter."

But the mother did have one more opportunity to speak to her daughter. It came in a phone call she received as she was travelling on a train for a day out in the Polish countryside on Thursday July 27. "She rang me and I was so delighted," she said. "But I knew immediately something was wrong. She said someone was threatening to kill her, she ordered me to return home and lock the doors, saying they were threatening me too. She sounded terrified."

Two days later the macabre discovery by a motorist in the woods outside Wooburn Green provided proof that the threats were not empty.

Detective Inspector Colin Seaton of Thames Valley police said extensive inquiries were being made to find Ms Bryl's killer. "We are passionate about this inquiry," he said. "Over the weeks, we feel we have come to know this young girl, who came here for a new life and perhaps got involved with the wrong crowd."

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