New claims have emerged that claim Manic Street Preachers musician Richey Edwards staged his own disappearance.
The guitarist-and-songwriter disappeared from the Embassy Hotel in London in February 1995 at the age of 27 and after an extensive search by the authorities, his family and his bandmates, James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire and Sean Moore, he was declared "presumed dead" in 2008.
However, a new book by Sara Hawys Roberts and Leon Noakes, with the full co-operation of Richey’s sister Rachel Elias who granted unprecedented access to his personal archives, suggests the Welsh rocker may have faked his own death.
The tome ‘Withdrawn Traces: Searching for the Truth about Richey Manic’ reveals a story written by the ‘Little Baby Nothing’ hitmaker for his school homework in 1980, where he plots disappearing from the same bridge, Severn Bridge, he is believed to have fallen from and the work details the musician’s interest at his great aunt, who lived inside her childhood home alone for 80 years, and his great uncle, went off-grid in the 1960s.
Speaking in the book about Richey’s obsession with the perfect disappearance, Sara told The Sun newspaper: "Knowing how intelligent he was, if anybody was going to stage a disappearance he would certainly be the person who would have been more than capable.
"As the band themselves have said, Richard was very adept at dramatic symbolism.
"He used to think a lot about the books he would read, the things he would say, what he’d give out in interviews.
"With all the books and all the different things he’d left and all the things he had spoken about before going missing, there were symbolic things in there that would lead you to think, ‘Oh, yeah, he did plan his disappearance.’ "
The book also suggests that the ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’ singer may have had undiagnosed Asperger’s Syndrome which stemmed his desire to shut out the world as a coping mechanism, and unveils unknown sightings of the rocker and details a mystery woman called Vivian – who was the last person to see Richey before his disappearance.
New evidence suggests Richey Edwards staged own disappearance
