Mary Flanagan was a London teenager who disappeared from her West Ham home on New Year's Eve, 1959. The BBC described her case as "the oldest open case on the books of the Metropolitan Police." Background Flanagan was born in London on 9 June 1943 into a Catholic family of Irish descent. She had two sisters, Eileen and Brenda, and a brother, Kevin. The family lived at Wallace Road, E15 at the time of her disappearance. Her father's family was from Pass, County Meath and her mother was also called Mary. She went to Holbrook Road Secondary School, and at the time of her disappearance she was working at the large Tate & Lyle sugar refinery in Silvertown. She also occasionally worked at an opticians in Stratford, as well as volunteering with the Blind Association. Events prior to the disappearance Members of her family, discussing her disappearance in 2013, suggested that Flanagan may have eloped with a man she had been seen with frequently in the last few weeks of 1959. He was supposedly another Irish immigrant and may have worked on the merchant navy, although police say they have never been able to trace such a man. He was called Tom, and undoubtedly existed under one name or another, as her father had introduced him to his daughter; the latter was in his early twenties at that time. He may have been Mary's fiancé. Information on him is sparse, however, and he has also been described as being an Irish labourer; even his surname is uncertain. He is most commonly referred to as McGinty, although it could also have been McEntee or even McGuinness.The Merchant Navy had no record of a Tom McGinty working in their service. Her family have suggested that she could have been pregnant, and disappeared because of that, as it would have been "a major thing for a 16-year-old Catholic to tell her parents" according to contemporary social norms. One of Mary Flanagan's last known interactions with her boyfriend was later reported by her sister Brenda as being a bitter argument. This had been caused by her discovery that, although McGinty claimed to be living with his landlady, Mary had discovered he actually lived with his mother. This lie, said Brenda, had distressed Mary sufficiently to cause her to oversleep on the morning of the 31 December. This followed an argument, with "raised voices", between