Police arrest elderly woman over the murder of missing Caroline Graham

DETECTIVES from the PSNI’s Serious Crime Branch investigating the murder of Caroline Graham in Portadown in 1989 have now released a 76 year old woman arrested in the Portadown area this morning in relation to the investigation.

The elderly woman was released unconditionally, say the PSNI.

Caroline was 19 years old and was living with her boyfriend in Hanover Street at the time of her disappearance in April 1989.

It’s understood she had been living in the Portadown area for around two years before her disappearance.

A murder inquiry was launched in September 2012 following the receipt of fresh information.

Despite a number of extensive searches in the area surrounding Caroline’s Hanover Street house being carried out in the intervening years, no body has ever been found.

Caroline was originally from the Newry area and had been living in Portadown for around two years.

A cousin of Caroline’s mother, Andy Moffatt, described the missing teenager as a “happy-go-lucky young girl”.

“Just like every other young girl, when they get up to a certain age, they like to get out on their own, to get away from home,” he said.

Mr Moffatt said that the family had waited for a long time to hear from Caroline, but there was no joy.

“We just thought maybe she had gone off and would be coming back again,” he said.

But Caroline was never heard from again.

A decade after the disappearance of her daughter, Barbara Graham said that she didn’t believe she was alive.

“I can’t understand why she has not got in touch with home,” she said at the time.

“At times we feel like selling up, but it stops me from moving because this is the only place she knows where to come to.”

The family did not want to be interviewed in case it jeopardised the new police investigation.

But Caroline’s distraught father John said that he was devastated to finally be told his daughter had been murdered.

He said that the family had never moved from the house where Caroline grew up in the hope that one day she would return and walk back through the front door again.