How ‘Girl in Green Mac’ became one of UK’s most baffling missing cases after six-year-old rode away with man on bike
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DETECTIVES have long been haunted by the case of ‘The Girl in the Green Mac‘ where a six-year-old girl went missing forever. Youngster Sheila Fox vanished on her way home from her school in Farnworth, Bolton, on August 18 1944. Sheila had left school as usual at 4pm and was thought by friends to be on her way home.
![[Sheila Fox was the youngest of five siblings and went missing in 1944]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1938-parents-george-miriam-fox-961098074.jpg?strip=all&w=337)
But classmates claimed they had later sighted her outside a local bakery. A man with her was described as well-dressed, clean-shaven and said to be thin and aged between 25 and 30. Various eyewitness described her as being either walking alongside him or riding on the handlebars of a bike he was riding.
![[She is also known as the 'Girl in the Green Mac']](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1938-parents-george-miriam-fox-961098424.jpg?strip=all&w=833)
Sheila was spoken to at the time and asked where she was going and she is said to have replied she was "going with this man". According to the police, the man was seen in the vicinity of Atherton Parish Church and rode in the direction of Leigh. That night police and neighbours combed the district, shouting her name in a desperate bid to find the little girl.
Air raid shelters and farm buildings were scoured as the volunteers continued their hunt and hedgerows and fields were systematically searched as fears for Sheila's safety mounted. Over the weekend, the County Police were joined by air raid wardens and Army cadets as their search was stepped up.
The hunt went on throughout the weekend, unbroken - but Sheila was never seen again. Sadly, Sheila's disappearance happened during World War II and it was soon overshadowed by war coverage. It was only until after the war, in 1948, that Sheila’s disappearance gained more attention, when a “tall, thin man” was wanted for stabbing two children and people believed he may have been responsible for her too.
