15/03/2013 00:00
TW
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By Humphrey Carter

PALMA
BRITISH holiday representative Jacqueline Tennant was last seen on October 8, 2007, hiking in the Victoria hills to the back of Alcudia in the north east of Majorca but her sister Monique is not giving up in her hunt for the truth about what happened to 45-year-old Jacqueline.

This week, Monique was back on the island with a BBC London television crew as she continues to keep the pressure on the local police forces and keep open the investigation into the disappearance of her sister.

Over the past 18 months, a number of searches have been carried out of various parts of the island by the Guardia Civil mountain rescue teams, Civil Protection, the Local Police and volunteers.

Money permitting, Monique has also brought two teams of highly trained dog handlers over from the UK to search the area round Victoria where eyewitnesses have claimed to have seen Jacqueline on the day she went missing.

Her disappearance was totally out of character. Jacqueline was a trained WRAF reservist and an experienced hiker who spent her days off during the summer of 2007, exploring the island's hiking routes.

At midday on October 8, she received a call from her resort manager in C'an Piacfort. She said that she was “nearing the top and the view was spectacular.” However, she gave no indication as to where she was nor had she told anyone of where she was heading that day - her last day off before accompanying Monique on a trip to visit their father in Jamaica.

He has since passed away and never knew about his daughter's mystery disappearance.
The midday mobile phone call could have been key to locating Jacqueline but, according to the courts and Monique, the mobile company Movistar was too slow in attempting to track the signal and provided little precise and helpful information.

This week, Monique has managed to get permission from the Inca court handling the case for an independent review of Movistar's response to court orders demanding as much information as possible about its lines of investigation. Following meetings with Guardia Civil commanders in Inca and Palma, Jacqueline's case has now been posted on the European-wide police data base and the Guardia Civil, with the help of Monique, has also begun “mapping” out Jacqueline's character in an attempt to try and build a picture of what could have happened on the day she went missing.

All of Monique's activities in Majorca this week were filmed by BBC London for the Missing Live series and Jacqueline's case will be featured later this month.

It was a BBC report last year which brought the eyewitnesses who saw Jacqueline hiking in the Victoria area on October 8, forward. “I know it's now been 18 months, but it's still very hard, it's very painful trying to live without her. I do my best to put her to the back of my thoughts as I try to go about my daily life, but I can't. It hurts. It hurts me and my family. “We're not going to give up until we know what's happened. I've always maintained that there's a possibility that she came back down the mountain on the day she went missing and that something else may have happened. “No one's saying that she may still be alive, but until we've looked at all angles, who knows,” Monique told the Bulletin. “One of my sisters is coming over from the States in June or July which is when we are planning to carry out another major search. “We have a large number of volunteers on the island prepared to help, some have already been out on searches with me, and more will come from the UK. “I'm going home in a much more positive frame of mind this time,” she revealed. “I'm not giving up....”