What really happened to missing teenager Russell Bohling? Satanic cult at RAF Bempton

On the 2^nd of March, 2010, 18 year old student Russell Bohling left his parents’ house in East Riding, Bempton, Yorkshire, never to be seen again.

According to his parents version of events he left the family home at around 8AM and was dressed slightly smarter than usual in a black Ben Sherman jacket, blue jeans and black training shoes. His car was missing from its parking space outside of the house, indicating he had left in it that day.

Russell was doing a course in bricklaying at the nearby Bishop Burton College at the time, but it has never been confirmed if he was supposed to attend any classes on the day he vanished.

(Source)

When Bohling failed to return home that day, his parents reported him missing.

The following morning the teenager’s Renault Clio was found parked near a Cliffside known as “Bempton cliffs’. The vehicle was discovered by one of the employees working on the nature reserve which was (and still is) ran by the RSPB. Bempton cliffs is often visited by those interesting in observing the puffins on the Cliffside and is nearby an abandoned RAF radar station popular with urban explorers.

A parking ticket was displayed on the window of Russell’s car. The time stamp revealed that the ticket had been purchased at 11:30AM on the day that he went missing. The worker noticed that the vehicle was still parked there at 5PM but thought nothing of it until it next day when it was still there.

Russell Bohling’s parents were suspicious that their son had managed to drive from their home in East Riding to Bempton cliffs without using his debit car to fill up the tank. They informed police that he had only 10GBP in cash and under 4 liters of petrol in his tank on the morning that he disappeared. The cliffs are a 45 minute journey one way and they were confident he didn’t have enough cash on his person or enough petrol in his tank to drive there without once stopping to fill up. Russell’s bank informed investigators that no transactions had been made on his account on the day that he went missing.

Russell’s parents did some investigative work of their own and came to the conclusion that their son would have needed to stop at a gas station, likely in Brandersburton, just under halfway to Bempton. They insisted that he would have nowhere near the amount of money to fill up and fully subscribe to the idea that he was not alone on the trip.
They looked to his SATNAV for clues and discovered that leading up to the day of his disappearance he had taken trips to York, Bradford and Bridlington.

York is around 47 miles from Russell’s home in East Riding. It would take him just under an hour and a half one way. Bradford is around 64 miles and just over an hour and a half by car. Bridlington is the closest to his home, around 20miles away and just a 40 minute drive via the A1. He didn’t tell anyone in his family that he had made these trips. He simply left and returned home without mentioning where he had been.

So what exactly was Russell doing at Bempton cliffs?

The police initially believed that he had traveled there to commit suicide as the cliffs are a suicide hotspot, however a body never washed up onto shore.

A user over at reddit /unresolvedmysteries recounted their visit to RAF Bempton and revealed that there was a steep slope leading down to a quick drop off the side of the cliffs and believe that he could of accidentally fell to his death- but again, no body was ever recovered.

The police had found what is mentioned in many online articles as “a suicide tape” in Russell Bohling’s bedroom. When I first read this I imagined they were talking about a video recording, but it turns out it was an audio recording found on a Dictaphone. On the tape, Russell talks about wanting to be buried in the countryside as he believed that he wasn’t intelligent enough and it upset him. The teenager’s mother claims that the recording was made at a time when Russell was stressed out about his GCSE results. He was supposedly 15 years old when he made the tape. His parents insist that the only reason it exists was due to the stress Russell felt when thinking about his future and that with time and confidence his fears for the future faded.

Russell’s parents had a completely different theory for why their son may have visited Bempton cliffs that day- his interest in the nearby disused RAF radar station. They claim that Russell had a particular interest in the bunker, which is popular with urban explorers and hasn’t been open to the public since the early eighties when it was bought by a private owner.

Apparently Russell carried around a USB stick with pictures of the “pornographic and devilish” graffiti that decorates the walls of the abandoned building.

The bunker, which was in operation from the 1940's, has been the subject of sinister rumors since the seventies. Locals believe it was used by a “Satanic cult” and that sacrifices and rituals were performed. There are no articles (that I can find) that mention anything of the sort going on at the disused bunker, but ask a local and they just may tell tales of a devil-worshipping group having orgies and sacrificing animals. Despite the buildings reputation, most locals are generally aware that the cults never existed. Some will offer that the tales are urban legends conjured up after raves and parties were thrown by students from the nearby university many moons ago. Some say they believe the “cult” was just a bunch of squatters who had to be evicted by police in the seventies.  

This album hosted on FLICKR details the artwork inside and includes diagrams and a layout of the building. There are also numerous blog posts online recording peoples visits.

This is one of the more tame examples, click HERE<< to be taken to a forum to see some of the more explicit pieces. 

The “Satanic graffiti” consists of paintings of naked figures in sheels having orgies. The artwork itself is pretty well done, considering. People with devil horns growing out of their heads with their genitals on display dance around the walls of the bunker surrounded by general graffiti tropes commonly found scrawled on the walls of most abandoned buildings, such as “666”, “this way to hell” and the nicknames of visitors.

An article in a local newspaper reports that Russell didn’t find the images of the graffiti online. Apparently the pictures were copied from a USB stick and pasted in a folder on his desktop. I couldn’t find anything about the whereabouts of the memory stick.

Russell’s father, Roger Bohling, suspects that his son was involved with an unknown person linked to the graffiti in the bunker. I assume he doesn’t believe that a satanic cult sacrificed him, rather that Russell may have been in contact with someone who agreed to go visit the bunker with him, but in reality had sinister ulterior motives.

Russell Bohling had speech disorder that his parents believe made him vulnerable. For example, he would have a hard time voicing disagreement and would instead go along with something that he didn’t necessarily want to do.

So what would someone want from Russell? Why him?

Well, apparently Russell Bohling stood to receive a 300,000GBP windfall from his father to start his own business. An article in the Yorkshire post states that the 300,000GBP would be signed over to Russell in the form of a semi-detached house with which he could do whatever he wanted. Russell has two brothers, Nigel (then 23) and Andrew (then 22) and they too were set to inherit the same amount. Russell was scheduled to receive his windfall as soon as he turned 18, but he was yet to receive the property at the time he went missing. Apparently the 18 year old planned to start his own business. Money is always a likely motive for murder as we often times see people disappear or die under suspicious circumstances shortly after taking out life insurance policies. Surely an outsider  would have nothing to gain from the death of Russell as he hadn’t even received his money.

Russell’s parents rule out their son as a walk-away arguing that if he was to voluntarily disappear he surely would have waited for his 300,000GBP windfall before doing so.

Sea, mountain and air searches for the missing 18 year old turned up nothing. It was if he had simply vanished into thin air. Fire and rescue searched the bunker aided with torches and heat sensitive camera equipment. In 2012 they returned to search once again, this time the Bohling family shelled out over 1000GBP to cover the cost of pulling up the concrete that had been laid to keep out addicts. Still, authorities found no trace of Russell.

His parents believe he is no longer alive. They think the answers to what happened to their son that day are in the USB, that whoever gave him those images had some involvement in his death. Russell had indeed searched about the RAF bunker online before his disappearance but that’s no surprise as he already had the images and the intention to visit.

Now, about Roger Bohling. I was honestly shocked to find out the next piece of information.

Russell’s father, Roger, turned his personal computer in to Humberside Police in what an article in the Yorkshire post describes as “a desperate bid to find his son”.

This gesture did not lead police to the missing 18 year old, but instead lead to the discovery of (then) 57 year old Roger Bohling’s child porn stash.

This collection of images consisted of what has been described as 415 pictures of kids in “erotic poses” as well as 3 images of people “engaging in sexual acts with animals”.

Apparently Roger Bohling did not download the images but obtained them via a memory stick from a relative. He then went on to burn the collection of images onto a CD.

These images were officially classed as “low level” CP and were said to be pictures that may have been of children on vacation.

Roger suffers from a degenerative brain issue due to an accident he had years ago and apparently once informed his family that planned to commit suicide on account of the disease. If Russell knew about this, it would have been an extremely difficult and upsetting thought to deal with.

Russell’s parents claimed that a pair of brown steel toe capped boots were missing from their son’s room. Later, a foot laced up into the same type of boot washed up onto shore. Testing proved that the foot did not belong to Russell.

His parents insisted that a certain pair of shoes their son was wearing on the day he disappeared were found in the family summer home in Ravenscar two years after he vanished.

Russell Bohling has never been found.