The family of Leah Croucher said their hopes of finding her alive were “extinguished in the cruellest and harshest of ways” after her body was discovered earlier this month, three years after she disappeared.
The 19-year-old’s relatives said she was a “bright, funny young woman” with a “smile that lit up the room”, as they paid tribute to her in a statement released on Thursday.
“As a family, we knew this heart-breaking news would come one day. The news that Leah had been taken from us, from this world, forever,” they said.
They said they had clung on to a “faint glimmer of hope” that she was still alive, but they are now experiencing the “deepest, darkest grief”.
“That glimmer was actually, foolishly, a shining beacon of hope, which has now been brutally extinguished in the cruellest and harshest of ways,” the statement read. “It has been a long way to fall back to reality.”
Last week Thames Valley police confirmed human remains found in a loft of a house in Milton Keynes had been identified as Croucher, who went missing as she walked to work on 15 February 2019.
Officers searched the home after a tip-off from a member of the public earlier in October, and launched a murder investigation after Croucher’s rucksack was found at the property.
Convicted sex offender Neil Maxwell, who is suspected of murdering Croucher while on the run, died by suicide in April 2019.
Eighteen attempts were made to arrest Maxwell while he was wanted, after an alleged sexual assault in 2018.
He was the only person with keys to the house where Croucher was found at the time of her disappearance, police said.
A Home Office postmortem conducted last week was inconclusive as to the cause of death, Thames Valley police said.
Croucher’s family said they hoped she would “give Haydon a big kiss and a big hug” from them, a reference to her half-brother, 24-year-old Haydon Croucher, who died months after her in November 2019.
“Leah’s presence and warmth impacted on all who knew her. Her disappearance has impacted on an entire city and beyond,” they said.
“We will soon be able to lay Leah to rest, as she deserves, and say our final goodbyes, be able to grieve at Leah’s graveside and lay flowers for her. We hope soon that we will be able to look at pictures of you again, but they are too painful to even think about at the moment.”
