Hundreds of children’s names remain carved into a crumbling white wall outside St Dunstan’s churchyard in the quiet south London village of Cheam.
At first glance, the hand-etched names might look like ordinary graffiti left behind by generations of local youngsters. But they are a haunting reminder of a youth club that operated nearby in the 1980s — and of the man who used it to prey on vulnerable children.
The club was known locally as The Shed. Its groundskeeper and gravedigger, William Lambert, later became known for the horrific abuse he carried out there.
Now, decades later, Metropolitan Police detectives are taking another look at the disappearance of Lee Boxell, a 15-year-old schoolboy who vanished in 1988 and has never been found. Investigators believe Lambert may have been responsible for his death and suspect his remains could lie somewhere in the churchyard.
For Lee’s parents, Peter and Christine Boxell, the renewed investigation offers fresh hope after 37 years of unanswered questions.
Hundreds of childrens names are carved into a wall outside St Dunstan’s churchyard in Cheam, south London. They were members of paedophile William Lambert’s unofficial youth club there in the 1980s. Some of them belong to his victims
Lambert’s surname is scraped into the wall at the very top in the largest lettering on the wall
Long-term missing 15-year-old Lee Boxell is thought to have been murdered by Lambert at The Shed in September 1988 and buried in the graveyard. Detectives have opened a cold case review into Lee’s disappearance last month which his parents see as a ‘last hope’ for answers
A youth club with a dark secret
To many children, The Shed was a place where they could escape the restrictions of home.
The ramshackle wooden building, located on the outskirts of Cheam, was filled with worn furniture and grubby sofas. Young people could drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes there — freedoms that made the club especially appealing to teenagers.
But Alys, whose name has been changed, now believes those freedoms were part of Lambert’s method of grooming children.
Paedophile William Lambert was jailed for 11 years when he was convicted of raping children at The Shed in 2011 by convincing them he could transfer magical powers to them through sex
The Shed has burned down years ago and a new Church Hall has been built on the site, but dreadful memories remain with Lambert’s victims. Alys weeps to this day thinking of them
It was here in 1988 that Alys believes she smelled Lee Boxell’s rotting corpse and saw a blood-soaked mattress leaning up in The Shed. She ran home horrified and never returned until many years later
She first visited The Shed when she was 13. At the time, she and her friends tolerated Lambert’s inappropriate comments, unsettling looks and occasional groping.
“Everyone just took it as that’s just what he did and then he’d just laugh it off,” she recalled in an interview with The Crime Desk.
“Now I understand, but I was very, very naïve.”
Paedophile William Lambert pictured outside Croydon Court in 2011 facing trial
Lambert was not simply a youth worker. He had already received a custodial sentence in 1968 for exposing himself to girls under 14 and impersonating a police officer.
At The Shed, however, he built an environment in which he could identify and exploit vulnerable children.
According to Alys, he deliberately drove wedges between youngsters to prevent close friendships and create an atmosphere in which he maintained control.
“He’d constantly be playing kids off of one another,” she said. “So there was no trust or real friendships there.”
The stories of witchcraft that kept children under his control
Parents of Lee, Christine, 84, and Peter Boxell, 79, (pictured) are still searching for Lee’s body 37 years after he disappeared
Lee was a ‘kind and considerate boy’ who was ‘never in any trouble’, who would be the first to help those who needed it and a fierce football fan, Peter said
Lee’s parents have kept his room exactly how it was when he vanished. ‘I wanted everything to be completely normal – unchanged’, Peter said
Lambert also used frightening stories about witchcraft and supernatural forces to manipulate the children around him.
He told them about ghosts in the graveyard and warned of a sinister presence he called “The Black Thing,” which he claimed could harm anyone who wandered there alone at night.
Alys believes the stories served another purpose: Lambert could monitor who entered and left the area.
“He was very controlling, so he knew always who was there, who wasn’t there,” she said.
Years later, at Lambert’s Old Bailey trial in 2011, the full extent of his manipulation became clear.
Prosecutors heard how he convinced vulnerable young girls that he was a “warlock” with mystical powers that could be transferred through sex.
The Boxell family, pictured with Lee’s younger sister Lindsay who was 13 when he disappeared
Peter believes the police theory that Lee stumbled upon Lambert sexually abusing a child and thath killed him for his silence. ‘Knowing our son as we do, he would have gone for help, and maybe have tried to stop him,’
Some of the posters have now been taken down after being torn or faded over the years but much still remains. The couple’s grandchildren now use the room when they stay but it is still known as ‘Lee’s Room’
One victim, who was 14 at the time, believed she might be pregnant after missing her period by a week. Lambert persuaded her that having sex with him would somehow end the pregnancy.
A friend who had already become trapped in his abuse encouraged her to visit him and held her hand while he raped her.
The girl was not pregnant, but she was left believing Lambert’s supposed “procedure” had worked.
Another victim described The Shed as a place of escape and said she had been fascinated by Lambert’s stories of witchcraft. She told the court that many of the girls had personal problems and were looking for somewhere to get away from them.
She said Lambert raped her more than 10 times in a private room attached to the youth club. According to her testimony, he would lock the door, make her remove the lower half of her clothing and lie her on a table before drawing a red velvet curtain across her body.
In 2011, Lambert was jailed for 11 years after being convicted of raping children at The Shed.
But by then, another mystery connected to the club had remained unresolved for more than two decades.
The disappearance of Lee Boxell
Lambert was said to have been ‘boasting that he murdered our son and buried him in the graveyard’ while in prison in 2012. It led to his arrest in 2014, along with three others, but he was never charged for Lee’s disappearance
Peter said the couple cannot properly grieve their son, not knowing exactly what happened to him, but tragically admit that ‘Lee probably was murdered’
Peter had the shirt Lee was wearing that day recreated by a printer. It now hangs in the wardrobe in Lee’s room, along with all his other clothes
Lee’s remains were never found in the graveyard and Peter and Christine still don’t know what happened to their son
Lee Boxell was 15 when he disappeared in 1988.
The schoolboy from nearby Sutton was due to attend a football match between Charlton and Millwall at Selhurst Park. He never arrived, and when he failed to return home, his parents’ concern quickly turned into panic.
“We called the police. We called hospitals, friends, anybody we could think of,” Peter recalled. “Nobody knew where Lee was.”
The disappearance became one of the most high-profile missing-person cases of its era. Lee featured in BBC Crimewatch appeals, while former Wimbledon footballer John Fashanu appeared in television appeals for information. His face was also printed on milk cartons.
Yet Lee has never been found.
Today, Metropolitan Police detectives believe it is possible that he was murdered and that Lambert may have been responsible.
One theory is that Lee stumbled across Lambert sexually abusing a young girl and was killed before he could report what he had seen.
“Knowing our son as we do, he would have gone for help, and maybe tried to stop him,” Peter said.
The family has never been able to establish exactly what happened to Lee. But the possibility that he was murdered has become increasingly difficult for them to ignore.
A chilling memory inside The Shed
For Alys, the disappearance of Lee has remained deeply personal despite the fact that the two were not friends.
She believes she may have witnessed evidence of something terrible inside The Shed shortly after his disappearance.
She remembers seeing a mattress leaning against a wall that appeared to be covered by a large bloodstain.
More disturbing still was a smell she says she has never forgotten.
“I know I smelled a dead body,” she recalled through tears. “It was rotting flesh. I had to vomit.”
Terrified, she ran home and says she never went near The Shed again.
Alys also claims Lambert made a chilling remark to her two days after Lee disappeared.
She said he sat her and a friend down and told them that Lee was dead, that he would never be found and that he had been buried nearby.
To Alys, the comment felt like a warning.
“It was like he was saying if I didn’t do what he wanted, the same would happen to me,” she said.
She immediately went to the police but claims her report was not taken seriously.
Alys had already experienced what she believes was an attempt by Lambert to assault her. On one occasion, she said he invited her to The Shed when she was alone and locked the door.
“I said, ‘I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m going,’” she recalled.
Lambert unlocked the door and allowed her to leave, but she said he appeared angry.
She now believes his subsequent warning about Lee was connected to her refusal to comply with him.
A family trapped in decades of uncertainty
For Peter and Christine Boxell, life changed the day their son disappeared.
“That was the start of the living nightmare,” Peter said. “We couldn’t sleep at all at night.”
For weeks, the family barely left the house, afraid they might miss a phone call or a knock at the door.
Neither ever came.
Thirty-seven years later, Lee’s bedroom remains known as “Lee’s Room.” His parents have preserved much of it as it was when he vanished, with football posters still on the walls and many of his belongings still in place.
“If he came home, I would want Lee to find everything exactly as it was when he left,” Peter explained. “I wanted everything to be completely normal — unchanged.”
Peter even had the shirt Lee was wearing on the day he disappeared recreated by a printer. It now hangs in the wardrobe alongside the rest of his clothes.
The couple’s grandchildren, Abigail, 15, and Alex, 18, now sleep in the room when they visit, but the name has never changed.
For Peter and Christine, the uncertainty has made it impossible to fully grieve.
The search beneath St Dunstan’s churchyard
The suspicion surrounding Lambert intensified years later.
While he was in prison in 2012, police received information that he had allegedly boasted about murdering Lee and burying him in the graveyard.
Lambert was subsequently interviewed on suspicion of murder. Two other men and a woman were also arrested, but no one was ever charged.
The investigation led to what was described as the largest forensic excavation in Metropolitan Police history at St Dunstan’s churchyard.
Investigators hoped to find Lee’s remains, but the search faced major limitations. Police were permitted to dig only between existing graves and could not disturb established burials.
The excavation did not find Lee.
Lambert, who was the father of eight children and whose family members have spoken publicly about physical abuse in their home, died of Covid in 2021 at the age of 86.
No one has ever been charged in connection with Lee’s disappearance.
Police say they do not have conclusive evidence that Lee was murdered, but they believe that possibility must now be treated seriously. Their priority is to determine what happened to him and, if possible, find his remains.
Detective Chief Inspector Kate Blackburn, who is leading the investigation, said Lee’s parents deserved answers and the chance to bury their much-loved son.
She appealed for anyone with information to come forward, saying that even anonymous information could help bring an end to the family’s suffering.
A new cold case review brings fresh hope
The Metropolitan Police have now launched a cold case review, giving Peter and Christine renewed optimism that evidence gathered across multiple police forces over the decades will finally be examined from the beginning.
Peter describes the material investigators have collected as “mountains” of evidence.
“One of the good things about the cold case team is they won’t be distracted,” he said. “They’ll look at everything from beginning to end.”
Christine is equally hopeful.
“We’re really, really lucky they’re going to look over it again,” she said. “They’ve got fresh eyes. Hopefully they’ll find something.”
Over the years, Peter has found his own ways to cope with the pain of not knowing what happened to his son.
During the graveyard excavation, one of the most difficult periods of his life, he joined a choir made up of families of missing people.
At a Christmas carol concert at St Martin’s in the Fields in London, he performed an original song about Lee that he said came to him in a dream. The audience responded with a standing ovation.
In 2017, he later performed with the Missing People Choir on Britain’s Got Talent.
For Peter, singing has become a source of comfort.
But the family is still waiting for the one thing they have wanted since 1988: an answer.
In the quiet village of Cheam, hundreds of names remain carved into the stone outside St Dunstan’s churchyard — a lasting reminder of the children who once gathered at The Shed.
Some of those names may belong to Lambert’s victims.
And somewhere within the mystery surrounding that youth club may lie the answer to what happened to Lee Boxell, the 15-year-old boy whose family has spent 37 years waiting to bring him home.
Editor’s note: Alys’s name has been changed.