Debbie Griggs documentary features Deborah Griggs defending Andrew Griggs
Debbie Griggs’ disappearance is back in focus after a new documentary features her husband’s new wife, Deborah Griggs, saying she still believes Andrew Griggs is innocent. Deborah Griggs also describes him as generous and protective. The programme ties that statement to a case that was revived after Debbie’s family spotted a KentOnline article in 2015.
Deborah Griggs in the documentary
Deborah Griggs says, "People say I'm in denial, but I still believe he's innocent" in the documentary about Debbie Griggs’ disappearance. She also says, "He’s very generous. He would give up something so someone else could have it."
In the same programme, she adds, "He’s a true gentleman, very protective of his family." When she began her relationship with Andrew Griggs, she says, "He said to me he had something to tell me, ‘there’s something you need to know about me’".
How the KentOnline article mattered
The documentary also revisits how a KentOnline article helped move the case again. In 2015, Debbie Griggs’s family complained to Kent Police after seeing an article listing unsolved cases in Kent and noticing that Debbie was not included.
Detectives then got the files back out of storage and treated her disappearance as a live case again. That renewed attention later fed into the murder investigation that ended with Andrew Griggs’s conviction at Canterbury Crown Court.
Debbie Griggs and the conviction
Debbie Griggs, a nurse and mum of three, was pregnant with her fourth child when she disappeared from the family home in Cross Road, Deal, on May 5, 1999. Andrew Griggs was later arrested and convicted of her murder, and in 2019 he received a life sentence with a minimum term of 20 years.
Debbie’s remains were not found until October 2022, when specialist officers excavated the back garden of a property in St Leonards, Dorset, and found them inside a sealed water butt. Andrew Griggs had moved there from Deal in July 2001 with his and Debbie’s three young sons, and one of the couple’s sons, Jake, contacted police before the remains were discovered.
The documentary leaves viewers with two facts running side by side: Deborah Griggs still backs Andrew Griggs, while the court record already ties him to Debbie’s murder. For anyone following the case, the key point is that the new programme does not reopen the conviction; it shows how the family’s own complaints and the later discovery of Debbie’s remains turned a long-unsolved disappearance into a murder case.
