How a couples dream honeymoon around the world hid a truly grotesque crime

Yoga at a retreat on the side of a volcano; beaches in India, the glitz of Miami: Debbie Cooper was on the trip of a lifetime with her new husband Jamie Starbuck and her sporadic emails back to her family in the UK laid out their adventures.It had all been decidedly whirlwind.Within three months of Debbie and Jamie meeting in July 2009 via a Nottingham MeetUp group they had moved in together, and within 10 months had wed in a tiny registry office wedding.Only weeks after that came more good news: Jamie, a cleaner who dreamed of being a photographer, had won a competition to take photos around Europe; he and Debbie, a free spirit and passionate traveler, were off on an open-ended worldwide adventure, starting in Amsterdam.For the next two years, her sisters and friends back in Britain would get email updates about their travels.“We’re in Nicaragua on a sustainable ecovillage living the hippie life,” read one message, according to The Telegraph’s Missing Debbie podcast.

“Mud houses, solar power, and growing vegetables.Every day we go into the garden and pick a salad for dinner.

I got up at 5:15 for meditation today, but it’s a very non-quiet meditation and involves strange breathing, which I don’t like.Pictures will follow.”There could be months between her emails but still, Debbie reassured her family, per Missing Debbie, “I’m feeling great.

This journey we’re on, by which I mean the whole life thing, is being very cathartic for us both.I’m sorry to make you worry by my silences.

Checking emails and things just doesn’t seem a priority.”“We’re literally only planning a few days in advance.”Her sisters asked her to send them photos; they never got any.Suggestions of phone calls were ignored.Jamie, meanwhile, had been working on a travel blog called Diary of a Misanthrope and many of his accounts were not exactly glowing.

“Greece is sh-t,” he posted.The food in Colombia “is pretty s–t.” In India, he detailed getting food...