Allen's web of deception

John Allen: Reputation as a ladies' man

The disappearance of John Allen's wife and two children has obsessed the seaside town of Salcombe in Devon since 1975.

Patricia Allen and children Jonathan, seven, and Victoria, five, went missing - and no trace of them has ever been found.

Allen said his wife drove off on 26 May after a row, then returned two days later to take the children, saying she could not live without them.

On Monday Allen was convicted of murdering his wife and two children.

It was not the first time he had lied to cover his tracks.

Patricia Allen's body has never been found

In 1967 he had abandoned his first wife and two children, faked his suicide at Beachy Head, then bigamously "married" Patricia six months later.

A chance meeting with a friend led to his true identity being revealed and Allen was given a two-year suspended sentence for bigamy and other charges.

However, Patricia stuck by him and they were later legally married.

Allen was jailed for three years in the early 1970s for criminal damage and theft following a mail-order fraud.

A search was launched a year after the disappearance

In 1974 the couple moved to Salcombe where Allen became the manager of the Marine Hotel.

But Allen soon started an affair with Eunice Yabsley, the widowed owner of a Salcombe restaurant.

She remembers the first time they met: "As he walked in, he filled the doorway and walked in slowly and a measured tread, with an elegant sway of his shoulders."

Patricia disappeared in 1975.

Ms Yabsley said: "He was upset and asked me to look after the children for the day because she had left that morning."

Allen was failed for a mail-order scam

A search began a year later and Allen was arrested, but no charges were brought against him.

He told police that he believed that Patricia had gone to the USA to stay with a boyfriend.

But no trace has ever been found of her or the children.

Her car was found in Salcombe, but she did not have a valid passport and her bank account was intact.

Her clothes had been left at the couple's flat.

Womaniser remembered

Allen moved in with Ms Yabsley, but their relationship later fell apart.

The mother-of-three later wrote a book about the events in 1975, entitled Presumed Dead, which led to the police re-opening the investigation.

Allen moved to Bournemouth where he ran the catering for the East Dorset Golf Club in Wareham.

Staff there remember him as a womaniser, who left abruptly in May 2000 when he was given a six-month suspended sentence after problems at another club.

Allen later moved to Dorset, but his past caught up with him when police knocked on his door.