Today is the seventh anniversary of
the disappearance of Georgie Gharsallah, a 30 year old mother of two from Worthing, UK.
Georgina was seen on CCTV at a shop near her home on the morning of March 7th, 2018 and vanished shortly afterwards, being seen once more on CCTV with an unknown woman at about 4p.m. the same day. She was close to her parents and stayed in frequent contact with them, and her disappearance was fairly out-of-character; she had made plans to meet with her father during the day on the 7th, but never showed up for this meeting. A murder inquiry was launched in August 2019 but despite lots of local press and several arrests, no trace of Georgina has ever been found.
The town rumour mill has suggested the usual everything from drugs to sex-trafficking, but nothing concrete has so far been confirmed. A fair few people locally thought she may have been concealed on the site of a derelict car park near to where she was last seen but if this is the case the subsequent redevelopment of the site did not reveal her remains. Additionally, the town is bordered by the South Downs National Park, where concealing a body might also be possible. Very few think Georgina disappeared voluntarily, although this too has been posited.
Donal MacIntyre's podcast
Missing Murdered Unsolved covered the case in some detail in 2022, interviewing her mother and others connected to the investigation at length but didn't manage to make any headway. The season is worth a listen for anybody wanting a deeper dive on this.
I lived locally for many years and for me the creepiest part of this was that her missing posters would frequently be town down within a day or two of being put up; although flimsier at first, eventually the family would laminate the posters and zip-tie them to lamp posts and within the week they'd all have been ripped back down again during the night — I personally saw this cycle happen four or five times in the two years I stayed living there after her disappearance. I have no idea if they've since found out who was doing this, but it gave me the willies.
Drugs and violence are not unheard of in West Sussex, and she was known to frequent some less than salubrious parts of town in the years before her death with people who were not exactly upstanding members of society. Over 70 sightings of Georgina were reported in the year or two following her disappearance, but none were conclusively proven to be of her. Personally, I think it's more likely that she is dead than trafficked or voluntarily missing, and that there's a good chance false sightings were called in by whoever was ripping down the posters.
Whatever happened to her, I hope her parents, siblings and kids get some answers one day.
