Katrice Lee: Woman admits impersonating missing toddler online

A woman has admitted using social media to impersonate a toddler who has been missing for almost 40 years.

Katrice Lee vanished on her second birthday, in November 1981, near the British military base in Germany where her father Richard was stationed.

Appearing at Wirral Magistrates' Court, Heidi Robinson, 40, pleaded guilty to a malicious communications offence.

She sent a message to Katrice's family in November last year, and will be sentenced on 30 October.

District Judge Nicholas Sanders said the pre-sentence report should include information on her mental health.

He said: "Clearly at the time you were not very well but, on the other hand, what you have now admitted to also caused some very real distress to people in this matter."

Robinson, of East Way in Moreton, was given unconditional bail.

Katrice was with her mother at a Naafi supermarket in Paderborn when she disappeared.

Mr Lee, from Hartlepool, has been critical of the Royal Military Police's initial investigation into his daughter's disappearance.

Last month they arrested a man in connection over her disappearance and searched a terraced house in Swindon, Wiltshire, but he was released without charge.