Has the last mystery of the Morecambe Bay cocklepickers finally been solved? ... trends now
A family renting a holiday home by the sea found a human skull and bones on a beach - and may have solved the last mystery of the Morecambe Bay cockling disaster, two decades after 23 Chinese workers drowned there.
Mother-of-two Jenny, 50, her husband Mick, 52, and their 10-year-old twins were walking along Cove Road Beach in Silverdale, north of the bay, when they saw a rocky outcrop and decided to go fossil hunting on Easter Sunday.
Lancashire Police said officers were 'keeping an open mind' when asked if they could rule out a link to the deaths of 23 Chinese men and women, aged 18 to 45, who, on February 5, 2004, drowned as they collected cockles against a rising tide.
The tragedy began as panicked cocklepicker Guo Binglong shouted 'sinking water, sinking water,' in a 999 call until the phone went dead. He was later found dead in a huge search and rescue operation.
The untrained and inexperienced cocklepickers were all illegal immigrants and were working for a criminal gang. Gangmaster Lin Liang Ren was found guilty of their manslaughter in March 2006 and handed a 14-year sentence before being deported to China in September 2012. His girlfriend, Zhao Xiao Qing and his cousin, Lin Mu Yong, were also convicted of immigration offences.
The only victim whose body remains unaccounted for is of Dong Xin Wu, aged 39 when he died, who worked a cobbler in China and had come to the UK to send money to his family.
A human skull found near Silverdale Point - the same coastline as where the skull was found this weekend - was proved by DNA tests in October 2010 to be the remains of missing victim Liu Qin Ying, a mother whose husband Yu Hua Xu also died in the tragedy, leaving their son an orphan.
A family renting a holiday home by the sea found a human skull (pictured) and bones on a Lancashire beach - and may have solved the last mystery of the Morecambe Bay cockling disaster, two decades after 23 Chinese workers drowned there
Emergency crews on Cove Road Beach in Silverdale, Lancashire, after human remains were found on March 31
Rescue workers take away the body of one of the Chinese cockle pickers who died after they were trapped by the rising tide in Morecambe Bay on February 5, 2004
The only victim whose body remains unaccounted for is of Dong Xin Wu (left), aged 39 when he died. A human skull found near Silverdale Point was proved by DNA tests in October 2010 to be the remains of the other missing victim Liu Qin Ying (right)
Chinese gangmaster Lin Liang Ren (left) was found guilty of the manslaughter of the cocklers in March 2006 and his cousin Lin Mu Yong (right) was convicted of immigration offences
Lin Liang Ren's girlfriend Zhao Xiao Qing (pictured outside Preston Crown Court on March 21, 2006) was also found guilty of immigration offences
'It was not until we found the skull that the penny dropped that these were human remains,' said Jenny, who found the skull with her husband and children
The family found the skull (pictured) on an outcrop on Cove Road Beach in Silverdale
The man who sent them out onto the sands in February 2004 - gangmaster Lin Liang Ren - was later given a 14-year prison sentence for manslaughter. He was described in court as 'callous' and motivated by money.
Jenny and Mick's twin son and daughter, who are both 'really interested in fossils and dinosaurs', saw and picked up several bones, including a hip, a large vertebra and a limb, initially thinking they were ancient animal remains.
'My son looked down and saw the skull in between rocks,' Jenny, from Lancashire, told MailOnline. He told his mother: 'That doesn't look like and animal or a rock.'
'When I first realised it was a human skull, a cold shiver went down my spine,' Jenny's husband Mick said. Jenny added: 'It was not until we found the skull that the penny dropped that these were human remains.
'It was surreal - my husband was a bit taken aback. I've got a criminology degree so I find that stuff really interesting. I thought I might have found something that needs to be investigated, even the children found it interesting.
'It's not like finding a body, if we'd found a head it would have been more scary.'
As the tide was coming back out at just before 1pm, Jenny decided the best thing to do was to pick up the skull and some other bones and take them ashore and report the findings to the police. They left some bones as her son had dropped them before they realise their true origin.
Jenny said: 'We picked the skull up and the other few bones we had - a vertebra and a rib - and we brought them back to where we were staying. I reported it online to the police.'
She said she thought the remains had been there for a long time and that the skill was
