When five-year-old April Jones disappeared whilst playing outside her house in Wales police launched the UK’s biggest ever missing person hunt.
Her frantic mother Coral, 43, joined the search desperately praying her youngest daughter, who suffered from Cerebral Palsy, would be brought back safely.
Tragically, April never came home. Five days after she vanished on 1 October 2012 her neighbour - former lifeguard Mark Bridger, 48 - was charged with her abduction and murder.
Sickeningly, police found over 20 pictures of April alongside a hoard of child pornography on Bridger’s computer.
In May 2013 heartbroken Coral and her husband Paul, 46, watched from the public gallery in court as Bridger was sentenced to life for the horrific killing.
Agonisingly, April’s family still don’t know where her body is, though a few fragments of bone belonging to her were found at Bridger's house.
He claims he accidently killed the little girl when he ran over her but couldn’t recall what he had done with her body.*
APRIL JONES' GRAN ON MADELEINE MCCANN: 'HER PARENTS WON'T WANT HER TO BE FOUND'
*Now, Coral, Paul and their children Jazmin, 19, and son Harley, 13, are preparing to poignantly mark what would have been her eighth birthday on 4 April.
Coral, who carries April’s Teddy bear with her wherever she goes, says: “I’ll make a chocolate sparkly cake because that was her favourite and share it with the family. We'll take balloons to her graveside and release lanterns into the sky in our garden in her memory.
“April loved birthdays and would get so excited. On her fifth birthday we had a children’s entertainer and she was singing and dancing – we had no idea that would be her last party.
“April is a hard month for us. I still can’t go out alone and I can’t eat or sleep properly.
“I look out the window and watch April’s friends playing, thinking she should be there in her pink peppa pig wellies jumping in puddles. I despise Bridger with every bone in my body for taking away my little girl.”
To read more of this story and for more real life stories don't miss our 24-page Real Life special inside the latest issue of Closer, it's a goody! On sale now!