A 66-year-old man charged with the murder of Shani Warren, who was found bound and gagged in a lake nearly 35 years ago, has failed to appear in court for his first remand hearing. Donald Robertson was charged at High Wycombe magistrates court on Friday with falsely imprisoning, indecently assaulting and murdering Warren in Taplow, Buckinghamshire, on 17 April 1987. He was also charged with the kidnap and rape of a girl, 16, who cannot be named for legal reasons, in Slough, Berkshire, on 16 July 1981. The court heard that Robertson was unable to appear either in court or via video link due to his health and a coronavirus outbreak at the prison where he is being held. He was represented by a solicitor for the brief hearing. No pleas were entered and the district judge Arvind Sharma sent all the charges for trial at Reading crown court on 29 November. Warren, 26, disappeared on Good Friday in 1986. She had been mowing the lawn at her home in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, and set off in her car to dispose of the clippings at her parents’ home, but never returned. The next day a woman walking her dog discovered Warren in Taplow Lake, face down, bound with jump leads and a tow rope, and gagged with a scarf. Despite the manner of her discovery, police initially treated her death as suicide, with one of the senior detectives leading the investigation saying it was not clear whether Warren had been murdered or had managed to bind and gag herself. A murder investigation into Warren’s death was only launched four days after her body was found, when a postmortem examination found she had died by drowning. Despite publicity, including a Crimewatch reconstruction, it took police 34 years to bring charges over Warren’s death. At the time of Robertson’s arrest in June, Warren’s family revealed her parents had died during the Covid-19 pandemic. Warren’s aunt Mavis Caney, of Reading, said: “My sister and her husband are now dead; they died this year. I think for her two sons, when you keep getting things resurfacing, it’s very difficult. “There were a lot of issues at the time about how the police handled the case, which was very unsatisfactory, and they did apologise. Initially, Shani wasn’t classified as being murdered, the discredited specialist who said she could have tied the rope knots herself – all of those issues are being brought up again now with the arrest.” Thames Valley police said Robertson, formerly of Slough, had been arrested after an investigation by the force’s major crime review team.