Still Clinging to hope Mark Deely’s brother Trevor went missing in Dublin seven years ago and hasn’t been seen since SEAN RICE
REPORTER seanrice@mayonews.ie
TREVOR Deely bade adieu to his work-mates on night shift in a Dublin bank, walked out into the wintry darkness of a December morning ... and disappeared.
Seven years later, the anguish of his family can be summed up in the words of his brother Mark in Castlebar: “I would be distraught to learn that Trevor is dead. I don’t know what’s worse anymore, to be told your sibling is dead or to not know he is dead.”
No day has passed in those seven years that Trevor Deely’s disappearance has not speared the consciousness of his family. Mood alternates between doubt and despair as they cling to the hope that some day, somehow, Trevor, their happy, jolly Trevor, will ramble back into their lives from some mad adventure.
Trevor had been missing for four days before their agony began. Following a Christmas party with some of his colleagues from the investment section of Bank of Ireland at Leeson Street Bridge in Dublin, Trevor left to walk back to his apartment at Serpentine Avenue. It was 3.30am on December 8, 2000.
Because of a strike no taxi was available. The night was wet and dark and windy, and on the way he dropped into the bank for a chat with a couple of his colleagues on night duty. He had made steady progress in his work at the bank. He was humorous and in good health ... your typical 22-year-old with scarcely a care in the world.
His visit lasted 25 minutes and afterwards he is captured on CCTV on his way to his apartment, walking by the canal, crossing it at Baggot Street Bridge, and passing another bank at 4.20am heading for Haddington Road … before vanishing out of sight.
His failure to turn up for work that morning was uncharacteristic, but to his colleagues understandable. Concern grew, however, when Trevor did not show up on Monday or Tuesday.
Mark, an optician in Castlebar, learned of his brother’s disappearance when the phone rang in his home on Tuesday, December 12. His mind was a tumult of emotions as he hurried to Dublin, stopping off at his parents’ home in Naas on the way.
He arrived at teatime and the night was dark and wet and windy. His brother’s mobile phone had rung out, the battery obviously dead. He recalls doing strange things like searching in bins and nooks and corners on the route Trevor had taken, his thoughts still in turmoil.
His search was so intense that the 20-minute walk from the bank to Trevor’s flat took Mark three-and-a-half hours to complete. A garda on duty at the American Embassy told him of President Bill Clinton’s visit to town that weekend and how the area had been swept clean on the morning Trevor had gone missing. Every bin had been emptied, every manhole sealed on instructions of the Secret Service.
“Each day that followed with no trace of Trevor was like getting sucked into a nightmare. We didn’t have a clue. As a unit of family and friends we knew, and still are a hundred per cent certain, that Trevor was not depressed. The notion that he would have contemplated suicide is totally out of the question, completely out of character.”
He had drink taken and they wondered had he gone on a bender. But as the days followed and no clue of his whereabouts surfaced that theory evaporated. There was nothing to lead them in any direction.
A group of some 60 friends, swelled in the evenings up to 300, engaged in the search co-ordinated by Mark and his sisters Michelle and Pamela. His mother and father were at home in Naas communicating with the Gardaí. A bus full to capacity of Mark’s friends, organised by Castlebar Mitchels, made the journey to Dublin to join in the search. They had posters of Trevor looking down from every pole. Banks, business houses, garages, shops, public houses, were called on and pictures of Trevor circulated. CCTV tapes were collected and left into the Garda station.
They phoned his friends everywhere, including his former girlfriend in Alaska whom Trevor had visited the previous September and with whom he remained on friendly terms.
It took time to convince the Gardaí that he had not hopped on a plane or a bus or a ship for some unknown destination. But the sub-aqua unit of the force spared no time in springing into action, exploring the waters of the canal.
Mark is full of praise for their meticulous efforts. But waiting for a result was nerve-wracking. People coming from work, stopping to look, asking questions. “It would put the fear of God into you, thinking that a fellow is going to come up out of the water and give a thumbs-up sign, and that a garda is going to come and drag you to one side and say they have found something and to prepare yourselves.”
That never happened and the thoroughness of their search in the canal and the Dodder has convinced the family that Trevor is not in water.
Mark’s mobile phone number was plastered on every poster put up in Dublin, and he’s not so sure it was a good idea. He got all sorts of calls, hoax calls and crank calls and some well-meaning, about sightings of Trevor, but all mistaken. “Every time you get news of a sighting your heart leaps a little and you think maybe this is it. You will grasp at anything.”
Places to which diviners pointed were checked again and again, every bit of information thoroughly examined, but has led them nowhere. Nothing ever turned up to prove Trevor is dead, or indeed to prove that he is alive. Since the first moment they learnt that Trevor was missing, time has stopped for the Deelys, says Mark.
One pencil of light pierced their gloom with the meeting of Brian McDonald and Trevor’s sister, Michelle, during the search in Dublin. Brian, a friend of Mark, took holiday time off from his then teaching post at Davitt College in Castlebar to assist in the search. Romance blossomed and the two are now married and living in Dublin. “Trevor would find a certain irony in that, I’m sure,” says Mark.
The mystery that brought them together, however, still overshadows the joy of that occasion. “We are all still finding it hard,” says Mark. “The day-to-day stuff is not too bad, but there are special occasions ... like the birthdays. Denise was expecting our first baby six months after Trevor went missing. I have three kids now.
“Trevor was the youngest of the family and you could imagine how his parents feel. Mother is hurting big time. We all are, but more so for her. It has been and continues to be unbelievably tough for her.
“The wedding was hard to go to. My dad had to give Michelle away, and to make a speech and their youngest son is not there, and they don’t know why. Then there are the Christmases, the anniversary, and as time goes by there is still no news.
“God, it will get to the stage soon when it is not just a birthday you’ll remember, but the date in September when he went on holidays to Alaska. Suddenly that date has become full of meaning because he’s not there anymore and you don’t know what way he is.”
RTÉ’s ‘Crimecall’ covered the whole story, and it appeared on all the national newspapers at the time. Three years ago the ‘Cracking Crime’ series devoted an entire television programme to Trevor and it was repeated last year.
“Everybody will tell you that it is the not knowing that is the hardest. But somebody knows something. My Mum will often say to me ‘do you think he’s coming back, Mark’. I answer in different ways ‘can you prove to me that he’s dead’.
“Some people will say he must be dead, move on. But we can’t do that unless we get proof. It’s possible something sinister happened, but we have no proof. Did he run away? Why? He had nothing to run away from. He had everything going for him. He was getting on mighty at work, rising up through the ranks. So, yes, there is hope.”
His father retired from Bord Bia last September. Mark’s eldest daughter, Megan, is seven now and he says would be starting to wonder who is her uncle. They have explained everything to her.
But no quarter of a day goes by that he does not think of his missing brother in some way. “It is hurtful and you keep thinking is there something you missed. Is there something I need to check again? Could I have done something better? Is there a pub I did not walk into and ask the right person what happened him? You could drive yourself daft thinking like that.
“All I wish is that the general public do not forget his name, that it is not about us, the family. We’d love to keep a focus on him and find out somewhere what happened.
“I’d love an answer. I would love to grab Dublin by the coattails and shake the living daylights out of it – turn the clock back to January 1, 2001, and shake the information out of it because the information is there, it has to be. I can’t believe it’s not there.
“I refuse to believe it’s not there. Because if I believe somebody doesn’t know what happened Trevor then everything I have ever believed in is wrong.”
