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5 days ago
10
If you live in Bristol or the surrounding area, the chances are you know Jack O’Sullivan’s face.
The missing 23-year-old’s image features on billboards and posters across the city and north Somerset, all featuring a simple plea in stark red type: “Find Jack.”
The lives of his mother, Catherine, his father, Alan, and his older brother, Ben, have been turned upside down by his disappearance in March and the efforts they have made since then to learn his fate, efforts they say have not been helped by the police.
“In the week after he went missing, the police told us: ‘We believe Jack’s fallen into the water, he’s drowned, and there’s a chance you’ll never see him again.’ They told us that in a phone call,” says Catherine.
“But it became very apparent that they had based that on statistics rather than any fact at all. There was nothing, there was no sighting, there was nothing that they could tie together. So they just resorted to a national statistic.
“Moving forward, we were completely in the police’s hands.”
Nine months later, Jack remains missing.
After graduating from the University of Exeter with a degree in history, Jack was living at home with his parents in Flax Bourton, north Somerset, and studying for a law conversion course.
On 2 March, Jack set off at about 8.20pm, taking the bus to Bristol to meet three friends at a Wetherspoon’s, before moving on to a party in a flat at 11pm in the Hotwells area, near to the floating harbour and Cumberland Basin, the entrance to the city’s docks.
At 1.52am, Catherine received a message from Jack to say he might go out to a club with some friends and would take a taxi home. He is thought to have left the party at about 3am. It has been established that he tried to call a friend who was still at the party at about 3.24am. The friend returned the call at 3.30am but the call was disconnected after Jack said “hello”.
The last CCTV sighting of him was at 3.40am, at the top of a slip road called Bennett Way. This is the last known image of Jack; he has not been seen or heard from since.
The O’Sullivans looked up his iPhone location at 6am on 3 March and went to the address in the Hotwells area. They rang doorbells but only one answered. No one knew where Jack was. He was reported officially missing to the police that day.
“We had no reason to question what they were doing and how they were doing it,” says Catherine. “But as time was moving forward for us, alarm bells started to go.”
Three months into Jack’s disappearance, Catherine was given access to CCTV the police had retained and in effect had said was no longer of value to the inquiry. But after hours of careful sifting, she found a sighting of Jack at 3.17am, which showed him walking away from the river, as well as the final sighting at 3.40am. The police had missed both of them.
“They should have had that on day one,” she says. “It potentially could have made a huge difference in terms of the public awareness.”
All along, the police stuck to their theory that Jack had entered the water, despite the CCTV showing that while he had crossed a bridge south over the river, he had returned to Hotwells, on the north side.
The family later discovered that large chunks of CCTV had not been retained, leaving them to wonder if other sightings had been missed. They also learned the police had failed to hand over details of Jack’s disappearance to the charity Missing People, as has become customary. They are only aware of one person the police spoke to who was present at the party Jack attended that night.
O’Sullivan ultimately complained to Avon and Somerset police, the force responsible for the search, which did not uphold the claims.
Her fears are that Jack got into a car thinking it was a taxi and has come to harm, but the police have stuck to the theory that he entered the water, despite there being no evidence of this.
“They always say that they’ve been open-minded from the start,” O’Sullivan says. “That’s definitely not true.”
As time passes, O’Sullivan and her family believe they are taking the weight of the search and that police have deprioritised the case. She has been on at least 50 or 60 physical searches in person. They have used crowdfunded contributions to pay for specialist charities’ assistance, including the use of search dogs. A £20,000 reward is available for information that helps find him.
“For me, it’s become a full-time job,” says O’Sullivan. “From the time I get up, from the time to the time I go to bed, I’m doing something related to this. I don’t think anything on earth could prepare you for some of the things we’ve gone through.
“We somehow keep going but it’s taken a massive toll on us as a family.”
An Avon and Somerset police spokesperson said: “We remain open-minded about what happened to 23-year-old Jack O’Sullivan after he went missing on Saturday 2 March in the Cumberland Basin area of Bristol and our investigation is continuing.
“Since Jack disappeared, we’ve received more than 130 calls in our contact centre with information, as well as receiving weekly updates from the family’s representatives.
“Each report is carefully assessed and triaged by detectives from our investigation team. They consider the information provided, the evidential value and the relevance to the investigation. Wherever necessary, they follow up the report by contacting the informant and conducting further inquiries.
“On several occasions, we’ve received a single-call report where someone who looks like Jack has been seen elsewhere in the country. Officers will use a probability scale to make a proportionate judgment about the information provided based on the information and evidence available. This allows us to focus the resources we have available on the reports which present more meaningful lines of inquiry.
“We’re always grateful for the public’s continued and ongoing support of this investigation. Our priority remains focused on finding out what happened to Jack and giving his family the answers they desperately need.”
Anyone who wishes to report newly uncovered CCTV footage should contact police by calling 101 and quoting reference 5224055172. The search effort can be contacted at [email protected]
