Trevor Deely’s family mark 13th anniversary of his disappearance

Yesterday marked 13 years since the wet and stormy night when Trevor Deely walked across Baggot Street Bridge in Dublin and disappeared. The bank employee had attended a Christmas party and went back to his office to get an umbrella before heading in the direction of home on December 8th, 2000. The last sighting of him was at 4.15am, when CCTV footage showed him crossing Baggot Street Bridge and heading towards Haddington Road. He would be 35 now.

His family and friends gathered for a prayer service in Naas, Co Kildare, at the weekend to mark the anniversary of his disappearance.

His father Michael said he was determined to keep his son’s disappearance in the public eye, in the hope that it would lead to a breakthrough some day. “We’re still looking and searching and waiting and hoping,” he said. “The gardaí would say you have to keep at it. As lonely as it is, and as difficult as it is, you just have to keep it in the public eye because you never know what piece of information could solve it in the end,” he said.

Mr Deely said it was difficult to keep it in the public eye “because the media thrives on new information but we have absolutely nothing.

“His umbrella was never found. His phone was never found. We’re not one iota further on than the moment when he was last captured on CCTV just after going over Baggot Street. It’s a total mystery”, he said. “Some people think somebody, somewhere, must have some piece of information but we haven’t unearthed that yet.”

An age-enhanced photograph was released in 2010, but it didn’t yield any results.

After he disappeared, an unprecedented land and water search and poster campaign was mounted by gardaí and friends and family.

A stretch of the Grand Canal between Leeson Street and the Grand Canal Basin at Ringsend was drained and the river Dodder was searched.

Mr Deely said the recent reported breakthrough in Madeleine McCann’s case and the discovery of the body of missing woman Elaine O’Hara gave him hope that his family too, could get the breakthrough they needed. “You have to keep on hoping because, otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to live at all,” he said.