AN ACHILL Island family has made an emotional appeal in the Netherlands for information on the whereabouts of their son and brother, who disappeared there two years ago.
The family of James Patrick “JP” Grealis has put up a reward of €10,000 and described it as their last chance of discovering his whereabouts.
The last reported sighting of JP, a carpenter then aged 24, was when he checked out of a BB in the town of Breda on October 23rd, 2008, saying he was going to find work in another town.
The Grealis family, of Tonragee, Achill, hope the involvement of a team of Dutch experts who have recently taken up the case will provide a breakthrough. A retired detective, a criminal psychologist and a well-known crime reporter who take on cold cases or those the police are not treating as crime have started their own inquiry.
They believe his disappearance was suspicious, and that he may have been murdered. "The Grealis family came up against a brick wall, they were sent away again and again as they tried to discover what happened to their son and brother here," said crime reporter Jolande van der Graaf of De Telegraafnewspaper.
JP had worked as a carpenter in the Netherlands since early 2007. He was said to be planning to return home to Ireland.
“He would never have put us to the worry of vanishing without trace, he always kept in touch with home, calling one of us four sisters or Mam and Dad at least once a week and he was cheerful and normal,” his sister Helen said.
Since November 2008 the family has regularly returned to Holland in hopes of a breakthrough. They hope the reward and the publicity in Holland may at last provide some clues, they said.