Shadowy ‘man in black’ could be the key to the mystery of missing Trevor
The family of a young man who vanished 16 years ago have been given renewed hope, writes Maeve Sheehan
EVERY year, Trevor Deely’s family have put their lives on pause to remind the country that their cherished son and brother has been missing since December 8, 2000. They have given interviews. Their prolific posters appealing for information about the red-haired 22-yearold became so iconic that they inspired an art exhibition. Last Friday, the Deely family gathered at Garda headquarters for another appeal for information. This time it was different.
When Trevor vanished, quite literally without trace, on his way home from an office Christmas party in Dublin, gardai could find no suspects, let alone witnesses. His last known movements were captured on grainy CCTV footage when he walked out of the frame at 4.14am, after which he simply disappeared.
Sixteen years on, the Garda review of the missing persons case has not only uncovered new witnesses, it has also delivered up a “person of interest”, a figure who was recently digitally enhanced from a grainy blob on an old VHS security tape into a sturdy-looking man dressed in black and wearing a beanie hat who follows Trevor.
Gardai are not yet calling him a suspect but he is potentially the last person to have spoken to Trevor, the last person to see him, and possibly knows what happened to him. An anonymous donor has offered a €100,000 reward for information.
Trevor’s family have taken tremendous heart from the developments. They never bought the theory that he fell into the canal or that he may have taken his own life. “We are his family and we feel we know him best. Not just us, his own friends, his close friends and outside his close friends, his colleagues. He was just starting out on his career. Trevor was your normal 22-year-old. We remain completely convinced that somebody somewhere knows something. We want to know how he disappeared and we want to know where he is now,” said Trevor’s older brother, Mark.
“We are not naive. We are not necessarily, by handing leaflets out, hoping that we are going to give a leaflet to someone who was there that night. But we do hope that somebody somewhere will hear this appeal yet again, maybe for the first time, and they will come forward with some information, whether they overheard a conversation, whether they were directly involved, whatever. We just need that little bit.”
Trevor was the youngest of Michael and Ann Deely’s four children and grew up in Naas, Co Kildare. At the age of 22, he had completed a computer course, shared a flat in Serpentine Avenue and was working in the IT department at Bank of Ireland Asset Management just off Baggot Street on Wilton Place.
On December 7, 2000, Trevor had spent the night at his work Christmas party at the Hilton Hotel nearby, close to the Grand Canal. Afterwards, he and some colleagues went to Buck Whaley’s nightclub on Lower Leeson Street.
The weather was bad and there was a taxi strike. Shortly before 3.30am, Trevor walked from Buck Whaley’s to the office, on his way home. He briefly logged onto his computer, and chatted with one of his colleagues who was working the night shift. Trevor picked up a blue golf umbrella from the office and left the building.
He called his best friend on the way home and left a voice message at 4.06am. Around eight minutes later, he was picked up by a CCTV camera outside a Bank of Ireland building on the corner of Baggot Street Bridge, walking toward Haddington Road. That remains the last sighting of him.
Reports at the time suggested that he had fallen into the Grand Canal. Gardai searched the canal, then the deep waters of the Grand Canal Basin, and then the swollen waters of the River Dodder. No trace of him ever surfaced — not a scrap of clothing, his wallet, his phone or the golf umbrella.
Last May, Detective Superintendent Peter O’Boyle of Pearse Street garda station reviewed the case to see if it was a candidate for a cold case review. By September, he had a full-time team assigned to the job. Their hopes centred on three sequences of CCTV footage, two from Bank of Ireland Asset Management and one from the Bank of Ireland on Baggot Street Bridge. The images were on VHS and grainy. There was dark shadowy movement that was impossible to decipher. The footage was sent to a UK firm for digital enhancing.
The project was so successful that it revealed for the first time that Trevor was watched, and then followed, by a man dressed in black who was captured by all three CCTV cameras.
The man first appears at 3am, walking into the frame of a CCTV camera overlooking railings and a pillar at the back entrance of Bank of Ireland Asset Management on Wilton Place. Dressed in black with a beanie hat, he leans into the pillar, as though taking shelter from the weather and stays there for half an hour. At 3.33am, he steps out toward the footpath. At 3.34am, Trevor Deely walks past, and the man turns to follow him.
A second CCTV camera captures Trevor at the back gate of his office at 3.35am. He is reaching down to open the latch. The man in black faces Trevor and they exchange words. The man turns toward the footpath, his back to the camera, shoulders hunched. It looks like he has his hands in his pockets. Trevor opens the gate. The man in black glances back over his shoulder.
When Trevor leaves the building at 4.02am, the man cannot be seen. Trevor pauses to do up his coat and he opens his umbrella. At 4.14am, the CCTV at Bank of Ireland on the corner of Baggot Street Bridge picks up Trevor walking toward Haddington Road. Thirty four seconds later, a man in black hurries behind him. Gardai believe it is the same man.
Who was this man in black? Why was he standing by a pillar in the rain at 3am? Why had he never come forward, asked Det Supt O’Boyle at a press briefing on Friday.
Gardai are keeping an open mind. A mixed bag of characters frequented the nexus of Baggot Street, Haddington Road and Mespil Road at that time. It was a community of night owls. Prostitutes worked the streets and laneways of the area, and it was not unusual to see strange men hanging around on street corners or peering out of doorways late at night. There was a late night-shop nearby where party-goers would congregate to buy cigarettes and taxi drivers would park up to get coffee.
Gardai are now revisiting witnesses who gave statements to the original investigation. They have taken 172 statements and 250 ‘reports’, and are following up 400 lines of inquiry. Their inquiries have shaken out some new witnesses already, according to Det Supt O’Boyle. “We are depending on a lot of help now from the public,” he said.
Gardai believe that if Trevor had fallen or been pushed into the canal, it is likely that his body would have been found by now. His family make no assumptions and refuse to rule out that he may be alive.
“How do you give up on something like this? As a family, there is no question of giving up,” said his father Michael. He said Trevor was remembered every day “with absolute fondness”, adding: “Sure, he was the absolute light of our lives.”
The family’s lives have moved on, according to Mark, but a part of them is frozen in time. Trevor had no nieces and nephews when he went missing 16 years ago. Now he has nine. In the days after he disappeared, his friends and family led the massive search for him. It was his friends who discovered the Bank of Ireland’s crucial CCTV footage of the last known sighting of Trevor on Haddington Road, just days before the bank taped over it.
“But we haven’t moved him from there. So even though our lives are going on, and of course life goes on, it’s like we are still left hunting that same piece of information now in 2017 that we were looking for in 2000,” said Mark.
The Deely family are appealing directly to the ‘man in black’, to anyone who thinks they might know him, anyone who may know anything at all. “It could be somebody who overheard a conversation. It could be somebody who overhears an overheard conversation. There will be some little nugget of information somewhere that will just lead to solving this,” said Mark.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 1800250025.
‘We are depending on a lot of help now from the public’