Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Charles Horvath-allan, 20: Missing since 1989
LEEDS Beckett university are taking on the case of Halifax man, Charles HorvathAllan, who went missing while backpacking in Canada.
Lecturer Kirsty Bennett, who formerly worked for West Yorkshire’s major crime unit, said: “The unit will follow the same format as a major incident room, and the skills the students will bring can hopefully identify possible areas of development in Charles’ case.”
Last week Charles was officially declared dead, after vanishing aged 20. He was last seen on a campsite in May 1989.
His mother Denise HorvathAllan, 71, has been left emotionally and financially devastated by three decades of searching for her only child.
The retired beauty salon owner from Richmond in London, has made 15 trips to Kelowna, British Columbia, which is between the cities of Vancouver and Calgary.
The mum starred as part of the Missing People Choir who got to the final of Britain’s Got Talent back in 2017.
She said: “The lives of my family have been devastated, surviving 31 years without answers; it’s been like living on a rollercoaster to hell. The torment, loss and pain of a child missing is unimaginable, especially thousands of miles away from home across the ocean at the other side of the world. I will search for my young son until the day I die. “Talking about the presumption of death hearing g last week, she said: “I wanted to scream to the judge, ‘ ‘He can’t be dead’.” The mum says sh she has received little support from C Canadian or British police despite her many pleas. In the end sh she had to turn detective hers herself and during one of her visits in 1992, 1 two notes were sent to her hote hotel from an anonymous s sender.
The fir first one said: “Dear Mrs A Allan. I seen your ad in th the paper looking for your son. I saw him in tiny tent town May 26. We were partying and two people knocked him out but he died.
“His body is in the lake by the bridge.” The mum paid out thousands for specialist underwater equipment and volunteer divers carried out a search.
Then another note arrived saying they were looking under the wrong part of the bridge. On day six of the search the volunteers found a body of a male.
As the horrified mum waited for confirmation and her husband flew out to join her, police dumped her in a psychiatric unit.
“I was exhausted I was manhandled into an ambulance, my mobile phone taken from me and I was taken to hospital,” she said. “I’d had three hours sleep a night for six weeks.
“I was in a concrete room like a cell and there were very poorly people walking up and down the hallways.
“When I was asleep they allowed people into my room to leave funeral director cards.
“I refused to speak to a psychiatrist. I told them, ‘I’ve got a broken heart not a broken mind.”
Eventually she was told the body was not her son but a man in his late 60s who had taken his own life.
On the students taking up the search for Charles she said: “It’s just amazing that finally someone is going to help.”
31 years & no answers is like being taken on a rollercoaster going to hell DENISE HORVARTHALLAN MUM OF CHARLES