Missing man’s family double reward in hunt
THE family of a man who disappeared without trace on a Greek island have raised their reward for any information which might help their search.
Yesterday, exactly one year after John Tossell went missing on the island of Zakynthos, his partner Gill Griffiths confirmed she had upped the reward to €10,000 in the hope that someone might come forward with information.
Mrs Griffiths originally offered €5,000 after the mystery of John’s disappearance was picked up by an investigative crime journalist on a Greek TV show.
But she has now doubled it in case “someone thinking twice in the current economic climate in Greece” might be swayed to speak out.
In September, three months after he vanished while walking alone on Mount Skopos, Mrs Griffiths admitted she thought there was “foul play” involved.
The family pushed for a criminal probe into the Welshman’s disappearance and Mr Tossell’s daughter, Katy, said she was unimpressed with how the Greek police dealt with the case at the time.
Now, 12 months later, Ms Tossell maintains that something “untoward” has happened and said “foul play and third-party involvement has to be considered”.
Mr Tossell, 74, from Bridgend, was on the third day of his holiday with Mrs Griffiths when he disappeared, prompting a major search involving specialists from Wales.
The police investigation in Greece has drawn a blank and Ms Tossell fears the worst.
“We are no further along than the day he went missing,” she said. “I think everyone involved in searching is now confident my father is not on that mountain.”
Although she refuses to give up hope of seeing her dad alive again, she said part of her fears he’s not coming back.
She said: “We obviously fear the worse after such a long period of time, but all we want is to find our father and bring him home.”
She hopes the renewed appeal will prompt people who might have been in Argassi at the time to think back and think hard about whether they did see Mr Tossell – even looking through holiday photos in case Mr Tossell appears in the background.
Any information would help them “put our minds at rest,” she added.
“If anyone wants to come forward anonymously just to give us some information, we just want to find him and have closure.”
The family have travelled to the island, visiting all the restaurants and bars in Argassi to examine CCTV in the hope of finding footage of him. They believe that if the area had been searched sooner back in June 2019, mores clues could have been found.
So far, the only information they have is unconfirmed reports from a witness at the cafe on the summit of Mount Skopos saying a man of Mr Tossell’s description stopped there for approximately half an hour.
“That is the last we know of what happened to John. We have had local search and rescue as well as a team of 13 from the Welsh Beacons rescue team search the mountain,” the family added. “We as a family have conducted four searches ourselves, covering ground that may have been inaccessible or unsafe, and still no progress has been made.”