I've got a missing person story.
Last month UK police confirmed the identity of a body that had been buried in an unmarked grave in Anglesey. It was an uncle of mine, who had been missing, presumed dead, for 36 years.
Conor Whooley was 24 when he disappeared in Dublin. He was due to visit our house that day but never showed up. He never called nor returned home, so family members made inquiries and conducted searches, including in the UK, where they guessed he'd perhaps migrated to start a new life. As the years rolled into decades, it gradually dawned on them that he had probably died. But still, they had no solid clues about what had happened to him.
In 2015 my grandmother was watching a TV show about matching DNA with unidentified bodies in Ireland and the UK, so she went to the police to submit hers, then they shared it with UK police. More recently they contacted her to request DNA from a sibling, after which they confirmed a match.
By chance, UK police had exhumed a body in an unmarked grave in northwest Wales in 2013. They were looking to match it with a missing Norwegian sailor, and selected my uncle's grave merely because his 1983 police report mentioned that he was found wearing clothing with 'continental' size tags.
It turns out that Conor's body had washed up on a beach south of Holyhead on October 22nd, 1983. The post-mortem report estimated he had been in the water for 6-8 weeks. This likely means he somehow drowned right around the time he went missing, and his body then drifted across the Irish Sea.
Interestingly, the family got the call with the news that Conor had been found on October 22nd this year, 36 years to the day since he washed ashore in Wales. My uncle, the eldest brother, called his daughter to tell her the news. She was in the UK visiting her cousin (my sister), who happens to live not far from where Conor is buried. So my cousin visited the grave on her drive home to Ireland and had this plaque placed there:
The spot is somewhere we've all passed many times as it's just off the highway that takes you to the ferry terminal for crossing the Irish Sea to Dublin. If you look to the right (north) as you cross the bridge onto Anglesey, the cemetery is a wee island in the strait:
Intriguingly, Conor is the third missing Irish person identified via DNA matching in the last two years to have been found along a two-mile stretch in south Anglesey. Last year a man who had been expected to journey to the UK in 1983 via the Dublin-Holyhead ferry was identified; his body was in an unmarked grave in the same cemetery as my uncle. The third person was a woman last seen walking her dog on a beach in Wexford in 1994. She washed ashore in the same place after drifting at sea for weeks.
There's apparently something about the sea currents and tides that brings bodies to that location, and UK police suspect that many more unidentified bodies in Wales, and elsewhere along the UK's western seaboard, are missing Irish people.
Here's a report in Irish media with more details:
Irishman missing for 36 years identified in Welsh grave
It remains unknown how or where Conor died exactly. He may have taken the ferry to Wales, then jumped or fallen overboard on the way. Or he may have drowned on the Irish coastline, then drifted all the way across.
Last week my grandmother, mum and some of her brothers took the ferry to Holyhead to visit the cemetery in Wales. They had a priest bless the grave and decided the spot was so beautiful they would leave the body there. They are all relieved to finally know where he ended up, surprised to have found out at all, astonished that he was all this time almost directly across the sea from their hometown on the Irish east coast, and sad that their father died (in 2015) before he learned what happened to his son.
Understandably, I didn't hear much about Conor when I was growing up. But today I learned that he wanted to be a fisherman. He had completed a training course but when he hit the high seas he discovered he got badly sea-sick. Instead he settled for working in customs at Dublin port, but tragically ended up 'lost at sea' all the same.
Of all my uncles, it seems that one of the younger brothers was especially affected by Conor's passing. He was just 13 at the time, but he apparently looked up to this older brother. That younger brother now sails the seas, taking people on whale-watching tours.
Rest in peace, Conor.