'My son went to a party and never came home - someone knows something'

Tortured by unanswered questions, every day of the last year has brought more pain for Catherine O’Sullivan.

Her youngest son, Jack O’Sullivan, has been missing for exactly 12 months, since leaving a house party he had gone to in Bristol with friends. He was seen later on CCTV in the early hours of March 2024, trying to flag down a taxi back to the home he shared with his mum and dad Alan O’Sullivan in Flax Bourton, 10 miles outside the city.

But he never arrived. And his parents and brother Ben, 28, still have no answers. “Every day is hell,” says Catherine. “We have no evidence to suggest Jack is no longer with us and no information to say where he is. I'm stuck on March 2 2024. It’s hard to explain how we are feeling. The world stops - and it only gets more painful, not less.”

Twenty two when he disappeared, Jack was happy to be back in Bristol after studying history at Exeter University and was excited about starting a law placement. That last night, she sent him a text at 1.52am asking if he wanted a lift home from the party near the city centre and he’d replied that he’d catch a cab.

Instinctively knowing something was wrong when he failed to come back, she alerted the police. They spotted Jack on CCTV walking near The Cumberland Basin - a stretch of water near Bristol Harbour - so focussed their efforts there, telling the family he had likely fallen in - knowing that 85% of men who go missing near water after a night out, do just that. But, without a body, the O’Sullivan family cannot accept this.

“I’m convinced he never fell into the water because the police never found anything,” says Catherine. “They haven’t located his phone or found anything that belonged to him. They focussed all their attention on this theory and were slow to follow up other lines of inquiry.”

Catherine and a team of private detectives have now devoted endless hours to searching for Jack, who would now be 23 - uncovering new CCTV footage which appeared to show him walking away from the water and back towards the city centre at 3.38am. This showed him after the police’s last sighting of him at 3.13am. The mum has also seen footage showing the area was busy with cars and people, despite the early hour.

“Someone knows something,” she insists. “I’ve studied the CCTV and even at 3.40am there are vehicles travelling past him and people walking around. Bristol is quite a lively place all through the night - it’s not a remote area where nothing is happening. I can't understand how one single person has not seen anything - even if we are going down the police’s narrative of him falling in the water. There are people walking at the side of the water. Wouldn’t they have seen something? It just seems incomprehensible for him to completely vanish without a trace.”

Freezing cold that day, most of Bristol woke up to a blanket of snow, which disrupted traffic on the roads before it was washed away by rain around 10am. Since then, the seasons have passed without any clues of what has happened to Jack.

“I still firmly believe he got into a car because he was trying to flag down a taxi - and his last message to us said he was getting a cab home,” Catherine says. “In my heart I have to believe we’ll find him. I don't know what mother would write their child off without evidence to prove it. I’m not giving up yet.”

Last month, the O’Sullivans received a call from the police saying a body washed up on a South Wales beach. “I was so distressed that I could barely hold the phone,” Catherine remembers. “From the information the police gave us, we really did think it was Jack. The description fitted - he was a similar height and age. But they said they could not be conclusive until DNA analysis came back. We found out after a few days the process hadn’t even been started - and it took six days to get the confirmation that it wasn’t him. That was the worst six days of our lives.”

The O’Sullivans are haunted by the night a year ago that changed their family's life forever. But Assistant Chief Constable for Avon & Somerset Police Joanne Hall is keen for the public to look back at that night again - as things which didn’t appear significant at the time may look different now. “Do you remember what you were doing that cold, snowy day in March 2024?” she asks “You may recall seeing something which, on the surface, seemed unimportant, but may be an important piece of information for us to know. Do you remember seeing anything on your journey, whether you were walking in the area or travelling on the roads.

“Our investigation has been extensive, with resources utilised from more than 30 different teams and organisations, including support from colleagues within the fire service, HM Coastguard and the National Police Air Service (NPAS). This includes seeking independent advice, support and guidance from experts at the National Crime Agency, an experienced Police Search Advisor from a neighbouring force and an independent oceanographer.

“We have kept an open mind throughout this investigation and regularly review our various hypotheses around Jack’s disappearance. We ask you again to please, cast your mind back to this time last year and think about any details which may help us.”

Catherine says the family’s agony is intensified by the fact that dozens of people have been reported missing and found during the last 12 months. And she fears that the police were too fixated on their water theory to examine all avenues. “The police told us they sent letters out to 83 vehicle drivers,” she says. “But the problem is that they missed the window of opportunity.

“People have contacted me and said ‘I was driving in that area and I have a dashcam but unfortunately it was overwritten because, by the time I was notified by the police, it had gone past 60 days’. It’s so awful hearing that. It just makes you think ‘what is going on?’...I feel as though I’m watching this nightmare on TV but sadly this is our life."

Chantal Korcz, of the Missing People charity, which is working with the family, says: “For a mother, a parent, or anyone who loves them, every moment feels like an eternity. As time passes, the pain deepens, knowing that so many others have gone missing and been found while you are still left without answers. That sense of helplessness can be overwhelming, but at Missing People, we are here to offer support, hope, and a lifeline for families desperately searching for their loved ones."

One theory is that Jack could have been concussed after falling down the stairs at the house party before he left to get a taxi home. While he seemed completely fine, as a school matron, Catherine has experience of boys seeming completely normal after a knock to the head, only to become confused some time later.

“There is a £20,000 reward but, surely, if that was going to convince someone to come forward it would have done its job by now,” she says. We can’t give up. We just need to know something. Please.”