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Peering through the curtains to see smiling families bringing their Christmas trees home overwhelms Catherine O’Sullivan. It is an inescapable reminder her own family is still missing a vital piece.
Her youngest son Jack’s last Christmas present, a brand new coat, hangs up in his untouched bedroom having only been worn three times before he vanished after a night out in Bristol on 2 March this year.
“We have always been quite a small, really tight, family unit but we have lost a limb,” she tells The Independent, some 9 months after the 23 year-old’s disappearance. “We are not celebrating it at all. We are aiming to be away from our home because we just need to take ourselves away from this environment.”
“Jack is always really appreciative, even something small seems a massive deal for him,” she says of her son, with a smile.
”Even though he was 22 last year he is like a big kid I still get him a stocking. Usually, we would go to the chapel on Christmas Eve and things like that but it doesn’t feel like Christmas at all.
“We are just going to be there for each other the three of us. Just looking out of the windows and seeing other people put up their decorations. It’s tough but we have to push through it.”
Jack was last seen leaving a house party in the area of the city’s Brunel Way at around 3.15am. Despite widespread local search efforts on land and air, involving mounted police, dogs, drones and teams of volunteers, there is still no sign of him.
Ms O’Sullivan herself has been on her knees, cutting up her hands through brambles as she desperately looks for any sign of her lost boy.
But she says she has lost faith in Avon and Somerset police, claiming they have not taken potential clues or witnesses seriously enough. For its part, the local force says it is doing everything it can to find her son.
In one incident, a drone operator who joined the hunt thought he had found a human shape in shrubs. Ms O’Sullivan says the police didn’t respond to the images sent to them. Eventually, on the fourth email, she says they thanked her for the information but said they wouldn’t be going to check the shrubs because it was outside of their search parameters.
“On that basis we are never going to find Jack,” she says, frustrated. “Because if we get any information that doesn’t fit their narrative they will not follow it up. Even if it’s not Jack it could be someone else just lying there.
“They think Jack could have run down the hill and at the bottom of it he tumbled into a lock. But it’s impossible. You have to cross six lanes of traffic and fall through barriers that are waist-height.
“It’s exhausting and devastating in equal measure. I have been in contact with families who have been through the exactly same thing.”
Friends of the family have launched their own website in a bid to find Jack, and continue to put up missing posters of the student in the area he vanished.
His mother, turned detective, filters out all the leads: “We get mystics, psychics, people with visions… I’m not dismissing these people – I’m really appreciative – but I don’t want to waste people’s time.
“We are doing everything we can with our limited resources and volunteers. There is no hope in the police finding my son.”
An Avon and Somerset Police spokesman said the force “remains open-minded” about what happened to the still missing student.
“Since Jack disappeared, we’ve received more than 130 calls in our contact centre with information, as well as receiving weekly updates from the family’s representatives.
“On several occasions, we’ve received a single-call report where someone who looks like Jack has been seen elsewhere in the country.
“Officers will use a probability scale to make a proportionate judgement about the information provided based on the information and evidence available. Our priority remains focussed on finding out what happened to Jack and giving his family the answers they desperately need.”
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