We knew Jimmy ran away’

James ‘Jimmy’ Malachy O’Neill was just 16 years old when he vanished from his home at 17 Leamy St, Waterford, on December 15, 1947. He will be missing 77 years next week.

The 16-year-old had worked in a local shipping company and it is believed he stowed away on one of their ships.

His disappearance tore through his family, leaving his father Jim dying of a broken heart and his distraught mother Bridie repeatedly calling out his name on her deathbed.

Frank O’Neill, who was the youngest of the couple’s seven children, took up the baton and has campaigned to find information on what really happened to his brother for the past 60 years.

Now, in an emotional interview with the Irish Examiner, he has revealed for the first time his belief that intimidation by a local detective forced his brother to flee. And that fear of this man stopped him from ever returning. He is appealing to Garda Commissioner Drew Harris to open an investigation into the case.

“My family was destroyed over Jimmy” said Frank, who was just four years old when his brother ran away.

“For 42 years, I’ve never missed Mass because it is prayers that have helped me in this very lonely road to find my brother”.

“I know most of what happened to my brother,” he said. “But I still don’t know where he is now, dead, or alive, probably dead but you just don’t know.

Jimmy O’Neill. His brother Frank now says a detective garda was looking for Jimmy after a postal order went missing from the shipping office where he worked, causing the boy to flee Waterford. Picture: Brian Lawless/PA  

“The truth is my lovely brother was run out of the country by one bad detective in Waterford at the time who really had it in for him.

“Jimmy saw no way out and ran and he never ever came back and that same garda tormented my family for years, until he died.

“He persecuted my poor mother. We fought a toxic battle all our life, carrying enormous inner sorrow,” Frank says.

So why break his silence and detail his belief that a garda is to blame after all this time? “I’ve seen some gardaí get away with abusing people before the courts in recent years and it’s made me think of him, the detective who tormented my brother and family and I just want it all out there now.”

Frank said his brother Jimmy has been accused of stealing a postal order in Waterford just days before his disappearance.

Frank O’Neill in Dunmore East, Co Waterford this week: ‘The truth is my lovely brother was run out of the country by one bad detective in Waterford at the time who really had it in for him.’ Picture: Patrick Browne

He was never arrested by gardaí, or formally questioned over the matter. Frank has asked to see any garda file or record on his brother or details of the allegation against him.

“The garda station at the time in Waterford was called Adelphi Quay, there is now a new garda station in Ballybricken,” he said.

“I’ve been told by gardaí they have nothing like that on my brother.

“I think the detective just took a disliking to him and that was it. Back then you didn’t open your mouth.

“That man, the detective, when you saw him, you were fearful of him.”

Frank said they were “just a very inoffensive family”.

“But he kept coming at us, I don’t know if he was tormenting Jimmy before an incident with a postal order, but he tormented us after Jimmy ran.

“He used to threaten my mother. He would say to her ‘I know you know where Jimmy is’ and she was so frightened of him.

Frank O’Neill, his sister Nancy, mum Bridget ‘Bridie’ and brother Jack. Frank says: ‘I used to go down the town with my mother. People would be stopping to ask her if there was ‘any news on the young fella’ and she would be crying. The woman next door to our house, she said she would wake up at night listening to my mother crying.’ Picture: Patrick Browne

“He would come to the door and stick his foot in it. He did it one day when my older brother Jack answered, and Jack told him to get his foot out of the door, or else.

“He had told Jack he was looking for Jimmy because a postal order went missing from the office in the local shipping company where he worked.”

Frank says he doesn’t know what was the value of the missing postal order, but Jimmy didn’t want to be treated like a robber.

“He stood no chance of going up against the gardaí, so he ran. That’s the way it was. It leaves you breathless.

“My sister Nancy emigrated to England and then America because of that detective coming to the house and she must have said ‘I don’t need that’. The same applied to Jack. He was in Mullingar, which was miles away then, but I had to stay. I couldn’t leave a sinking ship.”

The note from Jimmy 

Frank said he was in his 20s when he discovered a note that Jimmy had posted to his mother after he left.

“My mother had a pot, in our tiny hall in Leamy St. I found this piece of paper one day and it was from Jimmy.”

The Irish Examiner has seen the note, written in pencil and now faded. It reads:

Mama don’t keep my dinner hot; I’ve drowned myself.

Jimmy

Also tell Mr Jones [Jimmy’s former boss] to get a new messenger,

I am not a robber.

I don’t want to disgrace my family being treated like that. 

Frank said: “I don’t know where he wrote the note from. But I put it away and I never asked my mother about it, I didn’t want to upset her, she was grieving enough.

“I didn’t have the envelope or stamp, which would be helpful today.

“I asked Jack about it years later and he said Jimmy had posted it to our mother.”

‘Dear mama…’ The note Jimmy O’Neill wrote to his mother after he apparently fled Waterford at the age of 16. Picture: Patrick Browne

Children going missing was a rare event, and Jimmy was the “talk of Waterford” for years, Frank says.

“I used to go down the town with my mother,” said Frank. “People would be stopping to ask her if ‘there was any news on the young fella’ and she would be crying. The woman next door to our house, she said she would wake up at night listening to my mother crying.

“My sister Nancy told me that she went to Midnight Mass with our father the first Christmas he was gone, and she said, ‘Frank you’d want to see the tears coming out of dad’s eyes, they were like hailstones’ they kept coming.”

He said he can’t fully explain the hurt that that garda caused his family.

“Also Jimmy hurt us by never coming back, but he must have been terrified.”

Frank’s father, Jim, was a railway driver and was stationed in Kilkenny and Rosslare, while his brother Jack was in Mullingar. Frank’s mother Bridie was often home alone for long periods of time as a result.

“She would be in an awful state,” said Frank. “It was a heavy burden for her. It was a house full of sadness.”

In April this year, Mr O’Neill wrote to Garda Commissioner Drew Harris to ask for an investigation into his brother’s disappearance.

“I have told Commissioner Drew Harris everything, he appointed someone to speak to me and that was in October. I never heard anything again.

“I remember one female garda saying to me over the years ‘oh, your brother was a robber and had to leave’ and that really stuck with me. My brother was never convicted of anything, and I asked about a file or a record on this and there is none

“He was run out of this country, and he didn’t come back,” continued Frank.

“He must have been terrified, and I don’t know if he stole the money or not, I don’t even know how much it was for, but the letter to my poor mother he wrote was awful to read. It was a house full of sadness.”

For decades, Frank O’Neill, who never married or had children, dedicated his life to caring for his heartbroken parents and siblings while campaigning for his missing brother. After he retired from Waterford Crystal, he continued the search.

Frank O’Neill and his sister Nancy, who died in 2015. ‘Nancy told me that she went to Midnight Mass with our father the first Christmas he was gone, and she said, ‘Frank you’d want to see the tears coming out of dad’s eyes. They were like hailstones.’ Picture: Patrick Browne

“But I feel extremely let down now, because when I did go to the gardaí in April this year about this, I met with an inspector in October, and nothing ever happened. So I have decided to speak out now and let people know, including all of those who tried to help me, what really happened. We always knew he ran away.

“Well now my family secret is out. I was always in fear of saying it. I still felt frightened to speak out.”

Jack O’Neill died in 2012, while Frank’s sister Nancy passed away in 2015,

I was very close to Nancy. When we were talking, we used to say ‘why did Jimmy not stay and stand his ground?’ But then how could a young fella of 16 stand his ground? 

“The garda would want you to open your mouth and the wrong thing would come out.”

Investigations into the disappearance of Jimmy have continued over the years but Frank stresses he has carried out most of the work himself.

Jimmy could be in Liverpool or Canada

A ship’s manifest surfaced in the past decade that showed a possible match to Jimmy onboard a vessel to Liverpool.

In the past year, Frank has worked with genealogists in Liverpool who believe they have found a match for Jimmy who married and had at least one child.

“It appears Jimmy got married when he went to Liverpool and changed his name. We believe we have a match, but nothing is 100%.

Frank O’Neill with his treasured photo of his brother Jimmy at the Missing Persons Day event in Croke Park on Wednesday. Picture: Sam Boal/Collins

“It looks like he then felt the gardaí were following up on him — I am sure they would have known he had gone to Liverpool as it was the obvious place to run to, with a large Irish community and someone would have helped him.

“I believe from our research and working with the parish records in Liverpool that Jimmy felt the law in Ireland was coming after him, that that one garda found out where he was, and he ran again.

“We have a possible match in Canada of a man fitting Jimmy’s description dying alone in Canada but we are not sure that it is definitely Jimmy but that’s as close as we’ve gotten so far.

“So, sadly, the search continues.”

The garda press office did not respond when asked to comment.