Jack O’Sullivan: ‘My aim on this earth is to find my missing son’

Jack was 22 when he went missing in the early hours of Saturday 2 March.

He had been living at home with his parents while studying a law conversion course in Bristol, having graduated from Exeter University.

He had gone out for drinks and then on to a house party with people from his course, which he left shortly before 03:00 GMT.

Catherine has previously described how she messaged him around 01:00 to see if he was alright, as he was out with people he did not know very well, and to see if he wanted a lift home.

He messaged back to say he was fine and was going to get a taxi.

But when she woke up just after 05:00 and realised he was still not home, she “knew something was wrong”.

Since then, Jack’s family have been experiencing what missing persons expert, Charlie Hedges, calls an “ambiguous loss”.

“You cannot understand what’s happened. You can’t bring any sort of closure to it,” he says.

“So you’re left dangling, wondering, and the slightest thing that’s said makes you think, ‘Is that something that we need to respond to? Could that find our son or daughter or a loved one?’.

“Tragic and dreadful as it might be, if you lose someone in a fatal road accident or they die from some other means, at least you know what has happened. Unfortunately, with a missing person case, you don’t have that answer.”