Stevie Barry has been searching for her missing father for almost 30 years, exhausting every avenue from contacting police and Interpol, to approaching missing persons organisations
A devastated daughter has made an urgent appeal for help, saying “there must be someone who knows” the whereabouts of her father. Stevie Barry, 35, admits she’s frantic for her dad to meet his grandchildren “before it is too late.”
Andrew Barry, known as Andy, has been missing since 1997, with his daughter exhausting every avenue from contacting police and Interpol, to approaching missing persons organisations, old mates and ex-partners for any fragment of information.
One ray of hope is that police investigations suggest he was last heard from in 2012. SomersetLive reports that Stevie, from Weston-super-Mare, said her father wed again in the late 1990s before vanishing.
Stevie, whose dad disappeared when she was merely eight, explained: “We know that he was in rehab for a while, in Hope House, Weston-super-Mare and may have been in similar centres in Taunton and Cornwall.
“I’ve been trying to find where he is for years and years, speaking to his old friends, rehab centres where I was asking if they had forwarding addresses. Police learned that he registered at a Taunton job centre in around 2002, made a mental health counselling request in 2004 and was in Weston-super-Mare in 2012”, reports the Daily Record.
“But there’s nothing NHS-wise, he doesn’t appear to be registered with a doctor or has had any prescriptions. His friends have told me that he was quite the jack the lad, with the gift of the gab.
“They said he’s got a tattoo on his back of the face of an ex-wife. He also had a tattoo on his arm of skull, with a hat on it.
“His old friends said he said I was the ‘apple of his eye’, so it’s hard to understand why he would never get back in touch. I feel that if he knew I was looking for him, he would reach out, he would absolutely bend over backwards to get in touch.
“It’s always been a thing for me, finding out where he is. Sometimes I wish I could turn it off, but I can’t. There must be somebody out there who knows where he is, where he’s been, how he is.
“He’s going to be 63 this weekend and it breaks my heart that he is out there, not knowing that he’s missed and loved. I don’t even have any idea what he looks like now.
“My worry is he is homeless somewhere, living on the street, feeling like he can’t get in contact or shouldn’t. There’s no malice on my part – I’m looking for him out of love and hope and good intentions.
“I want to know he’s okay, that he’s well, that he knows he’s loved and missed. I’m 35 now and I just need that closure.
“He’s got four grandsons – the eldest is 17 the youngest is just one and he’s missing out on being a grandparent to them. I don’t want him to miss out any more time, whatever time he has left.”
If you have seen Andrew Barry or recognise him from these 1990s pictures, please contact Avon and Somerset Police, stating case number 5225215188..