Anthony FAHEY was last seen in Belconnen, ACT about 4.40pm
on 03/07/2013. It is believed that at this time he boarded a bus from
Canberra bound for Sydney. Mr FAHEY has not been seen or heard from since
this time and his current whereabouts are unknown.
From his family - Anthony (Tony) Fahey is still missing. Sadly there has
been absolutely no trace of him. Tony was last seen boarding a bus from Canberra
to Sydney on the afternoon of July 3rd 2013. He is 30 years old, about 6 foot in
height with brown hair and brown eyes. A year ago he was weighing in around
100-110kg with a beard. You will see Tony here with and without his beard for
your reference. It is presumed that he is missing because he wants to be,
however we are still uncertain of the exact reasons or circumstances around his
disappearance. In any case, he is a registered missing person and his family
wants to know that he is safe and well.
Please contact the local Police or call 1800 333 000 if you see Tony.
UPDATE January 2014 - Anthony's (Tony's) family are very worried about him
as it has now been 6 months since he boarded a a bus in Canberra for Sydney.
Tony still hasn't used his bank account and the Missing Persons Unit have not
been able to find any trace of him. The family was very hopeful Tony would
contact them over Christmas as they said he loved
this time of year when all family gathered. If you see Tony please ask him to
contact his family they really need to know he's safe.
This is Tony Fahey and a message from his very
concerned family -
Tony has not been seen since boarding a bus from Canberra to Sydney on the 3rd
of July 2013. He is 29 years old, about 6 foot and was last seen with long hair
and an awesome beard. The picture of Tony with his long hair is the more recent
photo and Tony is most likely to still have a beard
and long hair.
Tony may be seeking help clinically, or taking some time out to find himself in
his own way ie missing voluntarily. Nevertheless, his family is worried and
would dearly like to hear from him. Tony hasn't touched his bank account so he
might be trying to live by means without the need for cash. If you see him, will
you please plead with him to contact his family. You can also e mail me and I
can contact his family immediately.
Please contact local Police or 1800 333 000 if you see Tony. Thank you so very
much for sharing this.
Missing Murrumbateman man Anthony Fahey, 30, 'a big loveable character'
By Tegan Osborne
Updated
When the family of Murrumbateman man Anthony Fahey last saw him over a year ago,
he was heading out of town to clear his head.
What happened next is a mystery.
Anthony, 30, was dropped off at a bus stop in Belconnen by an aunty on
Wednesday, July 3 last year.
He told his aunt he was heading to the Jolimont Centre in the city, and from
there he was going to either Melbourne or Sydney - whichever bus came first.
Since then, Anthony's bank, email and social media accounts have not been
touched and he has not contacted anyone.
It has been ordeal for his family, but they still hope Tony's story will have a
happy ending.
In 2013, nearly 12,000 people were reported missing in NSW, and while most of
them were located quickly, Tony Fahey is one of the 36 who remain missing.
As part of NSW Missing Person's Week, police have renewed calls for information
on Tony's whereabouts and are asking anyone who might have seen or heard from
him to contact Crime Stoppers.
A family Christmas comes and goes
Tony Fahey is one of seven children - the fifth child in a loving family from
Murrumbateman, about 40 kilometres north of Canberra.
His mum Eileen describes her son as "a big loveable character".
"Anthony just loved being at home, loved his family, and we really, really miss
him," she said.
Ms Fahey said her son was battling a problem with alcohol and was "trying to
find his place in the world", but not contacting his family for such a long
period of time was completely out of character.
Tony had been working on and off in the construction industry in Canberra and
Sydney, and had a "lovely girlfriend".
At the time of his disappearance, he had just returned from a week in Perth, and
was living at home in Murrumbateman with his parents while looking for work.
"My first thought was that he's taken himself away to sort himself out, go to a
rehabilitation place, and that as soon as he got his act together he'd be home,"
Ms Fahey said.
"So for the first 12 weeks, although we were frantic looking for him, searching
and putting up posters... I really felt at the end of the day he would just come
home - and he didn't."
Tony's family hoped that he would re-appear later that year at Christmas, which
a time that he loved.
"I think that's what made Christmas really difficult for all of us... It was a
drawcard for him and, of course, he didn't come home. It was devastating," Ms
Fahey said.
Late last year, Ms Fahey and her husband gave DNA, after an unidentified body
matching Tony's general description was found in northern NSW.
To their relief, it was not a match.
Tony failed to contact siblings in Sydney
Ms Fahey said early police inquiries confirmed Tony purchased a bus ticket to
Sydney at the Jolimont Centre and that the ticket was used.
Buses from Canberra to Sydney often go via the Sydney International Airport, but
Customs found no record of Tony using his passport there.
We love him dearly, we miss him, we want him to come home. For
whatever reason he's gone, it makes no difference to us. We just
want to know that he's safe.
Eileen Fahey, Anthony's mother
Ms Fahey said Tony had brothers and sisters in Sydney who he would normally have
visited if he were in town.
She held out hope that perhaps he was living on the street.
"When we travelled to Sydney to check out the homeless shelters... we got
talking to quite a number of people who were there who were homeless," she said.
"They did say to us that you can survive in Sydney or big cities without money
if you want to."
Inspector Rod Post from the NSW Police Hume LAC said Tony had not used any,
bank, social media or phone accounts since he left Canberra.
He said there had been no further confirmed sightings of Tony.
"To my knowledge the last known sighting was boarding that bus in Belconnen," he
said.
Mother to son: 'We love you, the door is always open'
Ms Fahey said every day before she got out of bed, she said a prayer that today
would be the day Tony contacted her.
"We're just a normal family, we didn't see this coming, and we just don't know
what to do," she said.
Ms Fahey said the message from herself, her husband and from all his brothers
and sisters, was "we just want to know you're okay".
"We love you, the door is always open and we just want to know that you're
alright.
"We love him dearly, we miss him, we want him to come home. For whatever reason
he's gone, it makes no difference to us. We just want to know that he's safe."
Police have urged anyone who might have seen or heard from Tony to contact Crime
Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or via the online reporting page.
'It’s a bit like this ripple in the ocean': Police turn to Facebook to help find
missing persons
The Australian Federal Police has launched the National Missing
Persons Coordination Centre Facebook page in an effort to help
families find, or learn the fate, of their missing loved ones.
UPDATED
BY DAVID SHARAZ - SBS
Missing
person cases will be given new profiles and families of loved ones
given a community to engage with each other, after Australian
Federal Police launched a dedicated
Facebook page for the National Missing Persons Coordination
Centre.
The latest
research suggests more than 38,000 people are reported missing each
year, and more than 2000 people across the country are classified as
“long-term missing persons”, meaning they’ve been missing for three
months or longer.
Eileen and
Neil Fahey – whose son Anthony went missing on 3 July 2013 after
buying a bus ticket to Sydney from Canberra – believe the official
Facebook page will be a valuable tool for getting the message out.
“Our story will be up on this Facebook page and people will be able to read it.
They’ll be able to see his photo, they’ll be able to pass it and share it,” Mrs
Fahey said.
Anthony was dropped off at the local bus interchange in Canberra by his aunt on
Wednesday, 3 July 2013, and the bus manifest shows he did board for Sydney.
Since then Anthony has not sent a single email, his social media activity is
non-existent, and the bank account in his name has not been touched.
“In the beginning you don’t really realise you’re going to be in this for the
long-term but I love all my children and I wanted to do something straight
away,” Anthony’s mother said.
After contacting family in Sydney and Brisbane for Anthony’s whereabouts, Eileen
and Neil Fahey called the police to file a missing persons report.
In an effort to locate their 30-year-old son, the Salvation Army’s tracing
service was used, posters were put up and a media campaign launched.
“We’ve been to Sydney and walked the streets, we’ve talked to the homeless,
we’ve been to hospitals, we’ve been to rehabilitation centres, we’ve been to
wherever we think we’d be able to find Anthony,” Mrs Fahey said.
Nothing has worked but the Fahey’s are hopeful that the official National
Missing Persons Facebok page will prove successful.
“It’s a bit like this ripple in the ocean that we don’t know how far and wide it
will go but we hope that somewhere on that journey that someone will see
Anthony’s profile and his story and contact Crime Stoppers,” Mrs Fahey said.
The Justice Minister said the Facebook page is not to replace but instead
compliment family forums such as Leave a Light On and the Missing Persons
Advocacy Network.
“The more we can publicise individual cases then greater is the chance that they
can get a better result to know about the fate of their loved one,” Minister
Michael Keenan said.
'I won't give up until I know' Murrumbateman mum holds hope for missing son
Each year at Christmas the Faheys gather around the kitchen table in their
Murrumbateman home surrounded by bushland.
As her six adult children, three grandchildren and extended family tuck
into the enormous feast, Eileen Fahey constantly glances out the front
window hoping to see her son Anthony walking up the driveway.
Anthony Fahey has been missing since 2013, when he boarded a bus at
the Jolimont Centre bound for Sydney and was never heard from again.
Christmas was Anthony's favourite time of year, Mrs Fahey said, he
loved being with his siblings eating prawns and pizzas on Christmas
Eve, sitting around the fire playing cards, darts and having a good
laugh.
"I thought he'd be gone for a few months, would get his head right
and I was dead set he would come walking down that driveway for
Christmas," Mrs Fahey said.
"I was so shocked when he didn't.
"But I'll always remain hopeful until I have a reason not to be."
Sunday marks the start of Missing Persons Week. The Australian
Federal Police has launched a video that explores the theme of hope
and the impact on a family left behind when a person goes missing.
In the short clip a father and daughter are left stranded by the
side of the
road because their old car has broken down, when the child
complains about the car the girl's father explains they are
holding onto it in case her missing sister ever spots it and
knows it's them.
AFP deputy commissioner Neil Gaughan said the video was
inspired by the real impacts on families holding onto the
hope of their loved one returning.
Mrs Fahey said the video struck a chord with her as she had
purposefully left aspects of the family home untouched in
case Anthony returned.
However Mrs Fahey and her husband Neil are now faced with the
difficult decision of wanting to downsize from their large home and
perhaps move to a warmer climate in their retirement but are worried
what would happen if their son ever returned to the home he knew.
"It's a balance and it's all wrapped up in emotion," Mrs Fahey said.
"It's hard to make a clear decision with your head when you're so
used to making these decisions with your heart."
She also has concerns she may lose her memories of Anthony that are
so deeply connected to the family home.
"I can picture Anthony sitting on the end of the kitchen bench and
he'd come up with some harebrained scheme," she said.
"Will I lose those when we're away from here?"
But Mrs Fahey said she also understands the importance of moving
forward with life and taking care of herself and her family.
"I still have six kids and three grandkids, I still have to be there
for them as the
For the 30th year of National Missing Persons Week the AFP
is profiling 30 long time missing persons, deputy
commissioner Gaughan said.
“If you recognise any of the missing people profiled this
week, or indeed any of the 2600 long-term missing persons on
the public
register, please
contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000,” he said.
“You might just have a piece of information that could help bring
them home.”
With Anthony's case now suspended from an active search by the
police Mrs Fahey said the family needed the "community to be our
eyes and ears".
She said if Anthony didn't want to be with the family or wanted to
live a different life she was ok with that, but if she could get one
message to her son it would be a simple one.
"We love you. We miss you. We just want to know that you're ok.
Please contact us."
What it’s like to be the parent of a missing person
By Larissa
Waterson|
The disappearance of Anthony Fahey
Another Aussie parent who hopes that, one day, she’ll look out through her
kitchen window and see her son walking down the driveway, is Eileen Fahey.
Eileen’s son Anthony Fahey disappeared from their family home in
Murrumbateman, near the ACT border, on Wednesday July 3, 2013. He was 29.
“It’s not knowing that’s really, really difficult,” she says in an interview
on the TODAY
Show.
“Every day I look out my kitchen window which has a view of the driveway and
I just expect him to come walking down.”
Anthony, or ‘Tony’ as his mum calls him, had returned home to Murrumbateman
after moving to Perth to live with his girlfriend proved “too much” for him.
“He was very much into conspiracy theories, he was unsettled and I think
struggled to find his place in society,” Eileen says.
Voicing a need to “clear his head”, Tony asked to be dropped at a local bus
stop where he said he was going to “catch a bus to either Sydney or
Melbourne, whichever bus comes first.”
Tony bought a ticket for a 7pm Sydney-bound bus and has never been seen
since.
“In my heart, I initially thought, ‘He’s gone away, he needed to clear his
head, surely he’ll be home for Christmas, he loves Christmas.’”
“I never, ever thought that I would be in this situation."
Grieving
Eileen says, unlike the death of a loved one, when someone goes missing, the
cycle of grief is endless.
“With a normal cycle of grief -- you go through it and you come to some sort
of resolution. With ambiguous loss (when you lose something without
closure), you don’t come to a resolution -- you get so far in that grief
cycle and then it starts all over again.,” she says .
While she still hopes that one day Tony will show up at her front door,
Eileen says she has other members of her family, including six other
children and three grandchildren who need her.
“We have a lovely dam on our property and on Anthony’s birthday, on the
anniversary of his disappearance, and through Missing Persons Week (August 5
– 11), I go and sit at the dam, I have a little luxury of a cry, and then I
pull myself together and say ‘Okay, now I need to be there for the rest of
my family’”.
For anyone who fears their loved one has gone missing, Eileen urges them to
“act quickly”.
“I think the most important thing is to act quickly. A lot of people sit
back and think ‘I don’t want to jump on this too early’, ‘They’ll come home
tomorrow and they’ll think I’ve overreacted’”.
In Australia, contrary to social myth, there is no time limit on reporting a
missing person -- if you are concerned about someone’s disappearance, people
are urged to contact police.
“You need to call the police really quickly and you need to start tracking
the person’s movements,” Eileen says.
“Use social media and whatever else to create awareness.”
Missing persons week: family struggling to move house in hope of son
returning home
But now, half a decade after he was last seen, she's considering the
prospect of leaving behind the home they shared, and the memories its walls
hold.
"It's a fairly big house and we're looking to downsize," she says.
"Anthony knows where we are. He knows we're here.
Eileen hasn't seen her son since July 2013.
All she knows is he left their home in Murrumbateman, and was dropped off at
a bus stop in Belconnen by his aunt.
Police were able to determine he headed for Sydney, after telling family he
needed to get out of town and clear his head.
But in the five years since there's been no trace of Tony. His bank
accounts, email and social media haven't been accessed.
"My biggest fear is if I move from here, will I lose those memories?" she
says.
"I can still see him sitting at the end of the bench: 'Hey Mum, what about
this' and 'hey Mum, what about that?'
"Anthony might come walking down that driveway any day, any moment.
"I'd be devastated if he came here and we weren't here."
Families hold on for years
The daily anxiety and anguish for Eileen and her family is being highlighted
by the Australian Federal Police as part of missing persons week.
The usual stress and emotional strain of selling a home is amplified by the
ever-present uncertainty of whether Tony might come home.
There are 2,600 long-term missing people listed on the AFP's
missing persons register — and police say many of them have left
families stuck in limbo, unable to find closure.
"It's very difficult to explain what these families go through," Trish
Halligan from the AFP's National Missing Persons Co-ordination Centre said.
"These people suffer year in, year out.
"They find it very difficult to part with possessions, with their homes …
It's what to connects them to this loved one that's missing."
Still waiting
For the Faheys, family Christmas gatherings are particularly hard.
While once she would watch as Tony played darts and poker with his six
brothers and sisters, Elieen's gaze is now fixed outside.
"I really thought that he would come home for Christmas. There's no way that
he would miss out, with all that family excitement," she says.
Facing the prospect of selling, Eileen says she would rather see the home go
to somebody within the family, so they can greet Tony if he ever comes back.
In the intervening years grandparents have died and siblings married, but
Eileen retains hope Tony will one day return home.
"Whenever there's a crowd I'm always looking to see if I can see his face,"
she says.
"To me it was always he was just going to get his head together and come
home. We're still waiting.
"Still waiting."
Five years ago, Eileen's son boarded a bus to Sydney. He hasn't been seen
since.
They call it ambiguous loss. Grief that occurs without the closure of a
death, leaving a person in a perpetual state of not knowing.
It’s a heartache NSW mother Eileen Fahey lives with everyday.
Her son, Anthony (Tony to most), has been missing for more than five years;
no calls home, no emails, no money spent from his account, or flights taken.
Lost. Like more than 2600 other Australians currently on the long-term
missing persons register.
“When you bear children, part of your life blood or life spirit, whatever
you want to call it, part of you is
in your children. And when one of them is missing and you can’t reconcile
why, it’s very, very hard,” the mother of seven told Mamamia.
“I have nothing to say that he’s not here anymore. So until I can come to
that, then I need to cling onto hope that he is still alive. I’ll just have
to wait.”
Tony was 29 when he disappeared on Wednesday July 3, 2013.
He’d been working in construction, but was unemployed at the time, and had
recently moved back into his parents’ home in Murrumbateman, near the ACT
border. The previous month he’d been living in Perth with his girlfriend,
but according to Eileen, the move to WA proved “too much” for him, “a
strain”.
“He told [his girlfriend] that he needed to go home and sort himself out
before he could actually stay and be with her,” she said. “So he was a bit
unsettled.”
During a 2017 coronial inquest into his disappearance, Tony’s aunt, Margaret
Harries, gave evidence that when he visited her Canberra home the day he
vanished, he “seemed depressed, preoccupied, and wanted answers to things”,
namely religion and politics. That afternoon he told her, “I’m going to go
to the Jolimont Centre [Canberra’s main bus terminal] and catch a bus to
either Sydney or Melbourne, whichever bus comes first.”
Before he left, Margaret gave him a plastic bag filled with a cup of
two-minute noodles, a pair of socks, boxers and long pants, and urged him to
stay safe and to call.
Tony bought a ticket for a 7:00pm Sydney-bound bus, and the passenger
manifest shows his name was marked off. That is the last known trace of him.
In those early weeks and months, Eileen fought off the negative thoughts
that ran through her head each night as she tried to sleep; she told herself
that Tony was just clearing his head, that he would return at Christmas -
his favourite time of year.
He'd be back to help with the ham and turkey, to tuck into pudding, to play
poker and darts with his four brothers until the early hours of the morning.
But he didn't show.
"From the island bench in our kitchen I can look out the window and I can
see the driveway. Every Christmas standing at that bench, I've looked out,
expecting that I will see him walk down that driveway," she said. "And I'm
always shocked when he doesn't."
That expectation is part of the reason she and her husband are reluctant to
move house. Though they plan to retire in the coming years and hope to
downsize from their five-acre property, they're worried.
"How can I leave? The memories of the last 15 years are in this house. I
guess I'm frightened about I may lose those," she said. "And what happens if
Anthony comes home and there are strangers there? Those things really play
heavily on my mind."
There have been several sightings reported in past five years - all false.
Each time Eileen and her husband have steeled themselves, as they've been
handed CCTV footage and photographs of men resembling their son.
"You're trying not to build up too much hope. And as a matter of fact, we're
probably more critical, rather than positive we when we see or hear
something, because we are protecting ourselves," she said.
"You could drive yourself mad."
Perhaps the most difficult was when police took DNA from them after a torso
matching Tony's build was found in Queensland in 2013. For 12 weeks they
waited, until the negative result came through.
"I still believe there's hope that he could come home."
Almost as bad as the 'not knowing', Eileen said, is the feeling of
helplessness. She does her best to ease it by speaking publicly about Tony,
by following up with police, by answering every phone call, by searching.
Almost reflexively, she scans the faces of construction workers, the
homeless, even the people walking behind reporters on the nightly news. She
has trawled social media and the internet for clues, and even took a year
off work to dedicate herself to looking for her boy.
"A lot of people [with a missing loved one] feel guilty that they may not
have done enough," she said. "I don't want to find in 10 or 15 years that I
turn around and think that. I'd much rather be very active now."
Yet as time passes and the leads dwindle, the threads of what happened to
Tony become more difficult to pick up.
"I have noticed that in the very early days of talking and sharing about
Anthony I would say, 'when he comes home', then about six months ago I
started saying 'if'," Eileen said. "I don't know why. That's obviously some
sort of emotional thing inside... I don't know.
"I still believe there's hope that he could come home. But you know, as the
years go on that hope is much harder to keep going. I'm still out there, and
I'm determined with my head and I am absolutely determined in my heart that
I will keep going and I will keep searching and I will keep looking," she
said.
"I'm not that naive that I don't think I may at some point need to accept
that is dead, or maybe he just doesn't want to come home. So there are other
reasons, and I just need to be open to any of them. But whatever happens,
the most important thing for me is just to know."
Every now and then Eileen takes a moment, alone, to feel the weight of it
all.
"We have a little dam on our property, and I sit there and have a little
luxurious cry, for want of a better term. But then I sort of say to myself,
'Well OK. Now I need to pick myself up,'" she said. "I've got six other
children, I've got a loving husband and three grandchildren; I need to be
the best person I can be for them. So that helps me. That helps me to keep
going."
To her son, should he see or hear her message, or learn of her tireless
search, "I would tell him that I love him very much, I miss him terribly.
And to contact someone in the family. That's all we need. We just need to
know he's OK."
If you think you may have seen Tony or have any information about his
disappearance, please call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000. Any small piece
of information could help.
The mother of a man who went missing five years ago has told of how her life
has been left on pause since the day her son disappeared, afraid to change
her phone number or move house in case he tries to contact his family.
Anthony Fahey was 29 when he boarded a bus from Canberra to Sydney on July
3, 2013, and hasn’t been heard from since.
His mother Eileen Fahey thinks about her son every day, constantly wondering
where he is and if he is okay.
“I live in fear of losing my mobile number, because I know Anthony knows
that number,” Mrs Fahey told Yahoo7.
“We’re looking at moving, but how do we move away from a house where we have
15 years of memories of him?
“My fear is, if I leave that house will I lose that memory? I’ll not be able
to hear his voice anymore.”
‘Unusual’ disappearance
Tony, who would now be 34, boarded the bus to ‘get away’ for a few days, but
his bank account, credit cards, Medicare card and social media accounts have
not been used since he left.
“When Anthony first went missing, because he was 29 – a grown man, for the
first two or three days I didn’t really think anything of it,” Mrs Fahey
said.
“By the third day I thought, ‘this is unusual’.”
Mrs Fahey, her husband and Tony’s six siblings travelled to Sydney to look
for him; searching the city’s streets and homeless shelters to no avail.
“It’s unfathomable, you don’t ever expect to be in this situation,” she
said.
‘I was so sure he would walk down the driveway’
Tony, who worked in construction, was the third youngest of his siblings and
loved Christmas time with his family. In 2013, the year he went missing, his
mother was certain he would return home on Christmas Eve.
“We’ve missed him, a lot has happened in our family in five years. His
grandfather has passed away. His brother has gotten married and there are
two nephews he hasn’t met. And Christmases – Christmas is very special in
our house.
“I was just so sure that he would walk down the driveway on Christmas Eve. I
could’ve staked my life on it and I was just so shocked when he didn’t.”
Mrs Fahey said she tries to maintain her positivity and faith – made easier
by her “wonderful, supportive” husband – but found herself and her family
stuck in a constant cycle of grief.
“The thing that’s most difficult is that we just don’t know. I don’t know if
he’s alive or if he’s dead, I don’t know if he needs us or if he’s in
trouble, I just don’t know.
“There’s just a cycle of grief that you go through. There’s no resolution
and it just starts all over again. It just doesn’t get any better.”
The family have been shattered by several false sightings of Tony, who
stands at six-feet-tall, with brown hair, brown eyes and a beard.
But Mrs Fahey is grateful people are looking for her boy.
“I just take my hat off to those people, I’m just so thankful. It lets me
know that I’m not the only one looking.”
‘I’ll never give up’
This week – August 5 to 11 – is National Missing Persons Week. This year
marks the 30th anniversary of the event.
For Mrs Fahey, the week is one of the hardest times of the year, along with
her son’s birthday and the anniversary of his disappearance.
But she willingly takes every opportunity to speak about her son, in the
hopes that his story will reach the right person.
“From a mother of a long-term missing person, I would dearly love the
community to be my eyes and ears, to help me find him. I just need to find
out if he’s okay. I need to find out what’s happened.
“I’m not going to tell him off, I’m going to welcome him with open arms.
Just come home, just call.”
“I’ll never give up until I know.”
To mark the event’s 30th year,
the AFP is profiling 30 long-term missing people from around the country on
their Missing
Persons Facebook page.
AFP Deputy Commissioner Neil Gaughan said he hoped this year’s campaign
would give an insight into the critical role the public can play.
“It’s important that we raise awareness of this issue, including the reasons
why people go missing, the social and financial impacts, and how the
community can get involved.
“This might mean taking an interest and sharing our social media posts.
After all, the community is our eyes and ears in these cases, helping police
find the many thousands of people who go missing each year.”