Bill McDonald
speaker
119 appearances
5 recordings
2 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Bill McDonald’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I'm Bill McDonald, Detective Sergeant in the Dublin Cornwall Police. So I was a team leader, effectively.
We felt that in the next couple of days, there would be something that would get reported, which was an explanation. Sooner or later, somebody would get reported missing.
We were doing stuff within the media.
We'd released a photograph of the tattoo.
Obviously, within our police computer systems and databases, you can also search on tattoos.
We were talking to different shipping companies.
Well, we got passenger manifests for different boats and stuff.
I seem to recall there was a passenger reported missing from a cross-channel ferry. But over the coming days, sort of, actually, when you looked at the description, you looked at, you know, the person involved, none of it matched.
You would think distinctive tattoo, circumstances, media coverage, press, something would come out somewhere. But it just didn't. It was just, it was just unexplained.
An autopsy is looking at something which will give you more information. And you're looking for clues.
One thing that was obvious, though... The cause of death was recorded as drowning because of sea water detected in the lungs. So clearly, when the body entered the water, that person was breathing and they drowned. And that you would expect if somebody had fallen into the sea or if somebody was taking their own life or there was an accident at sea, drowning would be the natural cause.
And he said, look, Rolex keep records and you might be able to identify this person by contacting Rolex.
But when the son of a fisherman says something... Each Rolex watch has a, and we're talking obviously there's fake and there's real Rolexes, but a real Rolex will have a serial number which is recorded by Rolex. That's unique to that watch.
And just over a week later... Rolex were able to tell us that, yes, the watch had been serviced, it had a service history, and it had been serviced at a jeweler's called Fattorini's in Harrogate.
And sure enough, they had a record, a card in a filing system, which had the serial number of the Rolex watch, and then underneath had a name. R.J. Platt. And the Platt was P-L-A-T-T. R.J. Platt. Of course, it doesn't mean to say that just because the watch has got a service history for a man called Platt, that the person wearing the watch is the person called Platt.
But it certainly took us further forward than where we were at that particular time.
They matched. And by searching his service record, it confirmed the fact that they had a record of this tattoo.
So we're starting to get some real progress.
My brother lived in Hay-on-Wye. He welcomed me into his studio. He was a cartoonist.
And he confirmed that actually the stars were in the shape actually of a Canadian maple leaf. And he talked about his brother having dual nationality and holding a Canadian passport and the fact that he loved Canada.
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