‘How does someone just disappear without a trace?’: Desperate hunt for Brit grandmother, 75, last seen two weeks ago on Greek island as family admits hopes of finding her alive are ‘diminishing by the day’
- Susan disappeared without a trace on Telendos island in Greece on 30 April
- To report information, contact the British Vice Consulate at +30 22410 22005
The daughter of a 75-year-old who went missing on a Greek island more than two weeks ago says hopes of finding her alive are ‘diminishing by the day’.
Susan Hart went missing on Sunday 30 April after taking a ferry from Kalymnos to the remote island of Telendos with her husband, Ed.
She planned to wait at the front of the island while her partner went off rock climbing with a friend. When they returned, she had disappeared without a trace.
For more than two weeks, the family from Bath have been joined by officials and volunteers in an extensive search of the island.
Speaking to The Mirror, Susan’s daughter Bethan Blackwell said: ‘How does someone just disappear without a trace? The hopes of finding her alive are diminishing by the day and my sisters and I do not know what to do next.’
Susan Hart, 75, went missing after taking a ferry to the island of Kalymnos on 30 April 2023
Kalymnos is an island in the Aegean Sea, to the east of Greece and to the west of Anatolia
Susan Hart was a former employee of the World Health Organisation.
She lives with her husband, Ed, in his native Switzerland.
According to The Mirror, the couple had been visiting the larger island of Kalymnos for around the last eight years.
Telendos is a smaller island about 0.6 miles (1 kilometre) off the coast of Kalymnos, and an administrative part of the larger body.
After making the ten-minute ferry trip from Kalymnos, Susan Hart planned to read a while before heading over to a local restaurant while her husband went climbing.
The Sun reported that she decided to sit out due to health problems.
But when Ed returned, Susan had vanished – and nobody in the restaurant had seen her.
Bethan and her sisters Ella, 43, from London, and Ruth, 45, who was in Australia, have kept up the search for her mother since her mysterious disappearance.
Susan’s husband paid privately for search and rescue dogs to join the search after local police failed to make arrangements after eight days of looking.
Ruth wrote on Facebook on Saturday: ‘Someone, somewhere must have seen something. People don’t just vanish with no trace in such a small community.
‘Mum has dementia and is very vulnerable. We need to find her. Please help us.’
Bethan also said she worries that her mother was suffering from memory loss before her disappearance, though said she had not had a formal dementia diagnosis.
After battling for access to CCTV footage of Susan walking away from the restaurant, the family is now desperately trying to access video from the other side.
They say footage from behind the restaurant might help ‘settle something playing on our minds’, that Susan took the ferry back to Kalymnos.
Bethan disputed previous reports that Susan had been found dead at the bottom of a cliff.
Photo shows the monastery of St. Sava above Kalymnos town in Dodecanese, Greece
A flyer shared by the family described Susan as having short dyed brown hair and blue eyes.
She was said to be wearing a brown hat, grey Bermuda shorts, a light brown cardigan, a grey short-sleeved top, grey hiking boots, a grey sweatshirt and her wedding ring on the day she went missing.
Susan is mother to three and grandmother to four children.
Anybody with information can contact the Greek Silver Alert Service at SOS 1065 or the British Vice Consulate at +30 22410 22005.
