Gary Tossell was nearing the end of his shift at RAF Brize Norton on June 18, 2019, when he received the phone call that would change his life. It was Gillian, his dad’s partner, calling to say that he had vanished into thin air while out for a holiday stroll on the Greek island of Zakynthos.
Gripped by fear – and a determination to bring his 78-year-old father home – Gary caught the next flight to Greece to join the painstaking search.
Five years later, there is still zero trace of John Tossell. He was last captured on CCTV cameras in a royal blue polo top and cargo shorts while walking along the pavement 15 minutes from his hotel, the Katerina Palace. He was carrying ten euros and a bottle of water.
In a strange and troubling trend, John is just one of a surprising number of seemingly healthy men aged in their 60s and 70s who have mysteriously vanished in the past 15 years while hiking on some of Greece’s most popular holiday islands.
Beloved TV doctor Michael Mosley went missing on the island of Symi. He was sadly found dead five days later having collapsed from the heat
CCTV footage shows Dr Mosley on a walk, carrying an umbrella in a bid to protect from the vicious heat
All but one disappeared in the month of June when, amid soaring temperatures, the sun is at its strongest and holiday-makers are at risk of heat exhaustion.
The dangers are growing increasingly clear. On Sunday, the body of a missing American man was found on a remote beach on the small Greek island of Mathraki near Corfu, three days after he had been reported missing.
On Saturday, the body of a 74-year-old man from the Netherlands was found on Samos lying in a ravine. He had last been seen six days earlier, walking in suffocating heat.
The British men who have vanished include David Wolstenhulme, 69, who went missing on June 25, 2021, while walking on the island of Serifos.
Meanwhile, Roger Bainbridge disappeared on September 30, 2013, while on holiday on Antipaxos, and Russell Ward, 76, was never seen again after he left his hotel on Tilos in June 2012.
Arthur Jones, 73, was found dead on August 6, 2014, slumped up against a tree – six weeks after he had gone missing while on a hike on the beautiful island of Crete.
Most recently, of course, TV diet guru and Mail columnist Michael Mosley, 67, vanished after going for a walk on Symi earlier this month.
After a five-day search, his body was found alongside a low wall at a beach resort only a few minutes from safety.
Greek investigators are said to be working on the assumption that Dr Mosley, who leaves behind his wife Clare and their four children, died of heat exhaustion after sitting down to rest on a rocky slope and then losing consciousness as temperatures reached a punishing 40C.
This week, the Mail revisited some of the unsolved cases and spoke to the loved ones of these missing men.
While no effort was spared to find Dr Mosley, some of these families are demanding an apology from the Greek authorities that they say were ‘unprofessional’ and gave up the searches too easily.
Speaking five years after the disappearance of his father John, aircraft engineer Gary Tossell, 40, said the ‘under-resourced’ authorities on Zakynthos had failed to conduct a thorough investigation.
‘The Greek search and rescue teams started the search by driving around the island with the blue lights flashing, but they never even got out of their cars,’ Gary told the Mail.
‘Initially they said there was a team of ‘cadaver dogs’ coming from Athens, but at the last minute, they told us they weren’t coming any more.
‘They flew a helicopter around the island for a couple of hours to search for Dad. But the helicopter was coming in really low and fast. I’m ex-Royal Air Force and I know you will never find someone flying like that.’
He claims that, adding to the family’s distress, authorities charged them 500 euros per hour for use of the helicopter.
‘The CCTV of my father – the last known footage of him alive – was found by the family, not the police or Greek search and rescue teams,’ says Gary.
John Tossell was on the third day of his holiday when he went out for a walk and did not return
Mr Tossell was last captured on CCTV footage strolling on the island of Zakynthos
‘Until we had done it, they hadn’t thought to check CCTV.’ Then, he says, ‘after five days of essentially milling about, the authorities gave up looking.’
Gary found the operation to be so unprofessional that he went to the police captain and asked him directly: ‘Do you think you’ve done enough to save my father?’
‘The police captain simply dropped his head and said ‘sorry’.
‘This entire ordeal has been so hard on the family – especially my sister,’ he continues. ‘It’s the daft things that still upset you when you least expect it – like you watch the TV and an advert for Greek yoghurt will pop up and it will trigger something.
‘All that we really want to know now – after all these years – is what really happened.’
So determined were Gary and his family to continue the search that they raised £7,000 to fly the Western Beacons Mountain Rescue team to Zakynthos shortly after the Greek authorities had given up the hunt.
The team continued to search for John for another ten days but failed to make headway.
The family are still urging anyone who went on holiday to Zakynthos in June 2019 to check their holiday pictures to see if John appears in the background.
When Michael Mosley vanished on June 5, Gary couldn’t help but notice the remarkable similarities between the two cases.
‘I can empathise with the Mosley family because what they went through for those five days was gut-wrenching.
David Wolstenhulme, 69, (pictured with wife Heide) went missing in June 2021, while walking on the island of Serifos
‘The only difference is that because Dr Mosley was a bit of a celebrity and there was significant media attention. There was far more pressure on the Greek authorities to use all the resources at their disposal.’
But even though the disappearance of Dr Mosley was an international news story, his body lay undiscovered for almost a week, just yards from a popular beach resort.
A search and rescue helicopter had circled above the scene on a previous day but failed to spot him, and it was the restaurant manager from Agia Marina, rather than the authorities, who made the discovery.
For Gary this is no surprise: ‘There have been so many cases of missing men on Greek islands that have been swept under the rug.’ He suggests the police on the islands are ill-equipped to cope, and that they are not given proper help.
‘They basically send out all new recruits from Athens to get experience on the islands – and it’s a holiday for them. They’re just totally out of their depth.’
Gary is now demanding a formal apology from the Zakynthos search and rescue authorities, who he believes gave up on his father and abandoned the Tossell family.
Meanwhile, Heide Wolstenhulme, wife of David Wolstenhulme, who went missing on the Greek island of Serifos on June 25, 2021, told the Daily Mail: ‘When I followed the tragedy of Michael Mosley’s disappearance I noticed very real similarities to Dave’s.
‘The difference in the intensity of the searches is striking as Michael’s was a high-profile case. When I reported Dave missing, there was no sense of urgency from the police officer. He was making notes on little post-its.’
Speaking for the first time in a decade, Iain Bainbridge, son of Roger Bainbridge, who went missing while on holiday in Greece 11 years ago, said he was deeply saddened to read about Michael Mosley’s disappearance.
Roger Bainbridge disappeared on September 30, 2013, while on holiday on Antipaxos
Iain, 50, a housing consultant from Kendal, said: ‘I wanted to contact Michael Mosley’s family to tell them I empathised with their situation. Not many people know what it’s like to have somebody go missing in those strange circumstances’.
He had made a day trip to the island from neighbouring Paxos, where he had been staying at his sister’s home. Roger was wearing walking shoes and carrying a rucksack, and he was last spotted on a hike by other walkers.
Greek search parties scoured the two square miles of the island but authorities failed to find any traces of the 67-year-old.
In October, Cumbria Police sent two officers to help the local search and rescue teams, but still nothing was found. ‘Various members of our family flew out to help the Greek search and rescue authorities look for him,’ explains Iain, ‘but they found nothing. No CCTV. No trace of him. No body. No credible theory. Nothing. All we have are questions.
‘It was deeply alarming and frustrating. My mum – who now has dementia and is in a care home – was deeply traumatised. I was desperately trying to reassure her but we couldn’t do anything.’
And in another case, when ex-British Army cadet trainer Arthur Jones, 73, set out for a walk on Crete on June 19, 2014, he too seemingly vanished into thin air.
Officers from North Wales flew to Greece to support an enormous land, sea and air search conducted by local teams.
After six long, distressing weeks, which included a #FindArthur Facebook campaign endorsed by the then prime minister David Cameron, the body of Arthur Jones was at last found beneath a tree in Crete.
Russell Ward, 76, was never seen again after he left his hotel on Tilos in June 2012
A rare moment of closure for a British family in their circumstances? Perhaps not.
At the inquest, Arthur’s son Jeffrey blasted the Greek police for ‘lying’ because they had promised that they had thoroughly searched the remote peninsula where Arthur was eventually found.
But they had completely missed his father and in the end his body was discovered not by police, but by a local salt farmer.
When contacted this week by the Mail about the missing men, Greek authorities ’emphatically denied’ claims they were slow to act and said any criticism of this nature is ‘wrong and ill-placed’.
Constantina Dimoglidou, spokesman for the Hellenic Police, said: ‘Any talk of the type concerning the case of Michael Mosley is erroneous.’ She argued that Dr Mosley was already dead by the time he had been reported as a missing person.
She further insisted that the search process had been swift since ‘authorities did not even wait for the bureaucratic paperwork to be finalised for the search to actually begin’.
The Greek authorities did not address the specific cases of the other British men who went missing, nor did they explain why it took so long to find Michael Mosley’s body.
They nonetheless urged any bereaved relatives who feel that missing persons investigations have been botched to get in touch so that they can ‘dispel any haunting thoughts’.
But such repeated tales of apparent incompetence have left the families of the missing with nothing except unanswered questions, unable to fully mourn their losses.
Some families have held funerals without bodies, while others have continued the search – hoping against hope for some kind of resolution to their suffering.
- For help, advice, support, or to pass on information about a missing person, contact Missing People on 116 000 or email [email protected].
- Additional reporting by Anthee Carassava
