Olivia Newton-John death: Mystery of Patrick McDermott, one-time lover who vanished at sea

The mysterious fate of Olivia Newton-John’s on-off lover haunted the singer in her later years after he disappeared without trace – amid lurid claims he faked his own death.

Patrick McDermott, 48, went on an overnight fishing trip with 22 other people on June 30, 2005, but vanished before it returned to dry land without anyone noticing.

For almost two decades afterwards, he was rumoured to be in hiding in Mexico, on the run from crushing debts.

But repeated manhunts by police, media and private detectives have never been able to find any conclusive proof, despite constant reports of him being spotted.

‘I don’t think I will ever really be at peace with it,’ Newton-John admitted. 

‘I think there will always be a question mark.’

She hooked up with McDermott after her 1995 divorce from first husband Matt Lattanzi and began a nine-year on-off romance with the cameraman. 

Newton-John was on a promotional tour in Australia when McDermott disappeared and it was another week after the fishing trip until it was noticed he had gone.

Crew on his fishing boat had found the American’s car keys, passport and wallet on board the boat and his car was found parked at the San Pedro marina in Los Angeles.

But still no-one realised he was missing until he failed to appear at a family event on July 6, with police finally called in on July 11. 

By then though the trail had gone cold – and investigators turned up nothing.

McDermott had previously been briefly married and fathered a son, and a court had recently ordered him to pay $8000 in backdated child support.

He had filed for bankruptcy with debts of more than $30,000, prompting speculation he’d faked his death to escape and start anew.

A Coast Guard inquiry admitted they ‘did not find any evidence of criminal action, suicide, accident or hoax in the disappearance of McDermott.’

A three-year probe into the ‘Freedom’ fishing boat found it didn’t carry out any head counts on the day of the trip, causing McDermott’s disappearance to go unnoticed.

Both probes concluded McDermott was likely lost at sea during the night.

But eye witnesses continued to report seeing him around Mexico, where he was said to be living on a yacht off the coast of Sayulita and Acapulco.

TV companies repeatedly sent teams of undercover film crews and private detective to hunt for him and set up sophisticated online website traps to trace him.

One investigator John Nazarian insisted in 2016: ‘It’s rumoured he was with a German national. I spoke to people there. 

‘The girl he was travelling with was described as having a German accent.

‘To come up with the conclusion that he fell off the boat, and allegedly no-one saw him fall off the boat, is the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard in my life.’

All the manhunts proved fruitless though and McDermott continued to prove elusive.

Photographs of a man and a woman said to be McDermott and his new lover in Mexico were published in 2017 by New Idea magazine.

But the claims were undone weeks later when a Canadian couple came forward to say they were the people in the photograph.

Olivia Newton-John put the tragedy behind her to get on with life, meeting future husband John Easterling and marrying him at an Inca ritual in Peru in 2008.

But the mystery continued to stalk her in the years that followed, but she herself had resigned herself to the fact McDermott was most probably dead. 

‘He was lost at sea, and nobody really knows what happened,’ Newton-John told 60 Minutes in 2016.

‘It’s human to wonder. Because whenever you go through difficult times, there’s always those concerns.

‘But you know, those are the things in life you have to accept and let go. Of course questions always come up and that’s human.

‘I live on.’