Ireland’s oldest missing persons case finally solved after almost 60 years

Sources have confirmed that the case file for a man missing since the 1960s has finally been closed.

Noel Clarence Hardy, born in December 1936, vanished from Dublin on September 17, 1967 when he was just 30 years old. Noel was last seen in the Grangegorman area of north inner city Dublin.

His family in Ireland spent decades trying to trace their loved one, and discovered that he was living in the UK.

Using his own name until 1991, he then assumed an alias under which he lived until his death in December 1997.

Noel, who remained a bachelor, died of natural causes in Staffordshire, and no foul play was suspected in his death.

The case has now been closed and Noel’s family have been notified.

For families of missing persons, all hope can seem lost as the years go by.

However, the news of Hardy’s discovery can bring fresh hope to loved ones that they can be reunited with their missing family members even though many years have passed.

In February 2022, the family of Denis Walsh discovered that their missing son and brother had been found in 1996, just four weeks after he went missing on March 10th 1996.

The 23-year-old disappeared when he went out for a walk, his remains were found the following month on Inis Mór, Co Galway.

His remains were kept in a morgue for 18 years before he was buried in 2014.

Across Ireland, almost 30 bodies remain unidentified. A report published by the Department of Justice in 2022 revealed that there are 27 bodies in morgues and graveyards across Ireland that are unidentified.

The remains, 13 of which are partial, were found across the country in the past 70 years. Seven belong to men, three belong to women and the remaining 17 are undetermined.

It was the first time that figures relating to unidentified persons were published in Ireland.

One of those bodies belongs to the elusive Peter Bergmann, a man who was found deceased on Rosses Point beach in Sligo in June of 2009.

When Gardaí began an investigation to track down the man’s family to let them know he had died, they discovered that he had checked into a local hotel using a fake name and address. He still remains unidentified, and is buried in a HSE graveyard in Co. Sligo.

Another body included in the data was discovered to be that of a Donegal man named Paul McGinty, who had lay unidentified in a graveyard in Navan, Co. Meath for 30 years before getting his name back late last year.