THE MYSTERY of a missing doctor who vanished in a Welsh national park has finally been solved twelve years later.
Psychiatrist Shayne Eves Colaco went for a walk in the Carneddau mountains in Eryri – also called Snowdonia – when he disappeared.
He drove from Stoke-on-Trent in the summer of 2012 and set off walking towards 3,209ft Pen yr Ole Wen.
But he didn’t return to his Fiat car and was never seen again.
Despite searches, cops couldn’t find him and he was declared dead six six later, despite his body remaining undiscovered.
Fast forward to January last year, when David Brookfield, 65, also vanished in the Welsh Carneddau mountains.
He WhatsApped his wife from the summit of Carnedd Llewelyn, but no one ever heard from him again.
For four months, searches were carried out to no avail.
But in May 2024, a blue jacket was sighted in the Ogwen Valley by a passing coastguard helicopter on a routine training exercise.
It is believed David had fallen in a gully and was seriously injured on his descent from the mountain.
While his body was recovered, mountain rescue made another change discovery.
They spotted another jacket further down the gully, that looked far older and seemed to have been there for some time.
Sgt Paul Terry of the North Wales Police drone unit recalled to North WalesLive:
“The jacket didn’t seem to fit with the picture of what we were investigating. It was an older jacket, one that seemed to have been there for some time and inside the pocket was a car key.
“Deep in the memory of this rescue team was Shayne Colaco, who had gone missing in the same area 12 years earlier.”
As the cops investigated further, they were “amazed” to find that the details matched up with the missing hiker.
So they resumed the search for Shayne in another bid to find him and bring peace to his family.
A drone pilot then noticed a piece of fabric under a bush in the gully.
Sgt Terry continued: “Quite incredibly, [he] realised that he had also discovered the remains of Shayne Colaco.
“What’s really so amazing about this story is that so many of the people involved in searching for David had also been involved in the searches 12 years before for Shayne.”
David and Shane were both experienced walkers who were well prepared, and Sgt Terry warned hikers that it’s important to understand the danger of the hills and weather.
