'My dad went for a Sunday morning walk in 1987 - I never saw him again'
The family of a retired grandfather who went missing while on a Sunday walk in 1987 have opened up on the heartbreak and trauma of the weeks following his disappearance.
Phillip John Jones, 72, lived in Crynant in the Dulais Valley with his wife Ada when he went missing on a Sunday in November 1987, also leaving behind two daughters, Wendy and Gaynor. And now his family have opened up on the heart-breaking story of their father’s unexplained disappearance all those years ago.
“We got a phone call in the evening to say Phil had gone for his usual Sunday morning walk and had not come back," said David, 83, Gaynor’s husband and Phillip’s son-in-law. “We jumped straight in the car, drove to Crynant and got there at about 11pm. We knew where his walks were so we got a torch and we went out on various walks through the forestry but there was no sign of anything,” he added.
Gaynor visits the grave of her mother, Ada (John Myers)Gaynor, 81, a retired teacher and the only of Phillip’s immediate family still living, spoke to WalesOnline about the difficult experience. She still travels down to her hometown of Crynant to visit family members from her home in Long Ashton, Somerset - and hopes that putting her story out there will encourage someone to solve the mystery of the tragic disappearance.
A picture of the long-lost Phillip shown by Gaynor to WalesOnline showed the former miner smiling while looking into the distance, sitting on a picnic table near the same forest his family and the Crynant community spent hours searching for him after he was reported missing. Gaynor was emotional when talking about the weeks following her beloved father’s disappearance and remembering the trauma that came with it.
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Gaynor was teary when recalling the tragic period searching for her missing father (John Myers)"He would be just a skeleton now, wouldn't he, if he was found. But I would like it if somebody had anything to say. If we found him, that would be great, really," she said. A huge manhunt for Phillip at the time didn’t find a trace of the missing man.
The hunt included police, local miners and family members - particularly Gaynor's devoted husband David, who spent months searching for his father-in-law. Even the RAF got involved, searching the mountains of Crynant - but there was no luck.
"Everybody searched all day and nobody found a thing,” David recalled. “We walked the road from Crynant down to Aberdulais. We did all the verges and fields next to the road. Nothing at all. The official search lasted about three or four days everyday and then tailed off.
Phillip left behind a wife, daughters and grandchildren (John Myers)“I came down from Bristol every weekend for about three months. I walked the forest on my own and marked the area that I covered, putting them on a large scale map. After about three months, I worked out if I did it all my life, I would never cover the whole forest so I gave up.”
Over the next decades there was still no luck. Phillip’s granddaughter, Lynne, who was 17 at the time he disappeared, said: "He was a wonderful, warm, jolly grandpa and the life and soul of the party. I used to spend a lot of time down here in the holidays and we used to go on a lot of walks up the forestry and swimming in the pools.”
"He basically just vanished without a trace," the 53-year-old added. "It was hideous. It was such a strange thing to happen. People don't just disappear into thin air but that's what he did. We just want to know what happened."
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