EXCLUSIVE Private investigator hired to find Bryn Hargreaves accuses US police ... trends now
A private investigator hired to find missing former rugby league star Bryn Hargreaves today accused US police who failed to find his body for 14 months of ‘stonewalling’ his own search efforts.
Ex-St Helens player Bryn, 37, was found in late February in woods only yards from his apartment near Cheat Lake, West Virginia, and formally identified this week.
His remains were stumbled upon by hunters, yet the local Sheriff’s Department claimed that ‘extensive searches’ had been made of the same area when the ex-pat Briton went missing in January 2022.
As local people joined in criticism of the search effort on Monongalia County Sheriff's Office's Facebook page, Bryn’s mother Maria Andrews pointed out that it wasn’t until she and another son David flew to West Virginia and pleaded with them that any police searches occurred at all.
She posted: ‘They didn't carry out any searches till me and my son landed there from the UK, and then weeks later, when they finally agreed with us to do searches.’
The body of rugby league star Bryn Hargreaves was found more than a year after he vanished in the US
Bryn’s mother Maria Andrews pointed out that it wasn’t until she and another son David flew to West Virginia and pleaded with them that any police searches occurred at all
Ex-St Helens player Bryn, 37, was found in late February in woods only yards from his apartment near Cheat Lake, West Virginia, and formally identified this week
And Ken Cornell, a local private investigator who worked pro bono for Bryn’s family , said his repeated requests to the Sheriff’s Department for permission to organise his own searches – including the woodland where Bryn was subsequently found – were ‘stonewalled’ by lead Detective Sergeant Stephen Currie.
Mr Cornell, 57, told MailOnline in an exclusive interview: ‘I was not getting anywhere with detective Currie…every time I requested permission for a search I was getting stonewalled.’
The investigator with more than 20 years’ experience, whose firm spent more than 500 hours on the case, added: ‘If he had allowed me to deploy a search and rescue team I suggested from Tyler County, West Virginia, I believe with 90 per cent certainty that we would have found Bryn way before this.
Private investigator Ken Cornell, who was hired to find missing former rugby league star Bryn Hargreaves, has accused US police of
