Is Olivia Newton-John's boyfriend alive?

When Olivia Newton John’s long-time boyfriend went missing after a fishing expedition, Australian journalist Nick Papps started digging.

Nick Papps, Australian journalist: We got some very, very strong suspicions about what happened.

Neither he nor the operator of the marina bought the idea that Patrick McDermott fell overboard and drowned.

And as evidence, they both pointed to the same thing—

Frank Liversedge, marina manager: You have the numbers. You have what they bought.

McDermott’s galley tab. It had been checked off as paid  for a drink  and two hot dogs, noted by the abbreviation “H.D.”

Papps: The tab’s an interesting point because the tab’s paid about an hour before the boat comes in.

Liversedge: And from that point back to this dock, it’s almost a million to one odds that a guy could fall overboard, jump overboard, be pushed overboard, without half of the boat seeing it.

Keith Morrison, Dateline correspondent: Because everybody’s up on deck—

Liversedge: Everybody’s up on deck right outside the back doors to the galley. And the boat’s going forward. Anyone fell overboard, they would become visible.

But why would McDermott want to vanish in thin air, devastating his family, his friends and Olivia Newton-John?

Well maybe, according to Nick Papps, it was about the money.  Or, more accurately, the lack of it.

Appearances, apparently, are not always what they seem.

Patrick McDermott was not exactly a successful Hollywood lighting technician after all.

Papps: You gotta understand, his life was going very, very badly. This is a man who’s making no money. His job as a lighting tech was going nowhere. He’s got debts. Only one thing to keep him here is his son.

Keith Morrison: That’s a pretty powerful incentive to stay. Probably the most important person in his life. To abandon him, to leave the country, to leave him potentially penniless. What kind of a man would do such a thing?

Papps: A man that’s clearly not very happy.

According to court records, McDermott filed for bankruptcy in 2000. He still owed child support payments in 2005.

Elaine Lampert, Patrick McDermott’s friend (MSNBC interview): He was happy go lucky, playing tennis.

Yet this friend of McDermott’s says he showed no sign of depression. And she insisted, talking to Dan Abrams of MSNBC, that Patrick was far too devoted a father to ever abandon his son.

Lampert: He seemed fine. He was happy. He’s a good tennis player, he’s a wonderful father, and nobody can believe he just disappeared.

And then she spoke from the heart, an on-air plea, just in case he was out there, alive ... 

Lampert: “Your family misses you. Olivia misses you. All your tennis friends are worried about you. You have to call home.”

His friend’s public appeal turned out to be unusual for this case... a case which simply didn’t follow the normal script, the one that says more publicity can mean more leads and, one would hope, more answers.

Papps: Now normally when someone goes missing, you try and do everything you can to get people to say, “Yeah, I’ve seen him.” or “Have you seen this person?” All that sort of stuff.

Olivia was in Australia on business when McDermott went missing, but Papps’s journalistic antenna went up after it took more than seven weeks -- 52 days—before she said anything publicly about the man she dated for almost a decade, a man she called “my treasured friend.”

Papps: We all feel for her. But why doesn’t she use her celebrity to try and find this guy?

In her first comment in August, 2005, Olivia said: “Out of respect for his family, I have chosen not to make any public statements until now. For those of us who know and love him, it has been a truly heartbreaking experience and we’ve chosen to deal with it privately.”

Then, says Papps, tongues began wagging. There were questions about their relationship before he went missing.

Morrison: You heard reports that maybe they weren’t so close anymore.

Papps: There were reports that came to surface that maybe, maybe they’d broken up in the weeks before he disappears.

Dateline hoped to get Olivia Newton-John’s views on all this, but our interview requests were declined.

And so the story seemed to hit a dead end… another unsolved missing-person’s case with many more questions than answers.

And then? Well, something very strange.

Morrison: It might have ended there, but for what?

Papps: I got a tip off that McDermott had been seen in Mexico on the Baja Peninsula.

MORE FROM DATELINE

Dateline Section Front

NBC's People of the Year: Read the interviews The Night Mary Jane Disappeared The Friday the 13th Mystery Mystery at Lost Dog Road Slideshow: Photos in the Bob Duke case When The Smoke Clears   Sneak peek: When The Smoke Clears Slideshow: The Christie Fleming murder Transcript: Dan Brown and Secrets Of The Lost Symbol Through The Pouring Rain Dateline Section Front   Add Dateline headlines to your news reader: