Is Olivia Newton-John's boyfriend alive?

Tourists flock to the shores of Baja California for its sand, surf and sun.  It’s a great place to hang out or hide out, if you’re so inclined.

Nick Papps, Australian journalist: There’s a lot of people down there that are there for a reason. They want to escape the past. They don’t want to be bothered with anyone.

The Naja peninsula is something of a haven for ex-patriate Americans with a yen to get away. Could Olivia Newton-John’s boyfriend, Patrick McDermott, be one of them?

Australian newspaperman Nick Papps believes he is—that McDermott, who was declared missing in July 2005, ran down here to escape his child-custody debts in Los Angeles and try to start a new life.

Papps: If you got nothing here for ya, what’s the point of staying here? So where do you go? You hop in a car, you drive through Mexico, where no one checks your passport. And you go to the Baja Peninsula. Which is known as a sunny place for shady people.

This spring, Papps got a tip that Patrick McDermott had been spotted in southern Baja. And so, armed with his wits and a photo of McDermott, Papps went big-game hunting.

MSNBC TV Patrick McDermott

Keith Morrison, Dateline correspondent: What would you want to say to him if you found him?

Papps: “Patrick McDermott I presume?” Would be one. (laughs)

Papps claimed to have found six people who said they saw McDermott in the resort town of Cabo San Lucas and in the nearby artist’s community of Todos Santos.

Papps: I got people saying, “Yeah, I’ve seen him. This is what he was wearing. This is who he was with. This is the car he was driving.”

Could Papps’s spotters be right?

In August, Dateline decided to travel to Baja and find out. And, sure enough, we also found people who claim they’ve been around Patrick McDermott.

We showed Mcdermott’s photo to this man, the manager of a restaurant in Cabo San Lucas. He said he saw him drinking a beer.

Ismael, bar manager: I am absolutely positive. Truthfully, there aren’t many people who could look like this man.

Another bartender, who works in the town of El Pescadero, even remembered the chair where McDermott supposedly sat.

But one man’s claimed encounter with Patrick Mcdermott was unlike any reported so far.

Eduardo Mejia, the son of a cafe owner in El Pescadero, says he recognized McDermott after a local reporter showed him a photograph.

But, perhaps even more significant, Eduardo said a friend later took him to visit McDermott.  Here’s Eduardo’s story:

Eduardo (translated): The first thing he did was when I told him that some people came to ask for him, he grabbed a black bag from his car, sat down on a table, took out a checkbook, and then he tells me, “How much does your silence cost?”  I don’t want money, I answered him. 

Eduardo said he assured McDermott he would not reveal where he was.

Eduardo (translated): He is not interested in talking with anyone.  He is not interested in giving a trace or a sign that he is doing well or not.  I can tell you he is doing well.

And, according to Eduardo, the man he believed was Patrick McDermott had changed his appearance, though not through surgery.

Eduardo (translated): He’s made some modifications of his hair, face, all those things.

Months earlier, a local reporter named Kathy Aviles had heard that McDermott was in Baja. So she started snooping around. She talked to Eduardo’s mother at her cafe.

Kathy Aviles, local reproter: She remembered him distinctly and that he just went on and on about how great her fish tacos were, but that when he left he had forgotten his hat.

The hat is a pink visor with the words “Key West” on it. On her own, Kathy sent the visor to coast guard investigators in Los Angeles.

Papps: I think the question I’d be asking the Coast Guard is, “You got the hat? Right. You get DNA off it? Did you compare it with Patrick’s DNA? Have you asked Olivia Newton-John if she’s ever seen Patrick in this hat?”

A Coast Guard spokesman told dateline that no DNA testing was done and the visor had no value as evidence. The Coast Guard sent the visor back to Kathy.

Morrison: You know maybe their attitude is the correct one. Why should anybody care about this guy? What’s he done wrong? He just disappeared. Big deal.

Papps: Big deal. He’s someone’s father. He’s a father of a 14-year-old boy. Does that not matter?

And he still owes thousands of dollars in back child support.

The Coast Guard says the case remains open as a missing-person’s case.

So what does Olivia Newton-John believe about the man she’d called her “treasured friend”?

Recently, she appeared on the today show. In a brief interview with Meredith Vieira, she didn’t talk about McDermott’s disappearance, but said working on her new album had been therapeutic for her.

Olivia Newton-John (on the Today show): Music helps calm the body and heal, and it’s helped me heal.

Then she sang the album’s title song, “Grace and Gratitude.”

However, days earlier, in an interview with people magazine, Olivia said she believes McDermott didn’t fake his death, if, for no other reason, than to not hurt his son.

But she acknowledged that reports of McDermott sightings have made her uneasy. “It creates that, ‘What if?’ and I don’t know,” she told the magazine.

So what are we left with? One day he boarded a fishing boat with the now ironic name “Freedom.”  And then he was gone.

Morrison: Or, maybe he was dead all along.

Papps: Maybe. But I don’t think so.

The woman who now owns the house Patrick McDermott used to rent, says she still gets his mail, some addressed to him, and some addressed to his production company—“Twice-Alive Productions.”

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