The last known journey of missing student Jack O’Sullivan, who vanished after a night out in Bristol, are recreated in this video.
Text messages, CCTV footage, witness accounts and GPS data from Jack’s phone have been pieced together to create a timeline of events after he left a house party in the early hours of Saturday, March 2.
Police continue to be baffled by the disappearance of Jack, 23, despite the fact he had an Apple AirTag tracking device in his keyring.
As the desperate search continues, Jack’s parents have said they feel consistently ‘let down’ by Avon and Somerset Police. They say the force failed to identify their son in potentially vital security camera footage.
His mother Catherine has contacted Apple directly to see if can help trace Jack, but due to built-in privacy measures, the tech giant does not have access to his AirTag’s location data.
Mrs O’Sullivan said: ‘We’re desperately trying to get hold of the phone data that [the police] tell us they’ve analysed. They tell us “we have already told you the findings”.
‘Well we would like to be certain of that, because they did the same with the CCTV — they said they were certain of their findings, and they totally missed Jack on it.’
Here is a rundown of Jack’s last known movements:
1.52am – Jack texted his mum from a house party in Hotwell Road, Bristol, saying he was safe and planned to get a taxi to his home in Flax Bourton, Somerset.
He had previously been drinking with friends at Wetherspoons in Bristol city centre.
Jack O’Sullivan, 23, went missing six months ago after a night out in Bristol
After going drinking with friends at Wetherspoons in Bristol, Jack went back to a house party in Hotwell Road. Our video shows the route he would have taken after leaving
2.57am – Jack left the party alone. He walked south from the house along Christina Terrace and was caught on CCTV crossing the Junction Swing Bridge.
This is only a short walk from the house, and Jack may have been walking towards a main road where he could more easily get a taxi.
CCTV shows jack crossing the Junction Swing Bridge
Our footage shows the route of his journey over the bridge
3.13am – CCTV footage shows Jack walking under the Brunel Way flyover, having apparently walked there along Brunel Lock Road.
This is a short, five minute walk along the northern edge of the Cumberland Basin.
It would have been very cold on the night in question.
Jack is seen on CCTV walking towards the Brunel Way flyover in Brunel Lock Road
Various security cameras captured various snippets of Jack’s journey after leaving the house party
Jack’s journey under the flyover is seen in our video
3.38am – A shadowy figure, identified as Jack by his mother, can be seen on CCTV walking over the Plimsoll Swing Bridge.
Jack’s parents have accused Avon and Somerset police of missing their son in footage, but insist the figure in the video has Jack’s ‘walk and gait’.
A shadowy figure with Jack’s ‘walk and gait’ is seen crossing the Plimsoll Swing Bridge
It is unknown if Jack interacted with anyone on the bridge, though police have appealed for witnesses
The bridge, as seen in our video of Jack’s journey
6.44am – Having crossed the bridge, Jack’s movements become unclear.
Grainy CCTV apparently shows him walking into Bennett Way on the northern end of the bridge.
His phone sent its final GPS signal from an address in the nearby Granby Hill area at 6.44am.
by Arthur Parashar
When Catherine O’Sullivan was faced with every mother’s worst nightmare of having to officially declare her child a missing person, one of the first things she told police about was the Apple AirTag her son had taken out with him.
Just hours before vanishing after a house party in Bristol on March 2, 23-year-old student Jack O’Sullivan had even showed his mother how the tracking device worked at home.
They were debating over whether he should take his car keys, which the AirTag was attached to, because Jack’s father had recently lost his own car fob which had cost them a lot to replace.
Jack showed his mother that even if he did misplace the car keys, he could activate the AirTag on his phone which would reveal its location. He left the house and stepped onto the bus with his keys – and crucially a fully functioning AirTag.
‘I said to the police, Jack’s keys have got an AirTag. And I really thought that was going to be a really positive location finder,’ Catherine tells MailOnline six months after her son’s disappearance.’
Jack, an Exeter University graduate who had been living at home with his parents while studying a law conversion course in Bristol, first went out for drinks and then to a house party in Hotwells, which he left just before 3am.
Catherine previously told how she messaged him around 1am to see if he was OK and if he wanted a lift home. He replied to say he was fine and was going to get a taxi, but he never returned.
Jack O’Sullivan (centre) is pictured graduating with his parents Catherine (front) and Alan (right) and brother Ben (left)
As the desperate search continues, Jack’s family are hoping more answers could lie in the phone and AirTag data. They say they don’t believe Avon and Somerset Police have fully analysed it because of being consistently ‘let down’ by the investigating force.
The family were initially told by police that Apple privacy laws would not allow them to pursue any of the AirTag data.
‘We just thought that’s ridiculous,’ Catherine recalled. ‘We asked a legal friend of ours and they said, ‘No that’s rubbish I’m sure in a missing persons case, there’d be a way round it’.’
The O’Sullivan family went back to the police again, who this time indicated they had accessed the data. They were, however, told by officers that they thought ‘the battery must be flat on the AirTag because it’s not providing information’.
Catherine explained: ‘We said, well it wasn’t flat when he’d left the house, because he demonstrated how it worked to me at 6pm that night.
‘He showed me how how he used it, basically by hiding his keys and then using his phone to tweet it so that he could locate them.
‘I’m certain that it was not out of battery, and then again looking into it with the Apple technical people, they said that even if it was running low it would show on your phone.
‘It would tell you that your AirTag needed replacing so that wasn’t the case.’
‘The police then changed the story again and said, ‘Well actually we don’t think it was set up correctly, it was never registered’.
‘We were going around on this ridiculous circle of not getting anywhere.’
Catherine said that the police’s latest statement two weeks ago was that the AirTag had been ‘registered to Jack’s ex-girlfriend’s account’ which is why they couldn’t locate it.
‘But I actually contacted her this weekend just to verify that and she said, ‘No that’s not true, I didn’t register it’,’ Catherine revealed. ‘So we just can’t get a straight answer.’
Catherine previously told MailOnline that she uncovered this footage while trawling through CCTV herself. Although police have not confirmed this is Jack, the family say it his ‘walk and gait’
Catherine has gone back to Apple directly but they have told her it is ‘difficult with privacy laws to give out information’.
‘We’re just trying to get to the bottom of it, because to me, this is such an important thing,’ she said.
‘And I know it was working so where on earth is it? Where is it registered to? And why hasn’t it provided something?
‘That’s what we want clarity on. But we haven’t had an in person meeting with the investigation team since the 29th of May. We haven’t sat down with them, seen them face to face.’
Jack left the house party in the early hours of the morning of March 2 and mobile data shows that his phone was still in use at 6.44am – hours after he was last seen on CCTV.
The last confirmed sighting of Jack is at 3.13am as he walks onto a grassy area at the junction of Brunel Lock Way and Brunel Way, Bristol.
But while Catherine was forced to trawl through CCTV herself, she spotted a person – who she is adamant is her son – walking over Plimsol Bridge at around 3.25am, heading back in the direction of Bristol city centre.
When police were alerted to this, they later uncovered a second clip showing someone walking along the Bennett Way slip road at around 3.38am.
Jack attempted to call a friend who was still at the party at 3.24am. When the friend called back 10 minutes later, Jack answered but only said ‘hello’ before the call cut off.
His phone remained active on Find My Friends until 6.44am and Catherine could hear the phone ringing through when she was calling him, indicating the device was still working.
She said: ‘We’re desperately trying to get hold of the phone data that they [the police] tell us they’ve analysed. And they tell us “we have already told you the findings”. Well we would like to be certain of that, because they did the same with the CCTV.
‘They said they were certain of their findings, and they totally missed Jack on it.
‘So from our perspective, we can’t trust what we’re being told so we would rather have things ourselves and pay somebody to analyse it, and then we can then feel certain that it’s done.
‘If it hasn’t shown information, it hasn’t shown information. But we we can’t trust their processes because of what’s gone before.
‘What we do know is what the police have told us is that between when a call was made, we know when a call was received, and we know there are other chunks of data usage on that phone up until 5.40am.
‘And we know the phone was on the network until 6.44am. I’m not technical, so I don’t fully understand. But I’ve been told that the phone will ping off different masts and then you can kind of triangulate the location from it.
‘And we want to see if we can try and plot a route or the last time that phone worked. If we can be a little bit more specific with the area then that’s got to help in some way.’
Jack had been at a house party with friends from his course when he left in the early hours of the morning
She continued: ‘I’m not suggesting for a minute that it would ever be that sophisticated. But I just feel as if we can know that that’s been looked at properly by a technical expert who could say, the phone shows this or the phone shows that then it would.
‘It’s not going to bring Jack. It’s not going to find him, I’m sure, but it might give us an idea of the direction of travel.
‘If it was plotting in closer to the water, or if it was plotted in closer to town, then you could draw your own conclusion from that.
‘We were told at 4.39am that his phone uses the equivalent of data of a nine minute video. That is more significant than sort of apps running in the background type of data.
‘There’s every chance Jack’s not with his phone, and somebody else is using his phone.
‘But then it asks the question of well could there be someone else involved here? Because the police are categorical on that they feel it’s impossible for there to be a third party involvement. Well I don’t know how you can be so certain.’
Catherine said she was ‘concerned’ about a possible third party involvement.
She explained: ‘I was told that there was nobody else on CCTV, nobody in the area that Jack was seen wandering around.
‘Well, I’ve seen CCTV, and there are people in the area. You wouldn’t be able to recognise them. But they’re people. They’ve got arms and legs, and they’re moving around.
‘Some of it is quite a seedy, unpleasant area. So it is really difficult to know what to think.’
Catherine has this week opened up about receiving cruel ransom demands.
She told MailOnline: ‘I had two in a short space of time, and I forwarded them to the police because I thought that was a concern. And it was treated with, “you almost need to expect things like this because you’re making your case so public”.
‘They said “we’ll look into it”. But it wasn’t done, I felt, with any seriousness.
‘Somebody’s posted something saying that they know where his body is and they’ve gone quite public with where… so I’ve forwarded it to the police that.
‘They look at that on their weekly email, which is ridiculous.
‘I’ve had people saying that he’s been attacked and one was knocked over, and then dumped the body somewhere.
‘And I’ve had one saying he hasn’t paid something to do with a drugs deal and therefore, if we paid that, then they’ll tell us where he is.
‘Jack is just one of the squarest people you can wish to meet, so he’s never been involved in anything drug related, or anything like that.
‘So I think it is a scam, but people in our position, we’re not going to not read it. Because I’m reading anything and everything that I’m being sent.’
One of the latest updates is that the family have managed to get a replacement SIM card because Catherine is the account holder of Jack’s phone so it is in her name.
The police said that they did not feel it was necessary, so the family have paid for it to be looked at by a cyber security company in Manchester.
The experts have had the SIM for two or three months and are trying to see if any of the apps had any form of location trackers on them, but it hasn’t provided answers yet.
When Catherine woke up at 5.25am on the morning Jack was missing, her gut feeling was that something was wrong.
Catherine checked his location on Find My Friends, which the family had set up, and realised he was in a different location to the party.
She continued: ‘I then just WhatsApped him and said, “Where are you?”
‘And I know that message was delivered to the phone because it got the two ticks. So that’s why we feel really certain the phone wasn’t in the water at that point.
‘I was ringing Jack’s number up until half past 6, and it was it was ringing before it hits voicemail. So the technical people have told me the phone was functioning.
‘That was three hours past Jack’s last sighting so that’s quite a long chunk of time to be accounted for. That’s why the phone is such an issue for us.
Speaking about the last six months, Catherine said: ‘It’s really hard. It’s getting harder for sure. My sole purpose is to find Jack. That’s my life.
‘And it is hard for my son and husband. They are trying to have some form of I can’t say normal existence, because nothing’s normal. But they’re trying to get a little bit in the, in the real world, in terms of work and doing things because it it is important for them.
‘But unfortunately for me, I’m just stuck. I’m really stuck on the second of March.
‘So you have days where it is really difficult to function and then you kind of regroup and get some energy back and go again.’
Catherine and her husband Alan previously told MailOnline that they feel they have been ‘badly, badly let down’ by Avon and Somerset Police and even lodged a formal complaint.
Avon and Somerset Police say that since Jack’s disappearance, more than 20 different teams and departments have been involved in the investigation.
They have been supported by other agencies and emergency services, such as the fire and ambulance service, National Police Air Service, and RNLI.
A spokesperson said more than 100 hours of CCTV have been reviewed, 200 hours of searches on the river and the surrounding banks, mounted police searches from Bristol city centre to Flax Bourton, 40 land searches, and 16 drone deployments.
The force said it has received almost 100 calls from the public with possible sightings, and eight media appeals have been issued.
Assistant Chief Constable Joanne Hall said: ‘Our staff and officers remain committed to doing everything we can to find Jack and we do not underestimate what a distressing time this has been, and continues to be, for his family.
‘When I look at missing persons investigations [in Avon and Somerset] over the last year, we’ve had around 5 and a half thousand.
‘Missing people are somebody’s loved ones, they’re somebody’s family, and we don’t close the door on that.’
The force renewed its appeal for witnesses and said they will update Jack’s family when their handling of the complaint is finalised.
