Missing Clare Native Sought in Boston.

By Sean O’Driscoll 

THE search for a missing Irish law student has moved to Boston, 15 months after he disappeared from his home in Co. Clare. 

Nuala Casey, whose son, Damien, arrived in New York earlier this year, said that she now believed her son could be in Boston as he was strongly hoping to enroll in Harvard University. 

Mrs. Casey also sharply criticized two former New York policemen hired by the family to help track their son. 

“We spent a large amount of money on them and they were rubbish,” she said. “We are nowhere nearer to finding Damien. They didn’t give us a report on what they had done to find him, and just basically took our money.”

Mrs. Casey said that she still hoped her son was in the Boston area. “He was really, really set on getting into Harvard University and when he didn’t get it, it really upset him,” she said. 

Mrs. Casey traveled over to the U.S. last July in the hope of finding her son but didn’t have any success. She also learned that private detectives hired by the family had not helped to find their son, despite taking large payments from Mrs. Casey’s husband, Eugene. 

The family is now thinking of putting up ads in Irish pubs in Boston and New York but is not sure how that will affect their son. 

“We don’t want to overdo it at the moment because that might drive him further underground,” Mrs. Casey said. 

Damien Casey, a law graduate from University College Galway, later enrolled in a commercial law postgraduate in Ireland but told his family that he believed everyone in the business was corrupt. He later took a job on a building site but was intent on getting a place in Harvard. 

Mrs. Casey, who hired a psychic to help find her son, also believes that her son would naturally choose Boston over New York, his arrival city in the U.S. 

“He was never one for nightclubs or big pubs and I don’t think he’d really like New York. Boston seems to be more of a settled city, I’d imagine that’s where he would go,” she said. 

Now 24, Damien arrived in the U.S. on September 24, 2002, according to flight records obtained by him family. 

His family knows that he stayed at a hostel on the upper west side of Manhattan but his family don’t know his movements beyond that date.

Mrs. Casey said that the family was still keeping an open mind on where their son is now living. 

“We are hoping he is in Boston, but we just don’t know. He could be in Honolulu for all we know. We’re just hoping something will turn up sometime soon,” she said.