A private investigator has been hired to assist in the ongoing search for Bryn Hargreaves, a former pro rugby star in his native England who went missing from his Morgantown apartment in January.
Hargreaves, 36, who most recently had worked as a project manager for an oil and gas firm in Pittsburgh, was transferred to the University City in 2020, right before the pandemic hit.
“The police over there aren’t doing anything,” his older brother Gareth told the British media outlet PA News last week on the decision to bring in an independent detective.
“There are a few things that have come to light that need to be investigated.”
Gareth and other family who last spoke to Bryn this past Jan. 3, said they had been long worried for his mental and physical health.
The isolation didn’t help, family said.
Bryn Hargreaves was divorced from his wife, an American woman from Pittsburgh he met on a vacation in Mexico when he was still playing rugby.
He doesn’t really know anyone in Morgantown, they said, plus a car crash in December disabled his Jeep while leaving him with nagging back and neck injuries.
Bryn had taken to walking or hiring Uber drivers to get where he needed to go, family said.
Being an ocean away from his close family during Christmas didn’t help, they said.
When Monongalia County deputies tried the door to his Whisper Creek apartment after he was declared missing Jan. 16, the easy give caught them for a second.
That’s because it was unlocked.
And that was only part of the wrenching mystery.
His wallet, keys and passport were there.
The clothes in his closet were neatly arrayed.
And the shower was running – without him in it.
“It was like he was abducted, or he did a walk-around,” his mother Maria Andrews said in an exclusive interview with The Dominion Post in February.
Keeping at it
She and her third son, David, had flown over to search and appeal for help from anyone who knows Bryn.
Andrews said her son is gentle and artistic, despite starring in an aggressive sport.
He plays guitar, sketches and reads books, she said.
The family hails from Wigan, a working-class city in northern England right between Liverpool and Manchester.
Hargreaves’ home town is known for the stars it produces in rough-and-tumble rugby, which inspired American football. Bryn’s grandfather and uncle also played the sport professionally.
Bryn enjoyed fame and championship trophies in England, but like a lot of athletes, he didn’t have long go of it.
In 2012, his contract wasn’t renewed – in part, because his team was facing liquidation, his mother said.
“He got disillusioned with the old game,” she said. So he stepped away, and walked down the aisle with his bride from Pittsburgh.
Gareth, who picked Bryn to be best man at his wedding a few years back, worries both about suicide and foul play – the latter, especially.
“It’s one of the reasons I can’t leave this,” he said.
“If he’s had a rubbish time and had enough so he’s taken himself away, that’s fair enough. But if something has happened and we didn’t try to help or find him I could never forgive myself.”
Nothing average … and other absolutes
For now, Mon County Sheriff’s Detective Steven Currie said, there’s the ongoing search here.
Early on, search teams were hampered by snow storms.
Now, its cybersecurity, said Currie, the lead investigator on the case.
Bryn uses Apple communication devices, including a cell phone, which have a number of security gates that are hard to breach – even for law enforcement – and that makes for tough slogging on the digital trail for electronic evidence.
That doesn’t mean the physical search is ham-strung, though, the detective said.
If he’s gone off on his own, Bryn, Currie said, might not blend in easily.
He’s 6-2 and 220 pounds, according to his family, and if he’s fallen off his physical conditioning, he hasn’t exactly gone to fat, either.
The missing man might be sporting a full beard.
He’s left-handed, loves sandwiches from The Primanti Bros. chain and has a distinctive tattoo of his family’s crest on his right arm.
After 10 years in the U.S., his accent is just as distinct: an Angelo-American mashup, not quite Brit, not quite Yank.
Should you ask, in American fashion, how he’s doing, be prepared for some signature British-drollery as a response, however.
“Absolutely average,” he’ll respond, with a grin.
The detective, meanwhile, reiterated that the investigation and its search are ongoing – even if there aren’t any new details, necessarily.
“There are people out there looking in the vicinity almost on a weekly basis,” he said.
“They have their dogs out. It’s an ongoing investigation.”
Please call the Monongalia County Sheriff’s Department at 304-291-7260 if you have any information, he said.
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