IRISH MUM LAUNCHES APPEAL FOR MISSING DAUGHTER

A distraught Irish mother has appealed for help in finding her missing daughter who disappeared from her New York home a year ago.
Elderly County Cork-born Kathleen Meehan has broken 12 months of silence to reveal that her 49-year-old daughter has vanished.
Meehan has disclosed that she has been sitting by the telephone for the last 12 months waiting for her eldest daughter to make contact.
The heart-broken mother, who moved to America in 1955 and now lives in the New York borough of Queens, has reached out to the public in a desperate bid to get information about the whereabouts of missing Catherine Meehan Wray.
Wray, a stockbroker and registered nurse, last spoke to her family on the telephone on June 2008 while her parents were staying at their country home in Greenville, upstate New York.
Her mother, who moved to America in 1955 and married her husband John Meehan, of County Kerry, felt there were problems between her and her daughter.
Meehan said: “We were up in our home in the country. Cathy didn’t seem to want to talk to me but she spoke to her father and told him she was going to Ohio. And as far as I know she didn’t know anyone there.”
The mother, who has two other children, Tommy and Mary, is now asking her daughter to make contact immediately and has asked anyone who can to help to locate Wray.
It is known that Wray went to Ohio but returned to New York two days later.
The next thing that is known is that on June 16 she asked the doorman of the building where she lived to hold her post because she going away and would be back at the end of the summer.
That was the last time anyone saw her.
It was later discovered that on that same day Wray flew from New York to Geneva, Switzerland.
Meehan said: “I just don’t know what is going on or what to do. Cathy has never been in touch and it’s heartbreaking to not know where she is or if she is okay. I just wish to God she would call.”
The last time Meehan saw her daughter was at their family home in Middlevillage, Queens about a month before she left.
Meehan said: “She let on that everything was good but I could read between the lines that it wasn’t.”
The trail to Wray's whereabouts went cold two months after she left for Switzerland when she cashed a cheque in France.
“There has been no paper trail since August,” Meehan said.
Anxious Meehan has since enlisted the help of New York-based, County Cork-born private detective Olwyn Triggs.
According to Triggs’ investigation, Wray contacted her estate agent in September and told her she was travelling to Switzerland and staying at a beautiful place.
Triggs said: “The post mark on the Fed Ex envelope that arrived in New York with the apartment keys matched this statement.”
Wray was a widow who had been happily married to handsome stockbroker, Mike Wray, a relation of the famous American actress Martha Wray.
They had a beautiful apartment in downtown Manhattan, and although they had no children, they were deeply in love and blissfully happy for the 10 years of their marriage.
But eight years into their marriage, Wray's husband was diagnosed with a brain tumour and died two years later in December 2001.
Wray, who nursed her husband for two years before he passed away, never got over his death.
Her mother said: “When Mike passed away Cathy found it very difficult to cope. She was heartbroken and couldn’t deal with his death. She just was not herself ever since.”
Wray tried to bring some normality back into her life after her husband’s death by taking over his seat in the New York stock exchange – a seat he held for 25 years. But his death was too much for her and she finally had to give up his seat.
Up until her disappearance, Meehan said she saw her daughter quite frequently and spoke to her nearly on a daily basis on the phone.
She said: “We were worried about her. We were always trying to get her to move on from Mike’s death. Then she would get angry with us because we were not backing her.”
Wray’s state of mind was becoming more fragile as time went on, according to her concerned mum.
“She seemed to get a touch of a breakdown and she thought everyone was talking about her. I guess she was paranoid,” Meehan said.
Meehan and her other daughter took Wray to Ireland in a bid to help her heal after her late husband’s death.
Her mother said: “We were trying to cheer her up. We went for three weeks and toured around and stayed in Kerry for 10 days. She really did love it and loved going back to where her father was from.”
Meehan has also contacted a missing persons organisation in Ireland for help but they have come up with nothing either.
Wray’s luxurious apartment in Manhattan's Hanover Square was sold at auction last week for a mere US$349,000. According to Meehan it was worth three times that.
“She wasn’t making any payments so the bank took it over and put it up for auction. It’s so sad and it’s a beautiful apartment,” said Meehan, who with the help of her family cleaned out most of her daughters belongings.
Since her daughter’s unexpected disappearance, Meehan said every thought imaginable has gone through her mind.
“Where is she, is she in trouble, is she even alive?” are just some of the questions Meehan asks herself on a daily basis.
She said: “We know one thing is for sure, Cathy was never in trouble with the law so she wasn’t running away from anything or anyone.”
Unfortunately police told Meehan they cannot list her daughter as a missing person because she bought the ticket to Geneva. In their eyes she left willingly.
Meehan said: “Just disappearing like this is out of her character. It’s very strange to just walk away and leave everything behind. It just all doesn’t make sense to me.”
The sad mother said she was hesitant to go public with her daughter’s disappearance because she didn’t want to embarrass her but after a year of silence worry and anxiety has taken over.
She will do anything at this stage just to hear some news on her daughter’s whereabouts.
“Someone somewhere had to have seen her, even if it was in a church, a store anywhere. She is a beautiful girl and people will remember her face,” said Meehan.
“Our hearts are broken and we are just out of our minds with worry. We are trying to just find out where she is. The not knowing is certainly the hardest part of it all.”
Meehan pleads with her daughter to put her family’s minds at ease by letting them know she is alive and well.
She said: “I would just love her to contact the house to let us know if she is okay, where she is and if she needs our help. We are always there for her.”
Investigator Triggs said at this stage it is essential for Interpol and the United States Embassy to get involved in locating Wray.
He said: “We have very solid reason to believe that Cathy was not of sound mind when she flew to Geneva. If the embassy will provide her current passport number, our colleagues at PJIS Group in Belgium who have also worked tirelessly on this case pro bono will have a much better chance of locating her.”
Triggs said that although the paper trail have gone cold, she has reason to believe that Wray may have rented a car in Austria in January under a different name.
“However, we cannot confirm this without her passport number,” she said.
Triggs has asked that if anyone has any information about Wray’s whereabouts or has seen or heard from her in the past year please to contact the detective on at 516-674-4900 or e-mail: triggspi@yahoo.com.
But for the time being the silence continues to be deafening for the deeply worried family.