IT was a story that no family ever wants to hear when it broke a year ago.
Former Bradford Bulls, Wigan Warriors and St Helens prop Bryn Hargreaves had gone missing whilst working and living over in the USA.
False leads, police investigations and a search around Bryn’s home and area found nothing, with the 37-year-old seemingly disappearing into thin air with his apartment door found open and his car keys and phone on the side.
Bryn’s family, led by his brothers, mum – Maria Andrews – and uncle – former Great Britain forward John Fieldhouse – have led the charge for information ever since, even going as far as hiring a private investigator.
A collection at a Wigan Warriors home game towards the back end of the 2022 Super League season brought in more funds to keep the search going, whilst a GoFundMe page continued to grow in support.
John, however, has revealed the heart breaking news that no trace of Bryn has since been found, despite it being a year on.
“We do want to push and try and find him, but it would have been so much easier if it had been in this country,” John told League Express.
“It’s on American soil in a place nobody really cares about overseas people. They are all within themselves and looking after themselves.
“Apart from some support my sister and sons received from a former district attorney and a private investigator and their families and friends, there was little help.
“When you are a foreign person in a vast area with small amounts of people, you just wonder how tough it was to be in that situation.
“Knowing what’s gone on, it’s getting very hard to build a story because one person will say something and the other ten will say nothing.
“Over here, you’d have a good community if something happened in an area. A lot of people would try and do something or find something out and that’s the stumbling block.”
John explained that Maria, Bryn’s mother, had a number of issues trying to get hold of a search team and cadaver dog. “She did get hold of someone, but he said he couldn’t do it for a few months and then she got in touch with someone else about doing a dive in the lake, but when they could do it the lake had frozen over and then it got to wintertime.
“At the moment in time, we are waiting for the weather. Once that recedes a bit then my sister will be in touch with the divers and investigators to take up the challenge and see what they can find.
“It’s just over 12 months now and it is so frustrating. It’s in a vast foreign country and when you think about it, hundreds of people go missing every week and it makes your mind boggle and question: why is that happening?
“Not knowing where he is or what’s happened to him, if you start thinking about it too much it can seriously affect you.”
John explained just how lonely Bryn’s job made him in the USA. ”
We just hope, we are hanging on a piece of thread, hoping that something turns up.
“It’s so difficult, he’s a young man in the prime of his life, living life and the next thing we knew he was having mental health and injury issues.
“He was also showing signs of CTE, many times he was incoherent, it was like there was two sides to him. And this was confirmed with people in America who are very familiar with CTE.
“Whether that was from playing rugby or not we don’t know. We do know he was struggling with the work side of it. It was a lot of travelling, he was doing hundreds of miles per week over vast grounds. He’s in the piping industry and he wouldn’t see people for days. He didn’t have many friends and just saw a couple of people so he had no one to confide in.
“We rang him and family kept in touch with him but we weren’t there so we didn’t know what his mental health was like or what the situation was.
“At one point he said he wanted to come home but when I told him we would organise it, he kind have backtracked a bit. I don’t know whether he was having an issue with something or thinking he couldn’t do it, I don’t know.
“We got the Rugby League Cares organisation involved, they were in contact with him with the mental health assessors.
“The rugby league community will ring and ask all the time if there is any news – ex-players at Wigan, Saints and Bradford will ask, but it’s the same old story because there’s nothing happening.”
It’s not just the lack of information which is hurting John and his family, it’s the false hope that his family have often been given.
“We haven’t got anywhere we can look. We could fly tomorrow to America and my sister and nephews did for two months and couldn’t find anything. People were saying he was in one shop or another but it wasn’t Bryn. You get a lot of false hope and false leads.
“That hurts even more, when you get told he’s been seen, it lifts your spirits but then when you see it’s not him it drops you back down to the floor.”
At present, the plan from the family is to launch one last effort to find Bryn and then decide what they will do with the remaining money from Bryn’s GoFundMe page.
John asked Maria what her plans were and she said: “We are going to try and get another investigator, we want to have one more go.”
John continued: “But she needs to do it at the right time to convince herself that she’s done all she can. Then the rest of the GoFundMe money needs to go somewhere.
“The Rugby League Cares have been fantastic, they’ve helped fund some of the travel to and from America and they were great in getting mental health help for Bryn.
“But we’ve got two options, we either pass the money to Rugby League Cares or if Maria wants, to set up a foundation in Bryn’s name with the Rugby League Cares. We could start that off with the rest of the money.
“On the back of Bryn’s name, a lot of lads could get some support and if lads are in that predicament struggling away from home, not really knowing what to do and in two minds suffering then they could reach out.
“We didn’t see the full extent of it, he didn’t come over for his brother’s wedding and that was hard. If any lads are in need, then that’s going to a good cause.”
John himself has had several health problems in recent years, but he still has that drive – more than ever – to find a resolution.
“In the past two years I’ve had lots of issues myself. I had a knee operation and then a liver transplant. There were things going on with Covid at the same time.
“I was having problems, in and out of hospital. My wife was panicking about me, and I was 50/50 at one point whether or not I was going to pull through.
“On the back of everything else it was just so hard. My sister and his two brothers were trying to find out what was happening with Bryn, as this is when he started to show signs of struggling.
“We are all desperate to know what happened to Bryan and where he is.
“My sister Maria and his brothers Gareth and David are struggling everyday with no news of Bryn.”
Please donate to the GoFundMe page in Bryn’s name by clicking this link.
