Olivia Newton-John Had A Picture-Perfect Romance, Then Her Lover Mysteriously Vanished

The mystery began when McDermott joined several other passengers on an overnight fishing trip on July 30, 2005. When the charter returned to the Los Angeles port of San Pedro the following morning, however, the cameraman was nowhere to be found. Despite that, his personal belongings were still on board. And, The Daily Beast reported, he’d also settled his bill in full.

The plot thickened when contradicting reports about McDermott’s last sighting emerged from the three crew members and 22 passengers who did return to San Pedro. However, it actually took more than a week for the cameraman to be reported missing. The alarm was only raised when he didn’t show up for an important family meeting.

McDermott had failed to make a planned visit with his teenage son Chance. As a result, his ex-wife Yvette began making calls about his whereabouts. She soon discovered that no one had seen him since the fishing trip. And when the cameraman’s car was found still parked at the San Pedro marina, he was officially deemed missing.

In October 2006 Newton-John talked about her former boyfriend’s disappearance for the first time in front of the cameras. She told Good Morning America, “I love him very much, and this is very hard to go through. He has a young son so we still hold out hope that he will come back.”

An emotional Newton-John went on to add, “It’s very much a mystery and speculation has been rife, and I choose not to buy into the speculation. This is such a personal thing for me and his family. And we’ve chosen not to talk about it because it’s an ongoing investigation.”

Newton-John was referring to the many theories that had emerged in the wake of McDermott’s appearance. The cameraman was initially presumed to have fallen overboard during the trip. And in 2008 an investigation conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard stated that drowning was the most likely explanation for his disappearance.

However, as new information came to light, some believed that McDermott was, in fact, responsible for faking his own death. The cameraman was reportedly experiencing financial difficulties at the time of his fishing trip disappearance. Most notably, he allegedly owed thousands of dollars to his ex-wife, as he’d fallen behind with child support.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, McDermott had amassed a total debt of $40,000 before his disappearance. A quarter of that amount was allegedly owed to his ex-wife. But Philip Klein, a missing persons investigator, believes that the cameraman faked his own death-at-sea. As a result, his son would receive a hefty life insurance payout.

And this wasn’t the only bold claim that Klein made during a piece on Dateline NBC in 2009. The investigator, who also penned a book about the mystery, claimed that he’d received a message sent on behalf of McDermott. And it apparently revealed once and for all that the cameraman was well and truly alive.

The letter reportedly stated, “[McDermott] has asked that I portray to you his innocence. [He] has committed no crime. [He] simply wishes to be left alone. Let him live his life in peace and harmony. He is safe and has started anew again in a new place both physically and mentally. Stop this search immediately.”

Klein also told the weekly news magazine show, “[McDermott’s] lawyer called from Mexico City and said that [he] didn’t want to be bothered. He hadn’t faked anything. He just wanted to get away from the drama.” The cameraman was reported to be living on Mexico’s west coast at the time the episode aired.

Newton-John and McDermott first met on a commercial set in 1996 in the wake of their respective divorces. The former had previously been married to Yvette Nipar, the mother of his son, Chance, for less than 18 months. While the latter had only recently split with her actor husband of 11 years, Matt Lattanzi.

McDermott, who was born in Korea but raised in the States, and Newton-John preferred to keep their relationship private. Indeed, they were rarely pictured together during their nine years as a couple. The Australian singer, however, was once blatantly head over heels for the cameraman, describing him as “the most romantic person I’ve ever met.”

However, McDermott's inherently romantic nature couldn’t stop their love story from ending. According to the aforementioned episode of Dateline NBC, the pair had gone their separate ways by the time the cameraman went missing. But that didn’t stop Newton-John from attempting to uncover the truth about his baffling disappearance.

In Newton-John’s autobiography Don’t Stop Believin’, the star revealed that she’d asked for the help of Gavin de Becker, a noted security expert. The pair subsequently decided to send a private investigation team to Mexico to look for her former flame. But they failed to find any evidence in the country where McDermott was rumored to have set up home.

“I lived in pain for so long over this,” Newton-John wrote in her memoir. “But I had to teach myself to live in the now, which is an important life lesson.” Of course, the singer eventually managed to move on. She, in fact, wed Amazon Herb Company founder John Easterling in Florida just three years after McDermott went missing.

In 2010 an article in The Australian Daily Telegraph also claimed it had evidence that McDermott was still very much alive. The newspaper had reportedly seen various email correspondence in which the cameraman had offered DNA to prove to private investigators that he hadn’t fallen overboard on that day in 2005. These messages also allegedly proved that he didn’t want to stay in contact with Newton-John following their split.

Further evidence appeared to emerge in 2017 and this time it was visual. A photograph of an unkempt and shirtless man enjoying the sunshine with an unknown woman in Sayulita, a Mexican fishing town, was posted on a beach campsite noticeboard. And one person, in particular, believed that this man was the missing McDermott.

Charlie Parker, an experienced private investigator, told Australian TV show New Idea that he had little doubt the image was of McDermott. He said, “The widow’s peak is exact. The eyes are very similar and the ears extend down on the head the same distance. I believe it is him.”

An insider then told News.com.au that Newton-John would be relieved at finally knowing the “truth.” They said, “Olivia will be shocked that it has finally come to an end, and that she can finally say ‘Yes, he’s alive.’ But, in saying that, she has her own battles to fight at the moment. She’ll want to just forgive him and move on.”

However, the photo that once again brought the story back into the spotlight proved a case of mistaken identity. The man lounging in the photo wasn’t McDermott but a Canadian bar owner named Wes Stobbe. Thankfully, Stobbe revealed to CBC News that he saw the funny side of the faux-pas.

An understanding Stobbe said, “Apparently if you make the photo fuzzy enough and grainy enough, it might be passable. But I don’t think I look like him. I have a face that seems to be recognized falsely more than once. It happens to me so often for some strange reason.”

And the mystery woman Stobbe was pictured alongside? Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, it was his wife, Bridget. The bar owner, however, told CBC News that the blunder hasn’t stopped the pair from planning another trip to Mexico. He joked, “[I might] get myself a T-shirt printed that says, ‘not Patrick.’”

Of course, this wasn’t the first time that McDermott had apparently been sighted in the wake of his mysterious disappearance. In 2006, a surf camp worker on the Baja Peninsula, told British newspaper The Daily Telegraph that he’d once seen the cameraman enjoying the company of a blond German woman. Raul Avilez claimed the pair spent an evening in a beach shack before departing in a green camper van together.

Although Avilez didn’t engage in conversation, he was adamant that the man in question was the missing McDermott. And this was the fourth sighting to be reported within the first year of the cameraman’s unexplained disappearance. Another person claimed to have spotted him enjoying time in a Cabo San Lucas bar.

Could McDermott still be with the blond lady that Avilez mentioned way back in 2006? Eleven years later, John Nazarian, another private investigator, told New Idea that he believed the missing man had moved in with a German national in the Mexican town of Sayulita. He also theorized that he had acquired a brand-new passport under the guise of Patrick Kim, his birth name. In addition, he also believes the cameraman had previously withdrawn every cent he had from his bank account.

Nazarian also revealed, in no uncertain terms, that he has little regard for the original explanation for McDermott’s disappearance. He added, “To come up with the conclusion that he fell off the boat, and allegedly no one saw him fall off the boat, is the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” And the private investigator continued to slam such claims in a 2017 interview with The Daily Beast.

The highly outspoken Nazarian told the site, “First of all [McDermott] allegedly drowned off this fishing boat which was not some big cruise ship. It had 22 passengers. If you were on this boat and somebody dropped a tuna-fish sandwich you’d hear it, never mind someone falling overboard.”

Nazarian then offered his own theory as to how exactly McDermott left the fishing trip, adding, “I think he just walked off the boat and nobody noticed him. He split for Monterrey, Mexico, with some German girl. I think Olivia was probably relieved. She was sick of paying his bills.”

And Nazarian was just as vocal when it came to the subject of other private investigator’s claims about the missing cameraman, particularly those made by Charlie Parker and Philip Klein. He told The Daily Beast, “Both these guys have offices the size of a mailbox drop. I tip more in one night than these guys make all year.”

Nazarian continued, “Did you see what Dateline ran about Klein? They just showed a bunch of shots of him down in Mexico eating tacos on Dateline’s dollar. No real sign of McDermott. There’s a reason the Australian media goes for these guys in Texas of all places. They’ll tell them what they want to hear because they’re peddling a book or some other Goddamn thing.”

And there’s one other thing that Nazarian is also hugely suspicious about. And that’s why no one has managed to get a clear photo of McDermott since his disappearance in 2005. He argued, “This guy is in Mexico for 12 years in the era of camera phones and nobody can get a picture of him? What is he? The Loch Ness monster? Sasquatch?”

However, the claim that McDermott is living in the Mexican town of Sayulita was then backed up by a Denver man who spends his winters there. Stefan Brown told The Daily Beast that local residents have been aware of the cameraman’s identity for years. He explained, “But [he] would have no motivation to talk and the locals never were into the story.”

Brown continued, “There are so many characters here from all walks of life that everyone just seems to blend into the mix. Even when the pro surfers show up for the big swells, or the Dallas cheerleaders stroll through town, or when the movies [and] novelas are being filmed, life just goes on without much fanfare. Especially for him.”

Newton-John has never responded officially to any of the claims made about her former boyfriend. But in a 2016 interview with 60 Minutes, she revealed that she still often wonders what happened to McDermott. The star told the Australian TV show, “It was very hard. He was lost at sea and nobody really knows what happened.”

“It's human to wonder but, you know, those are the things in life you have to accept and let go,” the Australian star then went on. “Because whenever you go through difficult times, there’s always those concerns. But, I live on and, of course, questions come up, always. It’s human.”

Of course, Newton-John has had several other problems to deal with since her ex-boyfriend mysteriously disappeared. The star discovered she had breast cancer for the third time in 2017 after initially being misdiagnosed with sciatica. She’d famously first fought the disease in the early 1990s and later disclosed that she’d also had a second private battle in 2013.

Sadly, with the third diagnosis, the cancer had also spread to Newton-John’s lower back. But in a 2019 interview with the Belfast Telegraph she still appeared optimistic about the future. The singer said, “I’ve had my moments and my tears and all that. But I have a wonderful husband in John and a daughter in Chloe who support me through those things.”

Newton-John then continued, “There are moments, I’m human. If I allowed myself to go there, I could easily create that big fear. But my husband’s always there, and he’s there to support me. I believe I will win over it. That’s my goal, to see cancer cured in my lifetime.”