Ian Clenahan
Appearances
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Because obviously that would be a case as well if your husband or brother, son, whatever, never came home.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Well, old-fashioned detective work. So you start by going through all the missing persons listed in the Devon and Cornwall police, and you try and rule those out, and then you go further afield, and you look at missing persons in the south-west, then you go further afield and look at missing persons in the south.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
This is the description of the guy, this is what he was wearing.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Has anyone got any information that may help us identify the man?
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
But no, we didn't get anything, so it was never going to be easy. We contacted ferries.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
To see whether there's any reports of any fishermen being lost at sea.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Everything was coming to a dead end, really.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
It's like looking for a needle in a haystack, isn't it? You're trying to find one name.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
It's unusual if we don't identify them. There's not many that go unidentified. We were fairly close to just saying, well, we can't. So let's just like make arrangements for the body to be cremated or buried or whatever they were going to do with it as an unknown person.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
I was making a cup of tea, and I can always remember it, and the kettle was there next to a desk. My phone rings, and you've got one of those phones where you can star-star-zero to pick up a phone that's ringing, and it was him. And he started to talk to me.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
I mean, you know, he was a mate. He was a really good friend of his.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
So I grabbed a piece of paper that was nearby and I couldn't even find a pen. So I grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and I started writing what he told me.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
I can always remember Exhibit IDC7 was that piece of paper.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
He said to me that Ron had left England to travel to France to start up a TV repair business in France.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
He was a successful American businessman who had a lot of money and his mate Ron didn't have much at all. I mean, we weren't talking about a lot of money. I've got two and a half thousand pound in my head, which is a nice sum of money, I suppose. But it's not a world-shattering, life-changing sum of money.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
But it's enough to get him over to France, maybe find some accommodation so that he can then find some work to support himself.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
And sure enough... He had an army record, and we were able to go to his army record and compare the dental charts.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
And Brian confirmed the tattoo. And it was actually because we all wondered what the tattoo was. It wasn't clear what it was.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
We'd done all we could have done. I don't think we thought we would ever find out what happened.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
exactly to him unless we got more information to say well look you know I've heard that he was setting out on this boat on this day to travel to France then maybe we could have done some more digging but I think it was accepting that we were never going to find out the true circumstances of what had happened at that point okay he'd come off a boat that was obvious he drowned that was reality how are we ever going to find out what happened
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
So one late shift, I was sat in the office and thought, you know what, I'll give him a ring.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
I couldn't find the piece of paper with his phone number on anywhere in the office. So I thought, oh, right, okay. So I thought, right, I'm going to phone up an officer in Essex to see whether he will go round because I'd lost his phone number, basically.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
And I said, look, do us a favor. Would you pop round to this address, which I'd got from him in my previous conversation? He said, would I mind getting hold of him?
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
And that's where it all started to unravel.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
I was in the office in Paynton, the police station, and I got the call from Peter saying, oh, you're not going to believe this. And then he told me what he'd discovered.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
I do remember going into Phil Sincock and he was in the middle of a meeting and told me to go away. And I was only young. He said, no, go away. Come back later. I'm busy. And I said, no, boss, I think. And then he got really angry with me and told me to do one. But no, I was insistent.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
And then that was it. Then that was like the jaw-dropping moment where it all changed then. And there will never be another job like this. Seriously, there will never be another job like this.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
My name's Ian Clenahan. I was the original officer who was allocated the investigation initially when the body was brought to shore.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
It was one of my first jobs that I picked up, yeah. It came through that a body had been trawled up and could I go down to commence investigations into trying to find out who he was and the circumstances behind it.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
There was nothing that kind of smacked me in the face as being, this is suspicious. He had the watch on, so that would kind of rule out a robbery. There was a cut on his head. But when you consider what he's just been through, he's been dragged along, you know, the bottom of a seabed. And he was fairly clean other than that. There was no signs of him being involved in an altercation.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
You know, his shirt was tucked into his trousers. It was all, he was all neat. So you think, OK, well, I don't know what the cause of death is, so that will be ascertained in due course.