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As It Happens

'Mystery Man' with dementia was allegedly abandoned in UK by his family

UK authorities wondered for months how an elderly man with dementia, no ID and an odd accent, showed up at a care home. But now BBC reporter Darragh MacIntyre says new court documents allege Roger Curry was abandoned by members of his family.
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Earl Roger Curry pictured in Edmonds High School 1958 yearbook (left). The high school is just north of Seattle, Washington. The photo was shared on the BBC Facebook page and helped reporter Darragh MacIntyre track down Curry's family in America. (West Mercia Police/Debbie Cocker/BBC/Facebook)

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The man's sudden appearance in Hereford, England stumped just about everyone. In the fall of 2015, an elderly man was brought to a British care facility. He spoke with an odd accent and carried no identification. When asked who he was, the man offered a name, just once: Roger Curry.

As It Happens first covered the curious story in Jan. 2016, when Curry's caregivers were trying to find leads on his identity. Here's a short clip of what he sounded like.
As It Happens0:06CLIP- UK asking for help identifying "mystery man" with Canadian accent
A mystery man who cannot give details on who he is, is being described as having a "Canadian accent"
In the months that followed, there were countless theories about how Curry landed in Hereford.

Now, new allegations have surfaced: that Roger Curry was abandoned there by members of his family.

Darragh MacIntyre has been following the story for a year now. He's an investigative reporter with the BBC. MacIntyre spoke with As It Happens guest host Helen Mann about the tragic turn in the mystery. Here is part of their conversation.
It's been more than a year since West Mercia Police started asking the public for help in identifying this man with dementia who calls himself "Roger Curry." (West Mercia Police)

Helen Mann: Darragh MacIntyre, when you first heard that clip last year of Roger Curry speaking in that accent, what intrigued you?

Darragh MacIntyre: The case was completely baffling — not just to me, but to the authorities. By the time I met him last March he had been found, as it were, for four months. The police had checked DNA databases. They had checked fingerprints. They'd gone through missing persons lists in Britain and abroad, in Canada and the USA. I'd come up with nothing. Everything about this case was intriguing. No one had actually, I think, come to the conclusion at that stage that he had been effectively dumped.

"You're left wondering, after this particular case, whether Roger Curry's best interests were served by him being properly identified.- BBC reporter Darragh MacIntyre

HM: And that's what you now believe — that he was abandoned by his own family. It's really much more disturbing than other theories. What have you learned about how he ended up where he was?

DM: There was one big breakthrough in the case for us when a viewer of a BBC News bulletin was so moved by this man with no real identity. She spent hours and hours on the Internet searching for any information that she could find on this man, Roger Curry. You've got to remember, at this stage, the police weren't even convinced that this was his name. He'd only used the name once when he was speaking to care staff. Eventually she comes up with a photograph of our Roger Curry from a 1958 high school yearbook. From a school in a place called Edmonds, which is on the coast between Seattle and the Canadian border. The photograph was taken more than 50 years ago. However, the likeness was there. So we just had that as a starting point. Then we started to tie his life together and we traced his movements down to a suburb of Los Angeles called Whittier.

BBC reporter Darragh MacIntyre looks at a 1958 yearbook photo of Roger Curry with Jim, Curry's former classmate, and his wife Helen. (BBC)

HM: So you get to this suburb, you start looking around —and what do you find?

DM: We get to Roger's last listed address and we discover, in the midst of relative affluence, this one abandoned burnt out house. We speak to neighbours and immediately they identify him. Almost immediately, we realized we had stepped into a pretty dark backstory that involved the burnt out house. It involved a son who had a record. One of the items we discovered on his record was that 17 years ago his father had had to take a restraining order out against him. So we realized there wasn't going to be a happy ending to this tale.

DM: Tragedy and illness have really beset this family. While Roger has dementia, his wife is also ill. In November 2014, their house burnt down in the middle of the night. The couple weren't at home at the time but they did have to move out. Neighbours didn't see Roger again until August 2015, when they found the vulnerable couple camping out in the yard of their burnt out house. The son, Kevin, had been bringing them food and they appeared to be locked in behind the chain fence around the house.

HM: After that the neighbours report what? They noticed Roger wasn't around?

DM: Well, Roger appears in the streets of Hereford three months later. The LA authorities have written that they believe that Roger Curry was surreptitiously taken to England and abandoned by his wife, Mary Jo, and by his son, Kevin. All the evidence that we have seen supports that.

HM: Where is Roger Curry now?

DM: Roger right now is in a care home in Los Angeles. He was flown back in July of last year. I visited him there. I have to say that while I'm certain that his medical needs, his basic needs, are being looked after, the same type of intimate, attentive care that I witnessed when I visited him in his care home in Britain was not evident when I saw him. His hair was matted, he was unshaven, there was a wound on top of his head which had not healed.

HM: It sounds like you don't think he's in a better place then when he was in the UK?

DM: No I don't. You're left wondering, after this particular case, whether Roger Curry's best interests were served by him being properly identified. We hoped it would end with a reconciliation with his family, with a big happy reunion. We didn't expect it to end like this.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For more on this story, listen to our full interview with Darragh MacIntyre.

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