“We decided to send a couple of his private investigators to Mexico to certain places Patrick had talked about,” John writes in Don’t Stop Believin’, out now in her native Australia.
“I asked Gavin if I should get on TV and do a public plea, but he advised against it.”
The investigators placed missing person posters all over Mexico, but “nobody had seen him,” she claims.
In 2016, 11 years after McDermott's disappearance, the National Enquirer reported that he had faked his death to avoid dire financial problems, and was working aboard luxury yachts in Mexico.
John calls reports her former lover is still alive “strange” — but admits “the truth is, I’ll never really know what happened.”
“I lived in pain for so long over this, but I had to teach myself to live in the now, which is an important life lesson," she adds.