Mystery death of Dubliner on Majorca stag weekend

JOEY McGORIAN was the type of person who kept in touch, so when he went missing during a stag weekend on a Spanish island, his girlfriend back home was baffled and frightened.

Early yesterday afternoon, mother-of-one Colette Bennett received the worst news possible. Joey’s body had been found, four days after they last spoke.

“He was the type of person if I went up to bed he rings me from down the stairs, or sends me text messages saying ‘I love you’,” Colette, his partner of three years, said yesterday, before hearing the terrible news.

Over the four days of his stay in the resort, Joey, a 33-year-old Dubliner, had phoned 11 times.

In his last call from the Majorcan resort of Santa Ponsa to the Shannon home he shared with Colette, Joey said he was fed up with the drinking and wondered what he was doing on a four-day stag party. During the call, which was made shortly before midnight on Monday, he said he just wanted to come home.

His body was discovered at 6am yesterday morning. Investigators are attempting to establish the cause of death, but at this stage they do not suspect foul play.

Spanish police are also trying to piece together his movements. Joey did not return to the apartment he was sharing with his friends, and they left Majorca without him, arriving back in Dublin around 9pm on Tuesday night.

They took his belongings with them, including a Dublin GAA shirt Colette had bought for his birthday in a few weeks.

Colette filed a missing persons report at Shannon Garda Station, and Interpol and the Spanish police were informed. Holiday representatives separately filed a report when he failed to turn up for his flight.

In that last phone call, Joey had told Colette he was “about two hours away from the lads” and she took that to mean he went for a long walk. “It was not unlike him to go away like that,” she said.

He had sounded in great form on the phone, chatting to Colette’s 11-year-old son Kevin, she said.