No police file on man who faked death

THE home town police of a British man accused of defrauding pension payments and faking his own death yesterday said they had yet to receive an official complaint on the case.

Dorset Police said despite numerous media queries it had no active files on Walter Dominy — the 71-year-old man reported to have faked his own suicide to dodge mounting debts.

Having abandoned a failed business venture in Kilkenny, Mr Dominy left a suicide note in his car while travelling on the Rosslare to Fishguard ferry in 1993. Until this week he was considered missing, presumed drowned, having left behind a wife and family of four.

However, yesterday an English newspaper published pictures of a man and identified him as Mr Dominy, now living with his wife near Toulouse.

Mr Dominy’s daughter Lorna told the paper the family was devastated after her father supposedly jumped from the Irish Ferries’ vessel 15 years ago Miss Dominy said she was reintroduced to her father three months later at a caravan in Northern Ireland after he had made contact with his wife and went into hiding.

“Our home was put up for sale, then suddenly three months later mum announced out of the blue that dad had contacted her and was alive and well.

“She was clearly overjoyed. But us kids were left burning with anger that someone we loved so dearly had so cruelly conned us,” he said.

The man, now identified as Mr Dominy, is living in France and reportedly claiming three pensions fraudulently, one in his own name.

Scotland Yard said it would be practice in the case of any person faking their own death for the police force in their home town to handle the investigation.

A Dorset Police spokeswoman said: “We have no records on our files. We have had a lot of calls about it today but unfortunately we have nothing to report at this stage.”

In 1993, Mr Dominy is understood to have assumed the identity of an ex-neighbour Jim Kealy and even began working in Stormont for the British government.