In what has become a sort of annual tradition, a new private detective has alleged that Patrick McDermott, the ex-boyfriend of Australian icon Olivia Newton-John, faked his death in 2005 and is now living in Mexico.
The detective, Charlie Parker, told New Idea magazine that a photo discovered “last month on a noticeboard at [a] run-down El Palmar del Camaron beach campsite” shows a man who is almost certainly McDermott. “The widow’s peak is exact. The eyes are very similar and the ears extend down on the head in the same distance,” Parker said. “I believe it’s him.” He says the man in the photograph and McDermott are a “90% match.”
If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve been here before. Investigators Philip Klein and John Nazarian were on the case long before Parker, and New Idea grabbed the torch from another Australian publication, Woman’s Day, who broke its own version of this news in 2016.
Missing from this ever-expanding loop, however, is McDermott’s ex-girlfriend. In an interview with 60 Minutes (the Australian version) last year, Newton-John said she has no idea what happened, and that it’s just one of those things you have to “accept and let go.”
“I live on,” she told them. Which is funny, because I could have sworn McDermott said the same thing.