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Darryl Ferneyhough went missing on the morning of Sunday, May 13, 2001. He was thirty years old, out, well known and well connected in the gay bar community, was partners with actor, filmmaker, performance artist JohnnyTerris?, and worked as a meat cutter at Sobeys on Queen St1
Apparently completely unrelated, BrianGeorge went missing the same Saturday evening / Sunday morning.
there is one more pretty awful photo of Darryl here.
Reprinted with permission from the July 12, 2016 issue of FrankMagazine
By Bev Keddy bev@frankmagazine.ca
For most families, Mother's Day is a time of celebration of family, and for mothers to bask in the joy of being one.
But for Shelly and Evelyn Ferneyhough, Mother's Day signifies heartache. On Mother's Day, 1992, their daughter died of cancer. Nine years later, on Mother's Day 2001, their son Darryl disappeared. They only had the two kids.
Darryl had everything to live for. He was a good looking guy, with blond hair and blue eyes. The five-foot-11, 162-pound, 29-year-old was healthy and happy, and had just been promoted to butcher at the Queen Street Sobeys. He had been trained in the art of meat-cutting by his dad, who co-owned S&S Meat Market in Sydney Mines.
Darryl lived on Portland Street in Dartmouth with his roommate Erin MacDonald?, whose father David had once been mayor of North Sydney.
For a time, there was also a third wheel at Casa Darryl: Erin's baby daddy.
Although neither Shelly nor Evelyn can remember his name, the squatter apparently owned a tattoo shop on Gottingen Street, and was supposedly involved in the drug trade.
While crashing at Erin and Darrylís, this fellow ate their food, laid around, watched TV, didnít pay any rent or contribute to the household in any way other than his sparkling personality.
About six weeks before he disappeared, Evelyn says that Darryl confronted Erin and said, "He goes or I go!" The man went. Shelly tells me that after Darryl disappeared, Erin approached her ex and asked him if he knew anything about what happened to Darryl. He denied knowing anything about the disappearance. He left town not long after, and settled in B.C. Last anyone I spoke to had heard, Erin was living in South Korea.
In his spare time, Darryl hit the Halifax clubs often, and would sometimes crash at an apartment belonging to his cousins, Kim MacKeigan and her sister Jamie, behind the Marquee Club in the North End.
CBC Radio's Candy Palmater would later write about having been with Darryl at Club NRG on Gottingen Street the week before he went missing.
"He and I danced up a storm," she recalls in a June, 2007 article in The Daily News.
On Saturday night, May 12, 2001, close to midnight, Darryl borrowed five bucks and a spare apartment key from Kim and headed off to Club NRG. Jamie was out that night selling flowers at local bars.
As I understand it, Erin saw Darryl at NRG that night and wanted him to go home with her. But he said no, that he was going to spend the night at his cousin's.
Darryl remained at Club NRG until about 1:30 Sunday morning. At 3:40 a.m., Jamie observed Darryl running past her as she sat in a friend's car, after an evening's flower sales. He was running toward the Marquee Club, but away from the apartment building. It was three days before that information made its way to Darryl's parents, and then to police.
Speaking to me for this article, Halifax Regional Police spokesthingy Dianne Woodworth says that Darryl's case is open and is currently assigned to an investigator in the Integrated Criminal Investigation Division, which encompasses missing persons. She says Darryl's credit cards and bank accounts have remained untouched since his disappearance and that there have been no confirmed sightings of Darryl since Jamie saw him run by on that early morning 15 years ago.
Darryl's parents, who split several years before their son's disappearance, left no stone unturned in the search. They plastered every lamppost they could find with posters. They hired psychics. They even hired a dive team. No luck.
A friend who worked for the Bridge Commission told them on the QT that there had been no jumpers the night Darryl disappeared. Shelly says that, by contrast, the police didn't do a whole lot, at one point speculating that Darryl had just gone on "a road trip."
Dianne Woodworth politely disagrees, insisting that Darryl's case is an important one, and asks that anyone with any information about his disappearance to please come forward. "Sometimes the most minute detail can help progress a case," she notes.
For Shelly's part, he's convinced that there was -- and possibly still is -- a serial killer in the Halifax area, and this killer may have got his son. Shelly's current wife, Diane, remembers Halifax Regional Police announcing the dissolution of their serial killer task force, due to lack of funding, just two days after Darryl went missing.
"I'm looking for a ghost," Darryl's father said to me more than once during our chat.
If you know anything about the disappearance of Darryl Ferneyhough, contact your local police service or Crimestoppers.
Shelly Ferneyhough holding a picture of his son, Darryl in 2016-06
Reprinted with permission from the November 15, 2016 issue of FrankMagazine
By Bev Keddy bev@frankmagazine.ca
It may be cold comfort for Shelly Ferneyhough, but the provincial Justice Department's Rewards for Major Unsolved Crimes Program, founded in 2006, is here to stay, as it is a proven success.
In March of 2016, the maximum reward of $150,000 was doled out to a tipster whose information helped police arrest and charge Kale Gabriel with the 2010 murder of Ryan White.
Sydney Mines butcher Shelly is the father of Darryl Ferneyhough, who disappeared after he was last seen running on Halifax's Gottingen Street in May, 2001 (Frank 745). Shelly believes police have not been as attentive to his son's case as they could be, and points to the rewards program as proof: Darryl's case is not on that list.
While the program is administered and funded by the province, and Justice Minister Diana Whalen has the final say about which cases are added, suggestions come from police agencies across Nova Scotia. RCMP communications gal Jennifer Clarke tells me the Mounties only submit cases that involve missing persons where foul play is suspected, unsolved murders, or unidentified human remains involving suspicious circumstances.
Halifax Police spokesthingy Dianne Woodworth says their process is similar, which disqualifies the Ferneyhough case. As far as police are concerned, she says there's nothing "at this point" that leads them to believe his disappearance was suspicious. If the circumstances aren't suspicious, there might be no one to arrest, and no way for the tipster to collect their reward.
But without potential reward money to entice someone to come forward with information about what happened to his son, Shelly Ferneyhough could well go to his grave not knowing what happened to Darryl.
At presstime, the province was offering a reward for the successful resolution of 85 cases.
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