Where’s Barry? A Connecticut family’s 33-year search for their loved one

Dec. 11, 1990, was the last time anybody saw Barry Sheridan. A Connecticut native, Sheridan was a father, husband, and tugboat sailor working for Moran Towing when he disappeared after his tugboat, the Rhode Island , anchored at Pier 6 in Brooklyn.

The last man to see Sheridan, his crewmate George Forbes, later told detectives that Sheridan left the boat to call his family and wish his daughter Ashlee, who had just turned 5, a happy birthday. Sheridan’s family never received the call.

Instead, Sheridan’s wife, Sandi, was notified by Moran Towing at 3 p.m. the next day that her husband had disappeared. Despite the efforts of the Sheridan family, and the combined efforts of the NYPD, Harbor PD, Coast Guard and a private investigator that the family hired, no trace of Barry has ever been found. Although Sheridan is officially listed as a missing person, his family is convinced that he was a victim of foul play.

For over 30 years, the Sheridan family has tried on-and-off to chase every lead that might lead to the truth of Barry’s disappearance. Jenna Matos, Barry’s niece, decided to take matters into her own hands in 2019, devoting serious time and effort to investigating his disappearance.

“It really hit me that I can’t believe it’s already been 30 years,” said Matos. “I’m definitely the one that’s been holding the reins basically and driving the whole thing.”

The Sheridan family’s pursuit for answers regarding the fate of their long-lost loved one is an experience shared by thousands of families across the United States. Barry is one of 97,127 active missing person cases recorded by the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), which began its missing persons database in 1975.

Due to the nature of NCIC’s data recording, it is difficult to quantify what percentage of missing person cases go unsolved, but it is thought to be under 1 percent . According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons (NamUS) database, there are at least 218 unresolved missing person cases in the State of Connecticut, with the longest unresolved case being opened in 1952.

The Sheridan family’s story shows the lengths families go to find their loved ones, the hurdles they often run into, and the long-lasting impact that unresolved missing person cases have on their loved ones.

The Sheridan family has kept records about Barry’s disappearance. These files include notes taken by three of Barry’s siblings, Dennis, Kathy and Julie Sheridan, internal memos from Moran Towing, and reports from the Coast Guard’s investigation as well as documentation from a private investigator the family hired.

According to the files, Barry’s ship, the Rhode Island , had docked at Pier 6 at 4:30 a.m. on December 11. His only crewmate, the last person to see him alive, was the boat’s captain, George Forbes. Although Barry had worked on the Rhode Island once before, it had been Barry’s first time working with Forbes.

Forbes told the family’s private investigator that they “hung out on the boat” for most of the day. Philip Stuto, the pier foreman for Piers 6 and 7, claimed to have seen Barry walking in the warehouse with an unknown red-haired man around 3 p.m. headed toward where the Rhode Island was docked. Forbes did not match this description. Sailors on a nearby Moran tugboat, the Moira Moran, last saw Barry on board at 7:50 p.m. according to a memo from Moran Towing.

Conflicting that report, however, are notes taken by Dennis Sheridan. Sheridan spoke to Joe Perrera, captain of the Moira Moran , who said he saw ‘both Georges’ on board the Rhode Island , but not Barry. The second George, George Stetson, was the crew mate Barry was supposed to have relieved of duty that day.

Forbes last recalled seeing Barry sometime between 8 and 9:30 p.m. Barry told Forbes that he was going to leave the boat to call his family. Forbes suspected Barry may have wanted “to have a few drinks,” based on the fact that Barry radioed their dispatcher to see if there were any more orders for the day before leaving the ship. Forbes, tired from the day’s work, reportedly went to bed soon after.

Forbes reportedly woke up at 2 a.m. and noticed Barry was not on board. Forbes was not concerned at this time, because he figured Barry may be at a local bar, and he wasn’t required to be on board at the time.

Forbes was concerned, however, when Barry was not on the ship at 8 a.m. Forbes said he found the ladder used to board the boat resting on the deck, and explained it was common protocol amongst sailors coming on or off the boat. Forbes told private investigators that he checked for blood stains between the dock and the boat, to see if Barry may have injured himself while attempting to board.

Forbes radioed Moran’s dispatcher at 9 a.m. to let them know of Barry’s disappearance. At 3 p.m. Moran officials called Barry’s mother’s house. Kathy Sheridan, one of Barry’s sisters who lived there at the time, remembers taking the call.

“It was Moran Towing, and they asked me if Barry was there, I said ‘no,’” said Kathy. “They said, ‘Well, he didn’t show up for work today. We thought, maybe he came home to Connecticut.’”

Barry’s disappearance was reported to New York’s 84th Precinct and the Sheridan family asked Moran to contact the 76th Precinct. Moran officials reportedly tried to no avail. A Detective Southerland of the 84th Precinct arrived at Pier 6 later that day and questioned Forbes. A Sheridan family friend, Manne Krakauer, called Moran at 9 p.m. the next day, Dec. 13. He requested they allow members of the family to come aboard the boat and collect Barry’s belongings. Moran officials stated that both company and Coast Guard policy prevented them from doing so.

By this time, Sandi, Dennis, Kathy’s husband Jack, and one or two of Barry’s friends arrived in Brooklyn to assist police with their investigation. On Dec. 14, officers of the 84th Precinct boarded the boat and collected Barry’s possessions.

Once they were in New York, the Sheridan family made an effort to locate Barry. The group inspected the docks and nearby warehouse, contacted local hospitals to see if anyone matching Barry’s description had been admitted, posted missing person flyers in the nearby area and interviewed people from nearby businesses. Around this time, the family started paying for their own private investigator and on Dec. 17 paid for a private dive company to search the waters surrounding the pier. Both the private divers and Harbor PD divers found nothing.

Police also undertook a search of the pier area and nearby streets with a cadaver dog. The family also hired another private company to scan the area using fish finders, a type of sonar device. The family, private investigators and the police interviewed dozens of people in the Pier area and at nearby businesses, but nobody reported recognizing Barry or witnessed any sign of him either leaving the boat or falling in the water.

Eventually, the case was transferred to an NYPD Missing Persons Detective, Joseph Muldoon. The family’s private investigator report described him as being “very much up on the case,” having made regular inquiries into hospitals and morgues, and filing a missing person’s report for Barry to the NCIC database.

On the week of Dec. 17, Sandi attempted to get the Coast Guard to open an investigation of their own. Per the Coast Guard’s report, filed by a YNC Decker, they were hesitant to open a case because “there was no evidence at that time that Mr. Sheridan had fallen in the water, or that he was injured on the barge.”

Sandi remained in contact with the Coast Guard throughout the next two months. The Coast Guard attempted to placate Sandi’s demands by acting as a mediator between Sandi and Moran when she requested the ship’s gas tanks be searched at the recommendation of her private investigator. Moran declined this measure, saying that doing so would require them to empty the tanks, which would cost anywhere from $10,000-$15,000.

“He [Muller] said they would not spend that type of money for no reason, but if Mrs. Sheridan was willing to pay to have it done, they would consider doing it,” read Decker’s report.

Decker also reached out to a friend of his, referred to only as Mike, who worked as a professional diver, to see if he’d be interested in doing a dive in search of Sheridan. Mike told Decker that “you can’t see anything” when diving, and divers had to “feel” their way around the bottom. He also told Decker that there were strong currents in the area, which could have taken Sheridan away from the pier. Nevertheless, Decker provided Sandi’s number to him, though he admits in his report to not knowing if Mike ever reached out.

After a Jan. 15 phone conversation with Sandi, which Decker described as “not a nice one!,” Sandi worked her way up the Coast Guard’s ladder by reaching out to an unnamed Coast Guard Admiral. As a result, an official investigation was opened on Feb. 1, 1991. On Feb. 4, Decker reported speaking with Moran officials to arrange a search of the ship’s bilges, or below deck area. Moran officials told him the ship was anchored in Bay Ridge and may be moving over the course of the next two days to be loaded. Moran officials were instructed to notify the Coast Guard when it was to be moved so that they could inspect it, but the company never did.

Decker then called an Herb Walling at Moran, who said that Bill Muller, a Moran executive who had been in contact with Decker, was gone on vacation, and did not pass along word that the Coast Guard was looking to inspect the ship. Walling said the ship was now in Bridgeport, but would be in Astoria, Queens “on or about” Feb. 12. Decker told Walling, again, to notify him when the ship had returned to New York City, and again, Moran officials never reached back out.

Coast Guard officials were finally able to board the ship on Feb. 22, after speaking to Mark Vanty, a Moran executive, on Feb. 21. The ship’s fuel tanks, or ullages, were searched by “looking into the tanks with a flashlight.” Decker wrote that all compartments on the ship were searched, and nothing was found. Forbes was interviewed for a second time, and reportedly “added nothing new to the statement he had given the Moran people previously.”

Decker concluded the report by saying, “There is no evidence that marine casualty has occurred. There has been no report of Mr. Sheridan falling in the water or being injured aboard the vessel. Recommend this case be closed to file pending further developments.”

In the end, all the leads turned up short. And while the Coast Guard believed Sheridan must have gone missing on land, both the NYPD and private investigator believed he likely fell into the water and drowned.

“The climbing of the ladder was acknowledged as dangerous by Moran personnel,” read the personal investigator’s report. “Our investigator can testify that it is entirely possible that while climbing that ladder it slipped out from under Barry and he fell between the dock and the boat.”

This answer has never satisfied the Sheridan family. Sheridan was a sailor for over twenty years. He earned a degree in Oceanography Technology from Florida Institute of Technology in 1974, completed a Sea Survival Course and was a professional diver who helped recover artifacts from the shipwrecked ironclad USS Monitor . They don’t think it likely that he drowned.

“The barge was close to the docks,” said Matos. “He would have to fall perfectly flat against the barge basically to be able to fit in that space between the barge and the dock. Even if that had happened, he was an expert diver and swimmer and could hold his breath for a couple of minutes at a time.”

There were other abnormalities discovered after Barry’s disappearance that alarmed the Sheridan family as well.

Within a week of posting missing persons flyers for Barry, the private investigator reported back that several of the posters had been taken down. A nearby bar owner who had a flyer posted told the investigators that a “detective told her that Barry’s body had been found and that the poster could come down.” Stuto, the foreman, had also noticed that a poster had been removed and assumed it was the Port Authority. The private investigator checked with the 84th Precinct and Port Authority PD, neither of which ordered any of the posters to come down.

Another thing that struck the family as odd was a package that Moran Towing sent to Sandi on Dec 29., containing a shirt and jacket that Barry was thought to be wearing at the time of his disappearance. The package came with no note or phone call from Moran to let the family know where or when the items were found, or why they weren’t given to police when they initially searched the barge.

“It was the middle of winter and very cold, so the jacket would’ve been an absolute necessity when leaving the barge,” said Matos.

The family says they were disappointed with the way Moran officials handled the investigation, especially concerning the difficulty the Coast Guard had in getting ahold of them to search the boat. To date, the family has entertained several theories regarding Barry’s disappearance, and believes Barry may have been killed for speaking out about illegal sludge dumping he had allegedly witnessed while working for Moran.

Sludge is an oil byproduct that all large ships produce, because of engines’ oil purification processes. Sludge gets automatically deposited into tanks onboard, and due to environmental concerns, there are strict regulations surrounding its disposal. Various family members’ noted that Barry had told friends he was thinking of blowing the whistle on Moran for their apparent disregarding of these waste disposal rules, a violation which would incur hefty fines on Moran if ever substantiated.

“I know that someone said, maybe Sandi, his wife, said that he was thinking of blowing the whistle on them for doing that,” said Kathy. “If someone got wind of that, that could have sparked something too, right?”

Matos believed that Forbes may have known more than he had let on in his interviews with the police and Coast Guard. Dennis’s notes reveal that he took issue with the “inability of barge mate [Forbes] and/or other employees to account for activities on the day in question.”

“Barge was berthed at 4 am, 12/11/90,” read Dennis’s notes. “What did barge crew do throughout day?”

The family also had the chance to interview Forbes. Kathy recalls it being a couple of weeks after Barry’s disappearance.

“The most I can remember about him is I thought he was nervous,” said Kathy. “But you know, that’s normal, probably, right? After all, you’re facing a family who you know are here to find out what happened to their sibling who died in the course of his work.”

Matos recently ran a criminal background check on Forbes, which revealed a clean record before Barry’s disappearance. After the disappearance, the record is checkered with traffic violations, a license revocation, a misdemeanor assault charge and misdemeanor trespassing charge. Matos thinks that it could imply a guilty conscience.

“My family always said that he was very, very suspicious,” said Matos. “Not necessarily that he did something but that he knew who did. After I got that report a couple of weeks ago that was a big eye opener.”

Moran Towing did not respond to Inside Investigator ’s email or voicemail requests for comment.

The second theory has to do with Barry’s potentially rocky finances. Before moving back to Connecticut in early 1990, Barry lived in Virginia for a couple of months after moving from Mississippi, where he had lived for 7 years. A sailor by trade, moving around often was not something that was particularly uncommon for Barry, but the way he left Mississippi raised a few eyebrows among his family.

“The kids state they were awakened in the middle of the night in Mississippi for a hasty departure to Virginia in the Thunderbird,” read Kathy’s notes, dated Nov. 16, 1994. “Jodi said that there was a big fight over the car missing with no explanation – that Sandi left in the middle of the night with the car and back without it, and when Barry got home, the car was gone.”

Jodi was Sandi’s child from a previous marriage, who Barry raised as his own. Barry had been previously married as well, to a Catherine McCarthy, with whom he had two daughters, Maureen and Trish. Barry and Sandi had one child together, Ashlee, whose birthday tragically aligns with the date of her father’s disappearance.

Julie’s notes indicated that she had hired another private investigator, Bernie Soldate, to look into whether the Thunderbird had been repossessed. Kathy’s said that Connecticut police had no record of repossession and that she doubts “it was repossessed at all.”

“They left Mississippi, and I don’t know what went on there, but they left very quickly,” said Kathy. “They had to leave up and out of there in the middle of the night so obviously they were running from something.”

Sandi’s assumed sale of the car, and the apparent haste in which the couple left for Virginia, made family members wonder if they owed debt to shady figures in Mississippi.

“Maybe he owed money, I don’t know,” said Kathy. “What if someone followed them from there?”

Shortly after Barry’s death, Sandi had a mental break for which she was hospitalized. Quickly thereafter she fell into serious drug addiction, and as a result, Ashlee and Jodi bounced between her custody and the custody of Sandi’s sister-in-law, Donna Cunningham. While the family isn’t certain whether Sandi had dabbled in drugs before Barry’s disappearance, her behavior afterward made Matos wonder if the car was potentially sold to pay off a drug debt.

“He [Barry] had mentioned things to a couple of friends along the way of the troubles that he was having with Sandi, and her drug use and possibly owing money for drugs,” said Matos.

In 1994, Julie spoke to Jon Treat, a friend of Barry’s, who told her that Barry had told him he was “in trouble” right after he had relocated to Virginia. She also spoke to Hal Parchman, a man who knew Barry, but Kathy doesn’t remember how, who recalled Sandi telling him immediately upon asking her about Barry that he was dead.

“Parchman said Barry is dead – first words out of his mouth when Donna told him she was conducting an investigation as to his whereabouts,” read Kathy’s notes. “Supposedly Sandi called and told him this.”

Sandi seemed to blame herself for Barry’s death. A note attributed to Mary Sheridan reads, “Sandi knows it had to do with her.”

“My aunt Sandi, I definitely believe she knows something,” said Matos. “I don’t think she was involved in any way, but I think she knows something.”

Unfortunately, Sandi’s volatile nature after Barry’s disappearance severely strained the relationship between her and the majority of the Sheridan family. Kathy and Matos both said they haven’t spoken to Sandi in years, and Trish, who rekindled her relationship with Sandi 10 years ago, still hasn’t spoken with her “in a while.”

While these two theories seem to hold the most weight among members of the Sheridan family, other possibilities have floated around as well. Stuto noted an unfamiliar black Ford Bronco that hung around the docks that day for several hours; might its occupants have had something to do with it? Many Moran employees were on strike at that time, and Barry was a scab. Could it have been angry strikers? The mafia?

“You don’t know where to go when you don’t have much to go on,” said Kathy. “Your mind goes everywhere.”

Another Missing Persons detective, Det. Kupchinski, thought the posters taken down by someone claiming to be a detective could indicate that Barry was taken into witness protection. Kupchinski told Kathy it’s “not very often they take whole families,” and that if the marriage was rocky, perhaps Barry thought his kids would be better off without him. The Sheridan family is adamant that Barry would never leave his kids, however.

“We know he would never leave his family, he was a good man,” said Matos. “He wrote to all four of his daughters all the time when he was out at sea. He would never leave them, or the rest of the family either, so we know that something terrible happened to him.”

Matos, who’s 37, said she was only four years old at the time of Barry’s disappearance, and her sister was one, which limited the ability of her mother Julie to investigate at the time. Matos promised her mother that she would continue the search as long as she lived.

Matos grew up in Bolton, Connecticut. Her parents, as well as her Aunt Kathy and Uncle Dennis, all built their own houses on the same plot of land owned by their grandparents, which kept the Sheridans a tight-knit family. Her Uncle Tommy also lived there for a while but has since moved.

“We were able to walk through the field over to my grandma’s house, and my uncle [Dennis] actually has a house on that same property too,” said Matos. “So, we all kind of grew up around the same area which was nice.”

Matos now lives in Manchester, where she works for the town’s finance department as an accounting assistant. She has two children of her own, an 11-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son. She also has a stepdaughter with her long-term boyfriend who is 12.

“My kids got to be school age so that definitely freed up a little bit of time,” said Matos.  “I had a lot of paperwork sitting for a long time in a file and I knew at one point I wanted to work on the case as much as I could, so once I realized the 30-year anniversary was coming up, that’s when I really told myself I need to buckle down and try to do what I can to move this forward.”

Matos estimated that it has been a little over 10 years since anybody else from her family actively pursued answers. Around that time, detectives from the NYPD visited Matos’ mother Julie and her Uncle Dennis in Bolton to swab them for DNA that they could possibly match with unidentified remains. Kathy recalls going down to New York and speaking with NYPD detectives about the case but doesn’t know of anything that came of it.

“We don’t get anywhere and we just, I don’t know, you don’t want to think about it,” said Kathy. “Everybody wants to know what happened, but then everybody gets busy with their lives, and before you know it, we’re back thinking about it again.”

Matos has since tried numerous methods to move the case forward. She’s kept in touch with NYPD detectives assigned to her uncle’s case, to check for updates and try and get them to do more, but she said it’s largely been to no avail. She said the detectives change periodically, and she has spoken to “probably about three of them by now.” Matos has also called Moran Towing and left voicemails but hasn’t received any response. She cites her experiences trying to communicate with the two organizations as being the most disheartening part of the process thus far.

“It’s like everyone just wants it to go away, nobody wants to talk about it, nobody wants to look into it any further,” said Matos. “They make me feel like the crazy one for wanting to know the truth and wanting to know what happened.”

Matos said that detectives have told her the only thing they’re doing at this time is cross-checking Barry’s dental records and his family’s DNA with unidentified bodies to see if they can find a match. Matos filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the NYPD in hopes of getting a look at their case files in Jan. 2020, but it was denied in June 2021 on the grounds that the information on file “if disclosed would interfere with law enforcement investigations or judicial proceedings.” Matos just filed another request on May 1, 2024.

“I specifically addressed the explanation given for the previous denial as it does not and should not apply in this case, unless the lead detective gave me incorrect information regarding the status of the case,” explained Matos.

Matos also reached out to a private investigator of her own, Dr. Sarah Stein, back in 2019. Stein had shown interest in pursuing the case, but Matos declined at the time, because it wasn’t financially viable. The two remained in touch, and Matos received advice from Stein until sometime in 2022.

Stein at the time was co-founder of the Center for Unresolved Crime, or CRUC. It has since been renamed to the Stein Institute for Cold Case Resolution, but it’s unclear whether the institute is still active. Stein has experience helping police departments solve cold cases in the past and has written several books and taught numerous college classes on the subject.

“She did go through all my paperwork and basically came to the same conclusion, that he’s definitely dead and believes it was most likely a murder,” said Matos. “She did give us some advice, like possibly trying to contact the media to generate tips.”

Inside Investigator was able to reach Stein, but she declined an offer for an interview. Matos said she took her advice to heart however and has posted informative flyers about Barry on several cold-case or mystery forums and Facebook groups and has also caught the attention of a true crime podcast called Dead and Buried .

“I think podcasts are going to be a big step, just getting the information out there to people,” said Matos. “I know there’s a lot of internet sleuths that like to kind of dig in on stuff like this, and I feel like the more that we get the information out there, the more chance we have of getting some answers.”

Matos described the process of furthering her family’s investigation as “kind of overwhelming.” She said she doesn’t follow a process; she just does whatever she feels she can do to move it forward. It’s made harder by the fact it happened so long ago, because she feels reliant upon the documentation she has and nothing more.

It’s also difficult because many of the people who originally worked on the case or who may have been witnesses to Barry’s disappearance, are either dead or hard to track down. Forbes died in 2010, and two private investigators the family had hired, Soldate and Thomas Flood Jr, died in 2019 and 2011 respectively.

“We don’t have video or anything else to go on because it was so long ago,” said Matos. “So, it’s really hard to make things happen when you don’t have much to work with, and a lot of the people that were involved originally have probably passed away by now.”

Despite the difficulties she has faced, Matos remains persistent.

“Whenever I get a moment is when I kind of pull out my files and work on it,” said Matos. She said the close relationship she had growing up with Ashlee, Barry’s daughter, keeps her going.

“I know that if I ever lost my father, I mean that would be like the most devastating thing I could ever think of in my life,” said Matos. “I would love to give all of the girls some kind of closure as to what happened to their father.”

Although Dr. Stein declined an interview, one of her old co-workers and mentors, Dr. James Adcock, spoke at length with Inside Investigator about the struggles families often face when investigating cases like Barry’s, as well as the steps private investigators take to give families answers. Adcock is the President and Founder of the Mid-South Cold Case Initiative, a non-profit based in Memphis that helps train and work alongside Memphis PD on cold cases.

Adcock’s career first goes back to the 70’s, when in the course of his military service he was sent to a one-year fellowship in forensic medicine. He worked in the Army for a little over 20 years and ended his career as a Senior Supervisory Special Agent from the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command. From there he became a coroner, doing forensic death investigations for six years before getting his doctorate at Jacksonville State University. Adcock went on to become a professor and traveling lecturer on forensic and criminal investigations for several universities, including Yale and the University of New Haven.

Adcock’s first initiative when re-opening investigations is pursuing new evidence, whether that be lab work, fingerprints or additional case files. He said that his second is organizing evidence investigators already have on hand.

“Too many times detectives will be given a case and they go into it and just start reading the file from head to toe. Organize the file first,” said Adcock. “Get it into categories, get it set up properly, then review it.”

Adcock said that digging into the evidence that an investigator has on hand already is an important step because there’s no telling whether new evidence will be worth anything. Looking at existing files can lead investigators to more evidence down the line, he said. Adcock also stressed the need for fresh eyes in investigations, and that too often when detectives are brought in to work for cold case units, they gravitate towards their own cold cases.

“He grabs the cases that he didn’t solve, right?,” said Adcock. “So, what makes you think he’s gonna solve it now? I mean, I hate to say that, but it’s true, he’s got tunnel vision. Get somebody else to look at that case.”

As for Matos, Adcock listed several factors that might hamper her ability to secure the police’s case file on Barry’s disappearance. One of them is the way in which the case is classified.

“Police classify cases in different ways, okay?,” explained Adcock. “It’s either open, which means allegedly ongoing, or it could be closed, or it could be cold and if it’s listed as cold, that prevents them from having to let anybody look at it.”

Adcock said that in the course of working on families’ cold cases, he has often run into trouble securing police case files. He offered a multitude of reasons for why police departments are often hesitant to give their files away, especially on homicide cases, but he was slightly surprised that they didn’t give her a redacted version of the case files once he heard it was classified as a missing persons case.

“That’s a missing persons case, that’s not even a homicide that’s gone cold,” said Adcock. “I’m surprised she hasn’t been able to get all those through FOIA.”

Adcock was less surprised once he was made aware that Matos was only Barry’s niece. In Adcock’s experience, it helps to have the person who officially requests case files be the next of kin, which would likely be one of Barry’s daughters. He said it gives the requester more “ground to stand on.”

“Missing persons, with all the other stuff they [police] have to deal with,” said Adcock. “They’re not going to be too helpful to do much of anything. So, you might be able to convince ‘em ‘Well, let me see the damn file! Let me see what’s there or isn’t there.’ That could be the other issue too; there is nothing there.”

Adcock said that sometimes, police don’t want to release their files out of embarrassment of how scant they are, or perhaps because the file isn’t really there at all. “If there is nothing there, then they’ve got egg on their face and they know it,” said Adcock.

Matos suspected that the file may have been “scrubbed down” at some point, after a conversation she had with a detective.

“He said, ‘There’s nothing to indicate foul play or anything suspicious in the file,’” said Matos. “So I gave him a couple of examples of the suspicious circumstances I was talking about, and he confirmed that he didn’t have that information in his file.”

Adcock recalled a murder case in Memphis in which the department was repeatedly asked by the victim’s family for updates on the case. The department told the family they were waiting on evidence from the lab, but after months and eventually years passed by, nothing came of it. That’s when Adcock “asked the dumb question” of one of his colleagues at the department; whatever happened with that case? Adcock was shocked by the answer.

“They lost the evidence,” said Adcock. “They have no idea where the evidence is.”

He said a detective at the department almost got fired for making it appear to the family that something was being done with the case before verifying to make sure that the evidence was available.

Michael Sheldon, Supervisory Inspector for the Connecticut Cold Case Unit (CTCU), offered a less concerning reason for why departments may not want to release their files. Sheldon said that releasing case files removes “control” of the case from officers, and can directly hurt a detective’s chances of reeling in a suspect because it can turn information that only the killer and the cop working his case would know about into common knowledge.

Sheldon said he once investigated a murder where the killer had locked the victim’s dog in their bathroom, with that sliver of information never being publicly reported. Sheldon questioned a suspect who confessed to the murder, but Sheldon only knew his confession was true after asking him if the victim had any pets.

“He goes, ‘Yeah, I locked her husky in the bathroom,’” said Sheldon. “You know, chills just went down my back, it’s like ‘This is the guy.’ No one knew that, it was never reported, and those are the things law enforcement wants. At the end of the day, I want to rest my hat on knowing no one knew that, only the killer knew that.”

Sheldon said it’s a strategy that has worked for him countless times over his 30 years in law enforcement. Sheldon has been with the CTCU since its inception in 1998 and said that the unit has solved “about 70 cold cases” since. Sheldon said the unit consists of two State’s Attorneys, a paralegal, a Department of Corrections official, three police inspectors and two Hartford PD detectives. He said the unit is equipped to work seven or eight cases at a time.

Both Sheldon and Adcock spoke at length about the limitations police face when investigating cases, especially ones that have gone unsolved for long periods of time such as Barry’s. Both said that police are often overwhelmed with case work, and Adcock said missing persons usually aren’t considered as high a priority with police as other crimes such as murders or kidnappings.

“This is a New York City case; they probably had 10, or 15, 20 others missing that same day,” said Adcock. “They don’t have the manpower.”

To give an idea of how many missing persons cases NYPD precincts see a year: NYC’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said over 13,000 people were reported missing last year, with hundreds labeled “missing long term” (over 60 days). NamUS shows 110 open missing persons cases for Kings County, NY, where Barry went missing, with the oldest case being opened in 1974. While NamUS isn’t an exhaustive list, as departments aren’t required by federal law to file missing persons reports in NamUS like they are for the NCIC, it does allow public access to individual cases itemized per state and county while NCIC does not. As a result, it is the best possible way to get an idea of an area’s caseload.

Sheldon said that the CTCU often finds itself investigating cases that have only been open for less than a year, simply because many precincts just can’t handle the caseload expected of them.

“Some of those detectives, could be anywhere from 50 or 60 cases they’re holding each,” said Sheldon. “It isn’t uncommon for a detective to ask the Cold Case Unit, ‘Hey do you think you guys can help with this?’”

The reality of these high caseloads necessitates police and investigators to go with cases that have the highest probability of being solved. Sheldon said there was a difference between “suspicions and proof,” and Adcock added that even with the suspicious circumstances surrounding Barry’s case, nothing short of a witness or physical evidence can make officers elevate his disappearance from a missing person’s case to a criminal investigation.

“We try to get guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, not just probable cause,” said Sheldon. “We like to come in, where when you bring a case to court you feel like, ‘This is solid.’”

Despite this, both investigators also stated that family’s input is heavily valued during investigations, and that family members’ insights are critical to identifying a possible motive for a person’s disappearance. Adcock said that while it isn’t uncommon for the theories of grief-stricken families to be far-fetched, it doesn’t automatically disqualify them.

“I’d have to see some research on it, but there is no question that families sometimes get carried a little away with things, and it’s out of good reason in their own hearts,” said Adcock. “It does happen, but it’s not as often as everybody thinks it is.”

Both acknowledged the importance of victimology in missing persons cases, which involves asking deep and personal questions to a victim’s family to try and get an idea of why the person may be missing, or who, if anybody, had a reason to want them gone. Adcock said that probing victims’ families to try and unearth a victim’s secret life is often crucial in identifying a motive for their disappearance.

“Everyone of us has our public life, we have our private life, and whether you want to admit it or not, you’ve got a secret life that nobody else knows about,” said Adcock. “Sometimes you have to get into habits and routines and where they go and what they do and why they do it. Sexual preferences, everything, because you don’t when one of those things is gonna strike on a bell.”

Sheldon said in missing persons cases, just like in murder cases, investigators always want to know the “who, what, where, when and why.” Who the person was last seen with, what they were doing or wearing, where they were last seen, when they were last seen, and why might they have disappeared? Sheldon said that different people disappear for different reasons, and it’s important for investigators to try and find out what their victim’s reason might have been.

“Some people don’t want to be found,” said Sheldon. “Then there’s those that you know obviously something’s happened to this person.”

Both acknowledged many of the same difficulties in resolving long-standing missing persons cases that Matos has encountered, such as dead witnesses and missing documentation, as well as factors such as degraded DNA evidence, lack of a body, and little to no leads.

“You lose the chance to get evidence, you lose the chance to be able to prove what a person’s telling you because too much time has gone by,” said Sheldon. “Records are gone, documents are gone, cars missing, destroyed, you know all these little pieces that we look at in cold cases.”

On the other hand, Sheldon said that sometimes time can help a case, such as in instances where witnesses only feel safe to come forward and speak after a crime’s perpetrator has died. Sheldon also spoke at length about the increased ability of officers today to use DNA or dental remains to identify unidentified bodies and match them with records present in NCIC and NamUs.

“We work closely with the medical examiners with unclaimed persons, we’re always trying to identify next of kin,” said Sheldon. “We do a lot in the Cold Case Unit with bodies that float down the Connecticut River, we have no idea who they are, so we’ll start to look at forensic genealogy to see if we can start to identify the person. This happens quite a bit, and we always try to use new technology to help us figure out who these people are.”

Despite the stacked odds, both Sheldon and Adcock said that families that remain polite and persistent with police, and follow up often, can inspire the officers working their case to be more proactive in pursuing it. Adcock stressed the importance of politeness, and recalled one instance where a frustrated mother ruined her chances of getting police to investigate her child’s murder by vocalizing her anger towards investigating officers.

“The sad part of it was I understood her frustrations,” said Adcock. “As much as you may be angry and feel that way, you’re gonna turn them off and you’re gonna get zilch.”

Adcock recommended families in Matos’ situation hire trained investigators and put their faces in front of their loved ones’ caseworkers as frequently as possible.

“Stay with it every three months,” said Adcock. “You call him up again, if he doesn’t call you right away, you just keep doing it.”

For families looking to get case files, if FOIA doesn’t work, having the next of kin go before a judge might.

“Only thing she can do next is go to a judge and say, ‘OK, judge, here’s the problem,” said Adcock. “I’d be inclined to say, ‘Look, all I want is a copy of the report to look at.’”

Kathy Sheridan is 72 now and lives in Manchester, CT. She was the second youngest of eight growing up. The first born was Paul, who passed away in 2007 at the age of 66. Then came Patricia, who’s 80, Tommy, 78, Mary Anne, 77, Barry, who would be 75 now, Dennis, 73 and then Kathy. After Kathy came Julie, Matos’ mother, who is now 70.

“You notice I have to recite them to figure out who’s next,” said Kathy. “When we said prayers at night we had to go through the whole thing, so I’ve got it down to a tee, I just have to recite it every time.”

Kathy described her and her siblings’ upbringing on their family farm in Bolton as idyllic. The kids took care of their family’s cows and horses and spent their free time climbing trees, making forts, playing hide-and-seek and red-light green light. They had a pond nearby which they would use to fish in the summer and spring and use to skate and sled in the winter. When it was dinner time, their mom would ring a bell outside, and the kids would run back home. The Sheridans, who are of Irish and Italian ancestry, were devout Catholics and went to church every Sunday. Kathy now works as the office administrator at a Catholic school.

“You know how some people always say, ‘I want to give my kids what I never had?’” asked Kathy. “Well, I’d like to give my kids what we did have, because we had the best childhood ever.”

Kathy considered herself close to Barry throughout his life, though she admitted it was tougher as they got older, due to his constant moving for work and school. Kathy described Barry as a prankster and a troublemaker, but also a kind-hearted person who was good to those that knew him.

“He’d give you the shirt off his back,” said Kathy. “I noticed that even when he was living in Florida, when I went down to visit him, he was just so nice to everybody. Sometimes to his detriment, but that was just the way he was.”

A musical family, Kathy said they would often sing at reunions.

“Barry was the only one who was tone-deaf,” recalled Kathy with a laugh.

Kathy described Barry as a great father to his daughters. When he wasn’t away at sea, he was with his kids. When he was away at sea, he would write and call them as frequently as he could.

“When he had the kids, he was good,” said Kathy. “He was a good husband too. I never saw any problems with his interactions with his wife or kids or anything, it was all good.”

Trish Sheridan, Barry’s oldest daughter from his first marriage, said the same.

“If he was anywhere near us in Florida, he would always make the trip to us, even if only for the day,” said Trish. “If he was on the boat, I remember one time my mom surprised us and he was dumped in Fort Pierce, which is where we were living, so we got to spend the day with him there.”

Trish is 46 years old and has a younger sister, Maureen, who is 43. Ashlee, Barry’s only biological daughter with Sandi, is her half-sister. Trish also has three younger half-siblings from when her mother remarried whom she considers her full siblings as well.

“They’re not my half-brothers and sisters to me, they’re my brothers and sisters,” said Trish.

Trish now lives in North Carolina and has four kids of her own, three adults and one minor, but was raised in South Florida by her mother, Kathy McCarthy, who divorced Barry when Trish was about 4-years old. Despite their divorce, Trish said her mother and father “remained best friends,” and she saw Barry often.

“My mom never talked bad about my dad, she never kept us from being able to see him,” said Trish. “He would come and stay at my mom’s parents’ house in Fort Pierce if he was anywhere near us and come and stay for the night.”

Trish said that she spent summers with Barry and the Sheridan family up in Bolton. When Trish’s first stepfather was in the picture, he and her mother drove Trish and Maureen up to see Barry in Mississippi. They also spent a few weeks with Barry in Virginia, helping him load up the U-Haul and going with him on his move back up to Connecticut. Trish always saw Barry as her father and loved him dearly.

“There was a specific song, and I can’t remember the name of the song he’d play, and he would put us on his feet and dance around the house while we stood on his feet,” said Trish. “That was one of my most fond memories with him.”

Two other memories stuck out to Trish as well; one summer spent with him in Gulfport, Mississippi, where he cooked live crabs with the kids and one got stuck to the spoon, Thanksgivings spent with Barry, where the two would split the wishbone.

“It flew across the kitchen, and it was screaming,” said Trish, recalling the crab incident with a laugh. “Every Thanksgiving, if we were with him, we would always get the wishbones out of the turkey, let it dry out and split it together.”

Both Kathy and Trish vividly remember when they found out about Barry’s disappearance. For Kathy, it was the day of the disappearance; she took the phone call from Moran, and remembered worrying with the rest of the Sheridan family in Bolton before her brothers left the next day. Trish learned the day after his disappearance: she took a phone call that morning from Sandi, asking if her mom was there.

“She said, ‘Hi, how are you? Is your mom home?’,” said Trish. “‘No, she’s at work.’ She said, ‘I’m just trying to get some ideas for Christmas and your birthday, can you give me your mom’s work number?’ I had no idea.”

When Trish returned home from school, she saw several cars in the driveway. Her mother’s car was there, which she remembered being odd, because her mother always got home after them. Her grandfather’s car was there, as well as cars belonging to her mother’s best friend and Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor. She recalled walking through the backdoor to her living room with Maureen, seeing them all sitting together, her mother looking devastated.

“She told us to have a seat, she had to tell us something, and we did,” said Trish, fighting tears. “She told us our dad was gone, that he had disappeared and they didn’t know where he was.”

Trish recalled feeling “so lost,” and had a feeling she would never see him again. She was 12 years old at the time.

“It was awful going down there and seeing it, you know, that area where it happened and wondering what happened,” said Kathy, who visited Pier 6 in the spring of ‘92 with both Trish’s mom and Sandi. Kathy said that going all this time without knowing what happened, “leaves you empty and sad.”

“Time has a way of softening things a little bit but dredging it back up is going to bring it all back,” said Kathy. “You kind of bury it for a little bit and then it always comes out again, you know, it never goes away.”

Kathy said it has made her question the fairness of life, as well as her religion at times, but “not for long, because you have to believe this is what was meant to be, for one reason or another.” She recalled her mother being especially devastated, and Barry’s daughters as well. But perhaps nobody was as immediately impacted as Sandi.

“She just completely went off the deep end since then, she’s been an addict ever since,” said Matos.

Sandi was hospitalized for a time after Barry’s disappearance, and when she returned, she turned to drugs to ease her pain. It wasn’t long before the children in her custody, Jodie and Ashlee, were sent to live with Sandi’s brother and his wife down in Florida. Trish recalls Sandi living with her family for a while in Florida. Her mother, who’s 40 years sober from alcohol, knew what it was like to struggle with addiction and offered to help Sandi clean up.

“She lived with us for a short time after my dad disappeared, when she got out of the VA hospital,” said Trish. “She lived in our home with my mother and stepfather while she was getting custody back of Jodie and Ashlee who were with her brother at the time.”

Ashlee and Jodie bounced between the custody of Sandi and her brother throughout their childhood. While Jodie is now doing well, married and working as a nurse, Ashlee unfortunately fell on hard times in her adulthood, developing drug problems of her own and going in and out of jail. Sandi is still in Florida and has been dealing with mental and physical health issues. Matos and Trish said that both were close to Ashlee growing up, but Matos hasn’t spoken to her in about 10 years and Trish hasn’t in about 5 years.

Matos thought that Ashlee took Barry’s loss especially hard because he had disappeared on the way to wish her a happy birthday. Like her mother before her, Matos thinks a part of Ashlee has always blamed herself for his disappearance.

“Especially for her sake, I really wish that we could just figure out what happened because I feel in a way that she kind of blames herself,” said Matos. “I think subconsciously she probably feels some guilt about that, and that currently has a lot to do with where she is currently in life.”

For Trish, she said that Barry’s loss impacted the way both her and Maureen interacted with men throughout their lives. Introspective and brutally honest, she fought through tears as she recounted the myriad ways that her father’s absence impacted her growing up.

“I sought out relationships with men, I was pregnant at 17,” said Trish. “I had older boyfriends, I clung to my best friends’ fathers just to have that fatherly relationship with someone.”

She said her whole life she only had long-term relationships with men, and attributed both her relationships with them and the young age at which she had children a result of her looking for “that unconditional love for somebody that I knew my dad had for me, and I had for him, but that was gone, that was taken away from me.”

Trish described herself as the emotional one and Maureen as the angry one; Maureen rebelled against her mom and stepfather and got into abusive relationships with older men.

“Kind of in the same way but a different way,” said Trish. “A lot more angry, her and my stepfather never really got along to begin with, and it made it worse when my dad disappeared.”

Both Trish and Kathy said that not knowing Barry’s fate has denied them the ability to heal from his loss. After Barry was declared legally dead in 2000, the family held a mass in his memory at church and then a celebration of Barry’s life at Kathy’s house in Bolton. Kathy said it was nice, but it still provided no closure.

Trish described what it would mean for her to find out the truth.

“It would mean that somebody besides us finally pays for it, because we’ve paid for it for 33 years,” said Trish. “We’ve paid not knowing, our kids not knowing their grandfather, not having Dad to walk me down the aisle, those kinds of things. I’ve paid for it my whole life, and I think it’s somebody else’s turn!”

Trish imagined looking whoever was responsible in their eyes and letting them know, it was their time to pay.

Matos said that she is excited to see what Cold and Buried could mean for her investigation. She described Nat Slater, one of the co-hosts, as “very passionate about this and she’s been a huge motivating factor for us.” Both Matos and Trish have been in contact with the podcast; Matos to share her evidence and thoughts, Trish to share her experiences and perspective.

Several members of the family have tried in the past, to varying degrees of success, to publicize the case; a story in Newsweek was published at the time of Barry’s disappearance, Sandi and Kathy wrote letters to America’s Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries , and Trish recalled Maureen reaching out to shows such as Oprah and Montel as a teenager. Matos said she herself has written to Dateline , to no avail.

Matos’ renewed drive for answers has inspired increased action from Trish. Trish said that she was fearful before of what investigating could mean for her and her children. She didn’t want to potentially put any of her kids at risk.

“I had little kids, and I didn’t want to dredge up something that could be potentially dangerous for my family,” said Trish. “Now my kids are adults, all but the one, so I’m not giving up this time. It’s time.”

Matos said that two things she hopes to do soon is visit Moran Towing in person and visit Pier 6 to see the area for herself, and hopefully meet up with the detective currently assigned to Barry’s case in person. Her biggest hope regarding the police is to get them to re-interview whoever is still alive.

“Re-interviewing everybody basically, and kind of tracking down the original investigators possibly to see if they’re still alive.” Said Matos. “That would be a start, in my opinion. So, re-interview and interview Sandy if they can.”

Matos is determined. Just like Adcock and Sheldon had advised, Matos and Trish both said they would tell other families facing similar situations not to give up. Kathy advised them to fight through their grief, pray often, and “keep fighting.”

Amid their search for answers, and in the absence of Barry, the family has found their own ways to keep his legacy alive. For Matos, she’s inherited Barry’s love of the sea, and has since passed it on to her own children.

“One of my biggest interests in life is the ocean, and I think about my uncle a lot with that because he was so passionate about the ocean and diving,” said Matos. “I actually have always wanted to be scuba certified and I finally did it a couple of years ago.”

Her daughter followed suit and got her own scuba certification a little over a year ago. The two went on their first dive together in Tigertail Lake in Florida. Matos explained that you must be 10 years old to get your scuba certification, and now that her son has told her he wants to get certified as well, the family plans on getting him certified after his birthday in December, when they visit again next April.

Kathy said that she named her youngest child Barry, and at times he reminds her of her brother.

“He does remind me of him,” said Kathy. “Sometimes he even looks like him, some expressions he makes he looks like him. And I think he’s honored to be named after his uncle.”

The post Where’s Barry? A Connecticut family’s 33-year search for their loved one appeared first on Connecticut Inside Investigator .