Shelagh McDonald - Implications for Richey

[Jimi A]

So I'm at work supposed to be writing something on Pussy Riot but scrolling through Facebook and come across THIS clickbait about a Scottish songstress who supposedly disappeared only to re-emerge 30 years later to discover she had become somewhat of a cult icon in her absence.

Seemed like a fairly unlikely story, but it turns out Shelagh McDonald did indeed have a bad LSD trip causing her to take a relatively spontaneous decision to remove herself from the public eye leading to an apparent 'disappearance' unbeknownst to her. She gives her account HERE in The Guardian.

Obviously you can't help draw parallels with Richey's disappearance. Given that he gave the lyrics to what would become JFPL, gave various people apparent leaving gifts plus some sort of love letter there does seem to be a degree of forward planning to it. But given his fragile mental state, the fact he appears to have lived in his car for a number of days and the fact he left on a day he was supposed to be going to the States with JDB I can't help feel like this was a man without clear direction or an idea of what they were doing or where they were going.

Given that we live in a world where there is CCTV everywhere and its impossible to do anything without a debit/credit card, the lack of any positive sightings in so many years plus the relatively recent decision by the Edwards family to have him declare dead it does look increasingly like there will be no decisive conclusion as to what happened, with the most likely answer being that he chose to take his own life.

However, just reading this story now I can't help but hope maybe he is out there somewhere not realising just how badly his friends and family miss him.