A fresh investigation into the disappearance of a Harvard millionaire who vanished without trace on a remote Donegal island and which sheds new light on the case will be screened on TG4 tonight. Arthur Kingsley Porter, 50, was last seen alive by his wife Lucy on the island of Inishbofin in July 1933. He disappeared while out walking but no body was ever recovered.
An inquest – the first held in the Irish State without a body – accepted his wife’s opinion that the internationally-renowned academic slipped, fell into the ocean, and was washed out to sea. However, many of the islanders and a surviving relative of Porter’s believe he may have staged his death to create a new secret life for himself abroad.
“What I believe happened, to put it simply as possible, is that he faked his own death,” Porter’s grand-nephew Scott Arneill said. Porter taught art history at Harvard. He and his wife Lucy bought Glenveagh Castle in Co Donegal in 1929 for £5,000 which today forms part of Glenveagh National Park. The case is re-examined by journalist and filmmaker Kevin Magee.
In the hour-long documentary, Magee uncovers new details about Porter’s disappearance including some previously unseen material that lay undetected in a Harvard archive for decades. Included is the first broadcast of a tape recording of a late friend of Lucy Porter’s speculating on what may have happened after the millionaire had changed his will.
Ar Iarraidh/Missing will be broadcast on TG4 on Wednesday, September 7 at 9.30pm.
Watch YouTube clip from Ar Iarraidh at https://youtu.be/zQzhaI4P414
