Dead man’s identity revealed eight years after discovery on Galway beach
THE ‘man from nowhere’ – whose body was found close to a Connemara lake nearly eight years ago – has this week been positively identified by Galway Gardaí.
He is Arno Schmidt from Neumunster, Kiel, in Northern Germany, whose body was discovered by a hunting party in a wooded area near Lough Inagh in North Connemara on December 8, 2006.
For several years, his body lay in Galway’s University Hospital Morgue, as Gardaí sought the help of Interpol and the international media in an effort to identify him – from an early stage their efforts were concentrated in the greater North German area.
The ‘best before’ date on a Tropicana orange juice pack found on the man helped Gardaí to identify his time of death as late 2005 – probably between November 10 and December 24.
Strangely, the late Mr. Schmidt carried no personal ID on him, but a cleaning cloth for his glasses that carried the name of an optician’s premises in North Germany, steered the Gardaí in that direction.
A fresh look at the case last December by a team of detectives under Chief Superintendent Tom Curley at Galway’s Mill Street Garda Station led to a renewed media appeal in North Germany this summer, with a brother of the dead man, and a friend, helping to identify him.
Some years back the late Mr. Schmidt had been laid to rest at Omey Island Cemetery.
See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.