A British TV reporter was the person who finally spotted Michael Mosley’s body several days after the doctor went missing, despite a huge search and rescue operation across a Greek island.
David Blackmore, 37, who has worked as a producer and reporter for This Morning since 2015, was supposed to be interviewing the mayor of Symi when he arrived to find Eleftherios Papakalodouka boarding a boat at Pedi marina and jumped aboard.
“Surreally, several tourists were also hitching a lift,” Mr Blackmore told The Independent.
“They had no idea what we were doing but the mayor’s plan had been to show me the caves near Agia Marina, where it was suspected Michael might have fallen.
“We had to drop the tourists off first, so the boat pulled into the bay and the Greek photographer and I began taking pictures of the area – you never know what you’ll need in terms of footage when you work in TV. The boat then left the marina area and travelled to the caves, but on the way I saw something on the rocks. ‘What’s that there?’ I asked the cameraman, not realising at first that it was a body.”
He said it looked out of place among the rocks and the scrubby land of Agia Marina’s scenery, beyond the sunbed-lined bay.
“It was a very dark colour, black, and the rest of that area is all shrubby grey and green. It was then that the photographer asked me if it could be a body,” Mr Blackmore said.
After zooming in on the image taken on Mr Blackmore’s mobile and the photographer’s camera, they showed the image to the mayor but still found it “impossible to ascertain” whether it could be Dr Mosley.
The mayor directed the boat towards the original cave area, where the TV doctor might have landed after falling from the mountain, or been washed into if he’d surfaced from the sea.
Then the boat swung back around to look at the spot on the mountain that Mr Blackmore had identified, and tried to take some more pictures.
It wasn’t until they had travelled back to Pedi and sat in the Blue Corner café that the photographer zoomed in on the photo as far as his camera would allow, then took a picture of it with his iPhone and zoomed in again.
“At this point the shock set in,” said Mr Blackmore. “He turned the phone to me and just said: ‘look’. It was very clear to us at that point that it was a male body.”
There had been a flash of light in the picture, which they now saw was a watch. “The man’s arm was thrown across his chest and his watch glinted in the sun,” Mr Blackmore added.
“We could see the umbrella, and the blue clothes from all the CCTV imagery of Michael Mosley’s last movements. We were now pretty certain it was him, and it was at that moment that I told the mayor and the mayor called all of the relevant authorities into Saint Nicolas to cordon off the area.
“He also phoned the Agia Marina bar and had one of the men who work there go up to the fence where the body lay and check it was a body.”
Mr Blackmore, who has previously worked with Dr Mosley and his wife Dr Clare Bailey Mosley, said it felt more like “chance” that he was the one to locate the body.
“This area has been so searched so maybe there was something unique about the viewpoint from that boat and the angle from which we looked back at the marina – had it been a chance? Luck? I’ve seen helicopters fly directly over this area.
“More than that, you just don’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. We all still hoped he’d turn up alive somewhere else and that something else had happened. My heart sank when I saw the umbrella – it had to be him.”
His heart sank for Dr Mosley’s wife, he said, because it was less than 24 hours after the first statement from the family described the “most long and unbearable days” while they waited for news.
“It definitely hits hardest that it’s someone that you know, have spoken to, have been in communication with. And I’ve covered some huge news stories, but this is the first dead body I’ve seen. And I kind of knew him,” he added.
“The recovery of his body here is one more piece of the jigsaw but now we’re just waiting for the post-mortem to tell us what happened between the fact that he made it to Pedi at about 2pm on Wednesday and was found around 6km away, here in Agia Marina yesterday.
“There’s some relief obviously, in locating him.
“In the studio they told me Clare was glad we had found him. There’s so much sadness in not finding him alive but it’s the not knowing that causes so much pain in these situations, I think. You don’t want him to be assumed to be taking any glory in it but it’s some relief, I hope for the family, to know now.”
The 67-year-old was last seen leaving Saint Nikolas beach at around 1.30pm on Wednesday, setting off for a coastal walk in searing heat without his mobile phone.
Tributes have been pouring in for the medic, whose loved ones have described him as “extremely kind” and a “brilliant science broadcaster” after his death.
