Jeff Nutley tiptoes around his little grandson Tommy while making a gin and tonic for cousin Diana at the Nutley family home in Caldicot. Jeff is back from a day on the golf course where he laughs at winning just £2 while his wife Catherine and their daughter Helen entertain grandchild number two, Molly.
“Do you like my new kitchen,” Jeff asks, proudly showing off his navy and cream design and the long thin dining table he’s recently upcycled. He places a collection of photographs carefully on the table of his son James and poses for a picture alongside Catherine without direction. They've done it all before, and they hope this time their efforts to retell James’ story will lead to him being discovered.
It’s almost two decades since James disappeared in Tenby in October, 2004, plunging the family into one of Wales’ most notorious missing person stories in recent history. According to the charity, Missing People, James has now been missing for the longest period of time of anyone on its list for Wales. You can get more story updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletters here.
“We haven’t had a week like this in years, probably ever since James went missing,” Jeff tells WalesOnline, reflecting on a few days of intense focus on the story again following the release of a podcast with Pandora Sykes, which Catherine featured in, to renew the search for their son. “We’ve had journalists in and out all week. We’re grateful for it.”
Why, after 19 years, are they putting themselves through it all again? “Because someone knows something about it,” Jeff replied with certainty. “There is someone somewhere that knows what happened.”
Keen golfer James, then 25, had travelled to Tenby on the day he went missing on October 24, 2004, to play in a top competition. But when he didn’t turn up on the course the next morning his friends raised the alarm.
James had shown no signs at all of any mental health difficulties, he’d just been hired for his dream job as a demonstrator for Titleist and was travelling the length and breadth of the country working within a sport he adored. Catherine vividly recalled how he had ordered a delivery to come on the Monday when he was due to return home.
CCTV footage eventually released to the family by Dyfed-Powys Police 18 months after their son’s disappearance shows James left the Prince of Wales pub on Upper Frog Street at 11.40pm and was seen again at 11.57pm crossing the road outside the Atlantic Hotel metres from the Giltar Hotel where he was staying. Six people can be seen in the footage walking near James, who never made it back to the hotel, and the following day his wallet and cards were found on the South Beach.
“The police said at the time that they thought if he went in the water his body would either end up near Bude in Cornwall or near Llanelli, depending on the tide,” Jeff recalled. “Sure enough in the same week James went missing another man had taken his own life in the water and did wash up in Bude six weeks later.”
Many theories about what happened to James have played out in their minds and they say they have been tortured by multiple “nearly” sightings of their son. “The police used to phone all the time. Every time they found a bone, a shoe. Then something got published in the papers: ‘Bones found in Llanelli could belong to missing golfer James Nutley'. But no-one had told us before we saw the articles.”
After a cruel and bizarre false confession by local man Richard Fairbrass, who told police he had killed James and thrown him in the sea, Jeff said he was asked to attend Swansea prison to quiz Fairbrass face to face. “They weren’t getting anything out of him so they phoned and asked us to go to the prison and ask him: ‘Did you murder James?’ I said: ‘No’. I told Catherine: ‘There’s no way I’m doing that’.” Fairbrass was eventually proven not to have been involved and was jailed for perverting the course of justice.
The couple said they’d since heard nothing from the police, but they hadn’t given up hope that James was still alive. “I think he’s still about,” Jeff said. “We all still speak about James in the present, he’s not in the past for us. There is no evidence to suggest he’s dead. How did those cards get out of his wallet and lie on the beach like that? Were they put there deliberately?
“We still go down to Tenby twice a year like we’ve done every year and we do the route we know he walked that night. The sea wall is high. He’d have had a hell of a job falling into the sea by accident. There was no evidence of him anywhere other than the wallet and cards.
“We go and put a bunch of flowers there and put a picture of James saying: ‘James Nutley went missing here in 2004’. We go to the Giltar and have a meal and chat to them. They’re wonderful people in the Giltar and Malcolm, the owner, has helped us a great deal over the years. In lockdown when we couldn’t get down there he put the flowers and the picture out for us.
“We’re very grateful to the people in Tenby and the press as well for keeping James going and reminding people about what happened. The last time we went to Tenby the barman in the Giltar told us when he’s around the pubs in the town he’s always listening out for James’ name.”
Catherine explained how on a recent trip to Tenby two officers who had been with the force for eight years told the couple that they’d never heard of their son. “All the police officers who dealt with the case are now retired, so we’re grateful for anything that can bring it back into people’s consciousness.”
She still spends hours scanning the National Crime Agency database for clues. “I can’t stop,” she said. “One popped up the other night and I still don’t know if I want to pursue it. It was a decomposed foot in a shoe and the sock was Wilson, which James wore. I have been wondering, but it’s near Liverpool. I keep thinking: ‘Should I? Do I even want to know?’”
Does she think of him daily and how different life could have been for them? “Yes, he pops in and out. I think about how life would be very different if we were a complete family. James might have got married and had children, maybe he has done. It’s the not knowing.
"I think of him when I’m on the golf course in particular,” Jeff said. “When I sink a good putt I think of what James would say. If he knew I was playing with his clubs he’d be going absolutely mad. We’ve done 19 years of him not being around now and every Father’s Day or Mother’s Day you wonder whether a note will turn up. It’s special occasions when you feel it most. At those times we really miss him.”
Jeff remembered clearly his last day with his son, and repeatedly thinks over what his son told him in those hours. “He had played the Cock of the North winter competition the day before and then he had to be up at 7am on the Sunday morning to play at Dewstow with his partner and they won the game. They were top of the league and they came back here and his mates were then going to pick him up and they were going off to Tenby for another tournament on the Monday. Catherine kept on at him to eat his Sunday lunch before he went, and she warmed it up for him and he ate it and then off he went.
“The last thing he said to me was that he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to play at Cowbridge on the way back or not, but he was dead against me going to give him a lift from Cowbridge back home if his mates wanted to play at Cowbridge. He made a big thing of saying 'No'.”
“The day before he left for Tenby he also made an effort to call around the whole family and say ‘Hello’,” Catherine added. “I often think about that and whether there was a reason he did that.”
Recalling the horrendous 24 hours after James disappeared, Catherine remembered: “We travelled down in the car straight away on the Monday when we got the call James had gone missing. I was with my brother-in-law and Helen and it was just complete silence. We got to the police station and they went out with sniffer dogs. The dogs were picking up a scent but I think it was from James’ wetsuit which Helen was wearing."
“We stayed there for a week and walked everywhere trying to find him but nothing was happening. We had to come home the following weekend. It didn’t dawn on me he was a missing person as such until about four or five days later,” Jeff explained. “After five days I am panicking thinking: ‘James, where are you?’
“The following months were horrible - the worst period of our lives. I don’t know how we coped with that first month, it was utterly dreadful. We stayed in the house for a month and never went out other than in the garden. We just stayed in hoping for the phone to ring or for a knock on the door and for someone to say he’s been found.
“Then there’s the realisation that he might not be coming back and we’ve got to get on with things for Helen’s sake. We couldn’t lock ourselves away forever. Once we got back out again we’ve had amazing support. We still have a lot of support and people often talk about James. People have asked why we’ve never had a memorial service for James, but how can we if he’s not dead?
“We’re still looking to find him. We haven’t given up. Once we’ve got him, if he’s gone then we’ll have the memorial service at Caerwent Church. It’d be a lovely service.”
