Thread 4 - Michael Mosley

[Aquarius1234]

Body found and identified.

IDK @ThisOrdinaryLife perhaps he was too weak and/or parched to shout out -

Also if only someone at the resort had looked up and seen him scrambling down the steep slope towards the fence and shown him where the gate was but nothing seemed to be going his way at that point

CCTV showed one 'customer' but it might otherwise have been very quiet during the hottest part of the day

Apparently the CCTV footage was given to the Greek authorities on Wednesday eve on Thursday. Such a small island, why on earth wasn’t all the CCTV gone over with a fine tooth comb?

No arguments from me that it's a fact and a known detail that there is a perimeter fence.
I , like others , are wondering about MM last moments. I don't know why , other than it's a fairly normal reaction I suppose. I do feel a bit ashamed about writing about it on a public forum because then it becomes ( in my mind) a bit disrespectful. The poor man is dead .
The reason I posted above though was to try and deter people from repeating the more dramatic and most distressing descriptions that are being mentioned in the media.
They are descriptions and they do vary a great deal .
We don't know which are accurate so let's not focus and torture ourselves with the worst possible scenarios when none of us know what his last movements were .
What's the point .

If it helps anyone who is thinking that he made it to the fence but was thwarted by not finding a gate , I think he fell or collapsed while making his way down the slope and the fence stopped his downward momentum
I don't think he was conscious at that point.
I'm basing my thinking on reports that the CCTV show him navigating the slope and then disappearing from view.
Whether this is true or not I don't know but it sounds believable and tallies with several ( not all) descriptions of the position his body was found in .

@Thisoldheartofmine it was reported that he was found face up with his legs higher than his head. It is far more likely that he felt extremely unwell, dizzy and like he was going to faint (a symptom of heatstroke) so lay down to hope to feel better to continue on / be found. Unfortunately at that stage without rapid cooling he was only going to get worse.

it is a great tragedy.

That doesn’t seem to be true, he came to the top edge of the fence (according to the last cctv sightings) and went back and forth a little looking for an entrance/way through the fence, then decided to go round the side and down the fence line to get into the resort, probably realising that it was his only way in, at some point he seemed to have sat down then passed out, he was about halfway down the fence line at that point, there is a path on that side (Very loose definition of path) away from the fence line but he wasn’t on that when he was found, he was right next to the fence.

I don't think we will ever know. I've asked this throughout, apparently it was hot and it's a small island so limited resources are the only excuses so far. Despite apparently getting lots of help from Athens. You would think any missing person enquiry would've justified someone sitting up all night viewing the handful of cameras footage.

Judging by the photos that have been widely released of the rescuers looking towards the place where his body lay, it appears he was lying right by the fence. I've wondered if there was a small bit of shade there (depending on the direction of the sun) and he hoped to recover enough to make the last few paces, knowing how close he was to the water and people.

This could be true, I saw the photo of where he laid and it was fully exposed in the sun as the wall was too small. But maybe in the afternoon it made a little shadow.

I hadn't come across that account @sandyhappypeople .
Can you point me to where you've discovered that ?

Same, I think about these things so graphically and deeply until my brain says "enough!" and then it blocks it out, just waiting for that moment. But I can't stop coming back to these threads

Which part?

the cctv reports from Agia marina after he was found apparently pinpointed where he showed up at the back of the property.. it said in the report that he walked back and forth a little while (seemingly looking for a way through the fence), before picking his way down out of the cameras view in the direction of where he was found.

he was found by the fence line half way down so it seemed likely he stayed by the fence to try and work his way round and eventually just had to stop.

its been widely reported that he didn’t fall, it looks like he stopped and sat down instead.

Yes I was hoping there was a tiny bit of shade by that wall and he hoped that by lying down there he could recover. I've read several accounts that he put himself in to recovery position (which is so incredibly poignant).
Regarding the fence - it's heart-breaking to think of him looking for a gate but the fact is, even if there had been a gate he would have collapsed within minutes of getting in. No waiter or tourist would have been able to reverse whatever medical episode he was experiencing, presumably advanced heatstroke.
If you look at the photos there was a way to get in to the restaurant area. The spot where he dies led to a beach, just a few metres down. He would have been able to see the sea where he was so he could have walked to the beach and then in to the restaurant area - or he could have gone round the other side to the entrance which would have taken a few minutes. However, he was clearly very confused, weak and unwell and just couldn't make it to either of these places.
Everyone's saying he wouldn't have died if the fence hadn't been there but there were ways to get in - he was just too ill to make it.

@sandyhappypeople this part
. "it said in the report that he walked back and forth a little while (seemingly looking for a way through the fence), before picking his way down out of the cameras view in the direction of where he was found."
Have you got a link to where this was said or can you tell me where I should look to see it.

He didn't fall down the slope. It has been reported by the BBC that it took him 20 minutes to move between two fence posts - what would take in normal circumstances a minute or two.

Another source said that he was crawling.

It's heartbreaking.

It's all small margins isn't it. The 5 minutes walking backwards and forwards looking for a gate would have been enough energy if he'd just gone for it straight away but you can't say that as it's sensible to look for the best route.

I am not a doctor so I don't know if immersion in water and having water to drink would have reversed the effects. I'm glad his family have taken comfort from where he was found. I'm trying to calm my intrusive thoughts by telling myself he would have had hope in those last moments. Better that than succumbing totally lost in the mountains with no hope of being found in time.

@IdisagreeMrHochhauser Same here. I am telling myself that as the lights went out, MM was thinking ‘any minute now, someone will see me and help will come’.

Each paper says something slightly different about the final CCTV footage taken in that area - but they all say he was near the fence, moving around in a confused state for about 30 minutes. I believe it was The Times that said he was going back and forth along the fence, seemingly looking for a gate. Someone shared a link on Mumsnet. However, I also read The Times had removed some of these details after a while because they were distressing to read. So you could Google the Times articles and see if it's still mentioned there. It's interesting that some news outlets are more sensitive. The BBC for example just describe him as making his way down to the fenced area whereas Sky news describe him as crawling around. I prefer the BBC description!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cydd97gz9jgo

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Now he has been found and it’s known that he was captured on CCTV shortly before he died, it’s easy to say that that footage should have been found much earlier. But we have no idea how many hours of CCTV footage covered the period he was missing over the whole island. It would take a long time to go through all of that, especially scanning each image for a brief glimpse of someone who may have appeared only briefly on the edge of the area of focus.

It seems to have been a series of unfortunate events which led to this tragedy, and I feel for his family and for all those involved in the search for and discovery of his body.

I enjoy solo walking holidays in sunny locations and it has served as a reminder to me to keep checking my route and to make sure someone knows at least roughly where I’m going. I’m currently in Southern Spain and must say that was happened to Dr Mosley has been very much on my mind and has had an impact on what I’ve been doing.

And I will definitely be getting the Apple Watch Ultra 2 as it can make a call to local emergency services should I fall and be unresponsive. Not a 100% solution but part of a larger approach to safety while out on my own. And where there is life there is always risk of death. I hope Dr M’s family can take comfort from the knowledge that he led a full, healthy and adventurous life.

There's been several reports of it, I think the original terminology of him 'falling out of view' made people think he fell, but it seems that was just a way of describing that he had gone out of sight of the cctv footage.

It seems everyone who has seen the cctv and reported on it gives a slightly different account of what happened, but the gust is all the same.

this was on the BBC:
The BBC has seen CCTV footage, taken near the Agia Marina beach bar, that appears to show Dr Mosley disappear from view as he slowly makes his way down a hillside close to where his body was later found. He then collapses out of view behind a wall.
Dr Michael Mosley: Post-mortem finds presenter died of natural causes, police say - BBC News

this was on the mail:
The doctor was captured on CCTV footage by a beach restaurant stumbling around for several minutes before the 67-year-old gingerly picked his way down a slope close to a perimeter fence before then falling out of view.
It is then thought he carried on around the fence before he fell to where his body was found face up just a mere 260ft from a holiday resort.
Beach bar staff's 'heartbreak' after they failed to find Dr Michael Mosley for five days after Mail health guru collapsed and died just 260ft from holiday resort | Daily Mail Online

@IdisagreeMrHochhauser thank you for the link. Very clear description. Poor man.

And thank you also @sandyhappypeople

And to add, something similar but on a much less serious and obviously survivable scale happened to me the other day here. I decided to take what I thought would be a short and easy walk to the next village. A less than 30 minute walk on paths which were marked on my paper map and on the OS app. However, one of the paths is so overgrown that I missed it. I used my phone to find an alternative route, which also pretty overgrown. A few times I stopped and thought about turning back - it was hotter than I expected and the path was steep. But I could see that I was close to getting back to my planned route, which I duly did. And that route took me to a high, padlocked gate on a high fence. Fortunately there was a gap next to the gate and with a few scratches from the undergrowth I got through to the track beyond. But if the distances had been longer, the hill even steeper, the temperature even higher, no way round the gate, etc … Even with a phone, with pre-planning, with maps, things can turn bad very quickly.

Also a 'collapse' has a particular medical usage which doesn't mean falling to the ground, which is how we might use it in day to day language.

In the Lucy Letby trial they talked about the sudden collapses of babies who were already lying in incubators. It seems likely from how he was found that he sat or lay down and then died.

I think it's a bit odd that Agia Marina are now saying they gave the police the footage on Thursday, but the police say they didn't give the footage until after he'd been found.

It doesn't really matter now as either way as it wouldn't have changed the outcome, but it makes you wonder if quite a bit of blame is being thrown around after the fact.

I do find it odd that people working at Agia Marina wouldn't have at least checked both the paths leading out and around the resort as a bare minimum knowing someone had gone missing near there.. if someone had checked that north path or even just looked over that wall they would have seen him.