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| 10/15/2008 11:10:00 AM Email this article • Print this article | |
A year after her son's disappearance,
Kathy Gilleran still searching for answers
October 29, 2007.
The date marks the last time anyone saw 34-year-old Aeryn Gillern - and the beginning of a nightmare that has not stopped for his mother, Kathy Gilleran, a retired Ithaca Police officer.
The Groton High School graduate worked as a research clerk for the United Nation's Industrial Development Organization in Vienna, Austria. Gilleran said her son loved his job and his life in Vienna, and they were making plans for her to move there for at least six months.
The night of Oct. 29, 2007, that all changed when he vanished - without a trace and without any answers for his grieving mother.
He was last seen by co-workers around 6 p.m. that night, what happened after that is a matter of contention between Gilleran and Vienna police, the latter of which said Aeryn had committed "spontaneous suicide" by jumping into the Danube Canal.
When she found out Aeryn was missing two days after he had last been seen, Gilleran traveled to Vienna, arriving Nov. 2. What she found there were conflicting reports, uncooperative police and no answers to what had happened to Aeryn.
Police first told her that a fisherman had seen a bald man -Aeryn is bald - floating in the canal, she said.
"Their story changed from the fisherman seeing a bald-headed man, to not a bald-headed man, just a man," Gilleran said. "Then it was the fisherman heard a splash and a scream, but hadn't seen anybody."
She's not sure anyone could have seen anything floating in the canal at night - when she visited last November, she checked out the area where Aeryn was allegedly spotted in the water and found it to be a remote, very dark area.
"It's a place where drunks and whatever hang out," Gilleran said. "It's not some place where you would be fishing at 20 after eight.
"To say you could see anything in the water is completely ridiculous," she added.
That's not all that changed, either. The police told Gilleran they'd dispatched dogs and a dive team to search for the man reported in the water around 8:20 p.m.
"By 9:10 (p.m.) they said they had cleared the scene," she said. "They got the call, dispatched the dive team and dredged the canal, and they did all of that in a half hour.
"I think that's remarkable, and all police departments should learn from them," Gilleran added.
And, it may not have even happened.
"An officer told me that no calls came, that no dive team was ever dispatched," Gilleran said.
She returned home from Vienna after a month of trying to find out what had happened to her son. Gilleran hasn't heard a word from police since early December 2007.
"The State Department got involved in February (2008), and they got a one-page response in July (2008)," Gilleran said. "All it stated was his name, case number, that he'd been reported missing and he'd last been seen at the sauna."
It also went back to the police department's original story.
Another side of the story
Gilleran learned from Aeryn's friends they'd heard a fight took place at the sauna around 10 p.m. Oct. 29 that her son may have been involved in. That would be more than two hours after he was supposedly spotted floating in the canal.
"They told me there was a fight between some tourists, and somehow Aeryn was involved and that he was injured," she said.
The manager of the sauna told her he'd called police following the altercation, and that the law enforcement agency hadn't responded. The police, however, had no record of the sauna calling them that night, Gilleran said.
The police do have a theory about what happened to Aeryn - that he committed "spontaneous suicide" by jumping in the canal after he'd been startled in the sauna.
"They said he'd been sitting there listening to music and someone tapped him on the shoulder, which startled him," Gilleran said of what police officials told her. "He ran out, up a flight of stairs, past his changing room, through the entryway and check-in area and into the street, all with just a towel around his waist.
"Then he ran down the street about 20 blocks and jumped into the canal," she added.
Gilleran also had a troubling experience when the sauna manager gave her a tour of the premises, showing her Aeryn's dressing room. She said at one point he laid on the floor and wept, and the translator told her the manager was saying that was the last place he'd seen Aeryn.
When she pressed the manager for more information about his account, he told the translator he didn't want to talk about it, couldn't talk about it.
"The translator told me, 'You have to accept that your son is no longer with us,'" Gilleran recalled.
Anti-gay bias?
That Aeryn was gay is something Gilleran thinks played a role in the way police handled the case. He'd had a run-in with police in 2003 when he was taken into custody over a subway ticket miscommunication, and filed a complaint with Amnesty International regarding his treatment by officers. According to an Associated Press report, the deposition Aeryn filed regarding the incident stated comments were made about his being gay.
Gilleran has had contact with several international agencies for the protection of gays and lesbians, and one told her Vienna "was receptive of homosexuals, and didn't see any wrongdoing by police in cases involving gay people. They felt gay people would not be afraid to talk to police."
"But, two weeks prior to Aeryn's disappearance, the Vienna police felt the need to start a gay and lesbian task force to protect gay and lesbian officers," she said. "If nothing was wrong, why would there be a need to protect them?"
Gilleran trusted a gay officer she was in contact with at the police department, but said she got the feeling he was putting himself in danger by working with her.
"Ultimately, he withdrew, he pulled back his involvement," she said. "I think he did because it was getting too risky and I have not heard from him since I was there, even though I've sent him a letter."
Why does she think the matter is so murky?
"I don't know; that's one of the things that keeps haunting me," Gilleran said. "Vienna is perceived as a safe place, and probably for the most part it is.
"They don't have U.S. citizens disappearing," she added.
She thinks Aeryn's disappearance was likely hushed up because it was related to an incident at the Kaiserbrüendl, which Gilleran said is the oldest gay sauna in Europe - and located in a wealthy, prestigious neighborhood in Vienna. Her son, sponsored by the sauna as he was named Mr. Gay Austria and first runner-up for the 2006 Mr. Gay Universe competition, had his own dressing room there.
"I stood outside of the sauna and there were obviously some of the most wealthy, influential people going in there," she said. "This place obviously had connections.
"For an incident to happen there would not have behooved them," Gilleran added. "You just don't have something like this, with the clientele they have and in the location they're at, and survive it."
So, what does she think happened to Aeryn?
"I think he was injured and died in the sauna, to be honest. I think something happened there and he didn't make it out," Gilleran said. "If he did, he didn't make it far.
"I think my son's dead," she added, saying she could not bring herself to believe he was still alive.
That doesn't mean she's not wishing he is alive, but cannot think about the possibility because of the heartbreak she's felt since being told he had disappeared and the police told her Aeryn has committed "spontaneous suicide."
Maternal intuition
Gilleran also is certain he did not commit suicide, as police have maintained.
"I know in my heart, I know in my mind that he did not commit suicide," she said. "This is not a mother in denial, this a mother who knew her son."
Gilleran said she'd talked to Aeryn just two days before he went missing, and he received phone calls from friends right up until 8:20 p.m. the night he disappeared.
There were other signs that make Gilleran believe he was not considering suicide. One was planning ahead for the future.
"He bought airline tickets two weeks and one week before he disappeared for Zurich, Switzerland, for Christmas, and for Helsinki in February," she said, adding he often bought airline tickets to visit his partner, who lives in Switzerland, when they went on sale, such as for these two trips. "He was planning in advance; you don't do that if you're going to commit suicide."
Aeryn also was making plans for Gilleran to come for an extended stay. During his last visit home, in September 2007, they discussed how she'd put her home up for sale and was planning to move to Florida. He'd convinced her to come stay with him for at least six months, before she finalized plans for her move.
"The more we talked about it, the more excited I became," Gilleran said. "On the 27th, the last time we talked, I told him I hadn't had much luck and he asked me to at least try to come for the first week of December (2007), because he was going to visit his partner in Switzerland for Christmas.
"He said he'd talked to his landlord about getting a two-bedroom apartment in the same building, but it didn't look like it was going to work out, but he'd bought a sofa bed," she added. "We talked about that then and that was the last time I talked to him."
Another sign was contact Aeryn had with friends the day of his disappearance.
"They day he disappeared, he had lunch with friends, went to the gym and talked with his trainer," Gilleran added. "Everybody said he was in a good mood."
He'd baked Rice Krispie treats for his co-workers that day but had forgotten them at home - they were still sitting on the counter when Gilleran arrived to search for her son. Aeryn had dropped off his dry cleaning the day he disappeared, and did a load of wash before he left for work - the clothes were still in the washer when she got to his apartment.
"He talked to a woman friend of his around 20 after 7 the night he disappeared and they made plans to get together that Wednesday (two days after his disappearance)," Gilleran said. "In his backpack was a bottle of vanilla extract for Rice Krispie treats he promised he'd make for her and the receipt for the purchase, which read 7:30 p.m.
"At 20 after 8, he send an SMS (text) to his partner, which read 'I hate to go back to a lonely house, I miss you, talk to you soon,'" she added, saying his partner had just spent a four-day weekend with Aeryn.
In the months following Aeryn's disappearance, there was one occurrence that spooked her a bit, but she doesn't think there is any meaning to, is a pair of identical dreams - by her other son, Rahman, and one of Aeryn's friends at UNIDO - of her eldest telling them he was being held captive.
"Back in August, my younger son called me very upset and said he'd taken a nap and had a dream that Aeryn was being held captive in Turin," Gilleran said. "A week later, I was Skyping (communicating via the Internet) with one of Aeryn's friends from the UN, and he told me he'd had a dream where Aeryn appeared, from someplace that appeared to be someplace in Europe, and said to him 'You have to help me, I'm being held captive.' When he asked where Aeryn was, he said 'They're coming, I have to go,' and that was the end of it."
When she asked when he'd had the dream, it turned out to be the same day Rahman had dreamt of Aeryn. Still, she doesn't think anything of it.
"I haven't had anything like that since then," Gilleran said. "I've felt a void, since the day I got the phone call that he was missing, that he's just not here.
"I just kind of filed it in the back of my head - if I go there with the possibility my son is alive, I just set myself up for heartbreak," she added. "If my son's alive, that's the greatest thing in the world, but if I go there thinking that, it will be too much. I'm not into conspiracies and I cannot think why someone would be holding him captive."
Gilleran is headed back to Vienna in the coming weeks - leaving Oct. 26 and returning Nov. 2 - to mark the one-year anniversary of her son's disappearance. She's going by herself because she's afraid of how she might handle herself if friends -who've offered to go with her - try to comfort her.
"I will go, I will stand outside the sauna and I will hold my silent vigil," Gilleran said.
With the pain she's endured throughout the last year, it's hard to believe she would subject herself to being in the place where Aeryn disappeared.
"Because I have to, because my son is there somewhere, because I have to be there," Gilleran said tearfully when asked why she was going back. "I want to make sure they know I'm not going away. Somehow they made my son disappear. I'm not going away quietly.
"I need to know, as a mother, that I have done everything I can for my son," she added. "I miss him, so to be places where I spent time with him when I visited him before, I want to go back there and hopefully for a short time be able to see the city he loved, see the things that made him happy and the things he wanted to share with me."
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 | Reader Comments
| |  | | Posted: Sunday, February 01, 2009
Article comment by:
jenn
i am in shock. i am one of aeryn's friends from college, and i had thought he had just stopped emailing me abruptly for whatever reason. i had been trying to contact him. i am so sad right now for my dear friend, and i am praying for him and his poor mother.
| | | | Posted: Saturday, October 18, 2008
Article comment by:
Rob Buzzetti
I'm glad to see the media is still covering this story-thank you! We all miss u Aeryn, and we will never forget you my friend!
| | | | Posted: Saturday, October 18, 2008
Article comment by:
Rahman
Thank you for covering this story on my brother Aaron. I will never forget him....................
| | | | Posted: Thursday, October 16, 2008
Article comment by:
Karen J. Wagner
Thank you very much for covering the story on Aeryn Gilleran.I hope that the mother gets some answers on her trip to Vienna and I hope the State Dept. will get more involved.
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Suicide has recently come to Ithaca in a very public, and at times controversial, way. This past academic year, after three years with no suicides, Cornell experienced what is known in the scientific community as a "suicide cluster." OK, so maybe you're like me and you thought this whole JetBlue flight attendant story was good for maybe one news cycle.  |
