Secret life and times of the disappearing man

By CATHERINE MASTERS

The headline read "Dead Man Wanted", and the story was an exclusive for Queenstown's local paper.

It reported a hunt for a ghost and ran a photograph of a man whom police and a private detective were seeking after a chance sighting at a stationer's.

Within a day, Owen Bruce Taylor's cover was blown.

The failed businessman, husband and father of two had disappeared four years previously from the Westhaven Marina in Auckland, leaving the impression he may have walked into the sea.

Mr Taylor was recognised by eight people as John Bowland, a design consultant in the holiday resort town.

The 55-year-old has since gone to ground, and was last heard of in Arrowtown.

But after his discovery three weeks ago, it has been revealed that when he disappeared in 1999 he had a trail of creditors breathing down his neck and was facing the possibility of High Court civil action to recover about $3 million.

Then came an announcement through his lawyer that brain surgery had left him with memory loss and he had no recollection of his former life. There has been no explanation of how he came by the name John Bowland.

When Mr Taylor disappeared from Auckland, he left an emotional goodbye note for his second wife, Amanda, who is now living in Noumea.

The family in Auckland will not talk but believed he was dead. They held a memorial service for him and are understood to be shocked at his reappearance.

Private investigator and former police detective inspector John Hughes was hired four years ago by one of the creditors chasing Mr Taylor. When a company employee spotted him in Paper Plus in Queenstown, the company gave Mr Hughes the task of flushing him out, leading to the article in Mountain Scene.

Mr Hughes says the company does not want to be named or to talk, and may or may not pursue Mr Taylor further.

After walking out on his family in Auckland Mr Taylor headed to New Plymouth and became friends with a local family, who told the Herald he was a charmer but a conman. They find the claims of memory loss unbelievable.

But old friend and business associate Michael Mckeown says Mr Taylor is a lovely and cultured man who should be given the benefit of the doubt.

After John Bowland was identified as Mr Taylor, his brother Steve Taylor, who is out of the country, and Mr Mckeown went to Queenstown. They left convinced he had no idea who he used to be. They spent hours with him but say nothing seemed to twig and there were no nervous twitches.

Mr Mckeown says Mr Taylor arrived in Taranaki four years ago not knowing who he was or where he was. Before the brain surgery for a cerebral haemorrhage, he had "brain bleeds", and Mr Mckeown says he understands the memory loss took place long before the operation.

Mr Taylor's personal story is a tragic one, says Mr Mckeown.

"Bruce witnessed his parents die in front of him. They were electrocuted in a swimming pool when he was very young."

His first wife, the mother of his two now adult sons, died of bowel cancer and her death hit him hard. She had been the family's "guiding light".

When Mr Taylor first disappeared Mr Mckeown believed him to be dead, but when searches failed to find a body, he began to think that one day he would see him again. Now that he has, he is sticking by him.

"I like Bruce Taylor a lot. I liked him when he disappeared, I liked him after he disappeared and I liked him when he reappeared."

Others who knew Mr Taylor describe him as gracious and handsome, warm and generous, the kind of man to pick up the tab - a softly spoken gentleman with plenty of money.

Mr Taylor was in the property business. The Companies Office shows he was involved in 23 companies, mainly as a director. Most of the companies were wound up or liquidated.

One former associate says he was a bit of a property development guru in the late 1980s and had been affected by the property and sharemarket crash.

Police say many things, aside from the civil case, were going on in Mr Taylor's life when he disappeared. But they are not investigating. The missing persons file is closed and they have never received any criminal complaints about Owen Bruce Taylor or John Bowland.

It is not illegal to live under another name, says Detective Sergeant Phil Kirkham. It becomes illegal only if crimes are committed using the name.

Although it has been said Mr Taylor faked his own suicide, that may not be the case.

At the Westhaven Marina he did not park directly by the sea wall, and although he left a note apologising for disappearing it did not show he was taking his life.

When he made his decision to leave town, he went to New Plymouth and started again, coming into the path of the Brown family. They took him into their home and their hearts and now feel they were taken for a ride.

Mr Taylor first moved into a flat not far from Richard Brown's timber yard. The Herald spoke to his father, Donald Brown, 70, who says Mr Taylor hung around the business for a while, selling his technical skills.

"He said he'd help [Richard] and work for him. He didn't put any money up. He became part of the business, sold his expertise as an equity in the company with Richard. My son put up all the dough."

He would often dine at the Brown family home and was welcomed for Christmas dinners and one holiday met Mr Brown's younger cousin Sarah Fitzpatrick from Queenstown, a school counsellor.

When his son's company went into voluntary liquidation, Mr Brown says Mr Taylor "buggered off" to Queenstown and moved in with Ms Fitzpatrick.

She will not talk other than in a statement printed in full in Mountain Scene in which she said the recent disclosures had shocked her and caused her much personal distress.

Mr Brown says when Mr Taylor had brain surgery, his son went with him to Wellington Hospital by air ambulance, but there was never any sign of memory loss.

"He came back here and he could remember who he wasn't. If his story stacks up you'd think he'd remember who he was."