LABRADOR CITY, NL – Daniel Gaulton of Lab West was only out west for a few months when his family got a call that changed their lives forever.
“I remember it like it was yesterday – I said, ‘what do you mean he’s missing?’” said Josephine Gaulton-Rowe, his sister.
“I didn’t even know how to process it.”
Daniel Gaulton, 27, had only left Labrador City four months before to find work in Grand Prairie, Alberta.
On the night of Nov. 25, 1997, he was reported missing. Now, just over 20 years later they are no closer to finding out what happened.
“Talking to you today I know just as much as when I got the call saying that Danny is missing,” Gaulton-Rowe told the Aurora. “No one has come forward. No information has been found. Nothing.”
Gaulton-Rowe said after they found out he was missing she and other family members flew out west to find out what they could. She said when they got there the police hadn’t even begun an investigation.
“The police had done nothing, they were basically treating it like another stupid Newfoundlander out on a drunk,” she said. “They weren’t even looking.”
When he disappeared, Gaulton was living with two roommates. He had been at a bar earlier that evening.
Gaulton-Rowe said they heard rumours about an altercation at the bar, but nothing concrete as to whether it happened, or if her brother was even involved. He was at his apartment at around 11 p.m., where he had a brief conversation with one of his roommates before leaving, telling him he was off to work.
Gaulton was holding down two jobs, one of which was a nighttime security job. It was later discovered that he had called in sick to that job.
Daniel Gaulton was never seen again.
“How does someone just disappear like that?” Gaulton-Rowe said. “Nothing at all. The police tried to tell us it might be a suicide, which I didn’t think; Danny was always the life of the party kind of guy. But you never know what’s going on in someone’s head. But they never found his car either. If he’d done that you’d think they would have least have found his car.”
Gaulton was driving a 1985 gold Chrysler LeBaron, with Alberta license plate TSA 559, and that was never found either. Gaulton-Rowe said at this point, 20 years later, she doesn’t expect to find her brother alive, but the worst part is not knowing.
“Our mother, who passed some time ago, never gave up hope,” she said. “I understand, it’s her child, she never gave up that they’d find Danny. I don’t think we will find him alive and well but it’s the not knowing what happened that’s the worst part.”
To try to get someone to come forward, the family has put up $100,000 reward for information related to Gaulton’s disappearance.
“Someone had to know something,” she said. “Had to hear something, see something – someone knows something. We just want to find out what happened to our brother.”
20 years later, Gaulton family no closer to finding brother
Family just wants to know what happened
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