Gabriel Nagy and his family lived a life of joy and happiness in Sydney, Australia. Every day, he worked hard to provide for his family. When he returned home, he worked that much harder to be a loving and devoted father.

The Nagy’s seemed to have a perfect life … However, one day the father of the family disappeared. For weeks Nagy’s family went in search of their missing father. Unfortunately, they never found him … Until the day they received a mysterious letter.

Australian family struggling to make ends meet
Although he was born in Germany, Gabriel Nagy lived in Sydney, Australia.  As a child, his father was constantly absent due to work while his mother faced countless illnesses. This meant it was up to Nagy to take on the role of head of the family.

Despite all of life’s challenges, the Nagy family stayed strong. In 1987, Nagy married Pamela, and soon they started a family of their own. They had two children, together, a son Stephen, and a daughter named Jennifer. Gabriel Nagy wanted to give his children a much better life than the one he had had. He began to embark on a career in accounting to have a good life.

Overwhelmed by so many new changes
Nagy’s family always thought of him as a loving and devoted father in mind but in reality,  he often struggled to cope with the pressure.”A number of things tormented me, I guess (…) The fear of not making the right decisions was one of those things, and the fact of getting married a bit early, a bit quickly, without ever thinking to the consequences. “, he explained to reporters in a radio interview.

At this point, it seemed that Nagy was starting to feel overwhelmed by all the challenges that accompanied his life as a married man. He often found himself dreaming about what might have happened if he had chosen another path. However, he still worked hard to fulfil the needs of his wife and children.

Lunch at home
Because Nagy had never spoken out loud about his internal fears, his family had absolutely no idea of ​​the terrible events that would soon take place … On January 21, 1987, Gabriel Nagy made a call to his wife, Pamela. , to inform her that he was coming home for lunch today. Following this call, Pamela prepared sandwiches excited to see her husband.

As the hours passed, Pamela’s doubts grew and even turned to fear. Very quickly, she realized that something was wrong. Her husband hadn’t shown up yet and it wasn’t like him to not call if something had come up. She followed her instincts and called the police, who started the search immediately.

When the police find a disturbing element

Pamela accompanied by her children Stephen and Jennifer, sat together all night, hoping to hear from their father. They feared for his life, torturing their minds imagining him alone in the wild Australian countryside.

The next afternoon, a police official found Nagy’s vehicle abandoned on the side of the road. Worse still, the car was burnt. For Nagy’s family, the mystery had only just begun … “He had never been so far from home without telling anyone,” Jennifer said of her father.

An investigation into a missing person
More days passed and still no sign of Gabriel and at that point, his disappearance then became a full-fledged missing person investigation.”Pretty soon people started searching all over the place and sounding the alarm bells, Jennifer said.

Even when more people started looking for Gabriel Nagy, they couldn’t find anything. As if he had vanished from the face of the planet. Given the condition of Nagy’s vehicle, Pamela and her children feared that he had been harmed. Finally, two weeks after his disappearance, his family received something strange …

Unusual activity
After two weeks of hard work on the Nagy case, the authorities finally had the opportunity to make some progress in the investigation. They discovered that Nagy’s bank card had been used at a bank in Newcastle, 100 miles north of Sydney, to withdraw money. After tracking down the flow of money, the police finally found that it had been spent on buying camping equipment. Unfortunately, the store concerned did not have a surveillance camera. Besides, the employee of the store had absolutely no recollection of the appearance of the person who had bought all this material.

It was the only credible lead for almost 20 years. Indeed, for almost two decades, Pamela and her children wondered what had happened and they couldn’t believe Nagy had abandoned them without ever looking back …

Volatilized

Nagy’s children, Jessica and Stephen, grew up wondering where their father had been. They absolutely had to know if he was still alive! They were desperate to know what had happened to him!

“It was traumatic for everyone Jessica recalled.“It really affected me emotionally. People would ask ‘Where’s your dad?’ It was too much to take, too painful. No one could explain this sudden disappearance, “she continued.”He was my world, and suddenly it was all taken from me.”

The start of a whole new chapter
Over the years, Nagy’s family began to come to terms with the fact that he had completely disappeared from their lives. They needed to mourn and end this story. Although they would always remember their dear father, the Nagy’s needed a fresh start. Therefore, they decided to abandon their home in Sydney and move to the Sunshine Coast, 500 miles further into Queensland.

Pamela and her children made sure that the authorities knew about their move, just in case any other leads about Nagy emerged. Despite this lingering hope, the family members feared, deep within themselves, that Gabriel Nagy was dead. It was the only possible explanation for his disappearance.

A final attempt
23 years after Nagy’s disappearance, the officer in charge of the case, the chief commissioner named Georgia Robinson, slowed down the search. According to her, there was only one thing to do: declare Nagy officially dead. However, before she had time to do anything, something strange happened.

The legal process demanded that she make one last attempt to find Gabriel. And this time, she found something! Apparently, a man by the name of Gabriel Nagy had recently had eye surgery. Fortunately, the Australian health authorities had taken care to properly document the entire procedure. Here is a new track more than promising …

A man named Ron Saunders
The more she explored the matter, the more she was filled with mystery. Medical records led her to a man named Ron Saunders. The latter had just used the name “Gabriel Nagy”. After some time digging into the case, the police commissioner discovered that the man lived in Mackay, a town in northeastern Australia, located about 1000 miles from the last place Nagy was seen.

It was the only tangible lead she had in this two-decade-long affair. Robinson needed to pursue this before declaring Gabriel Nagy officially dead. Very quickly, the local police went to the home of the mystery man.

Glue the puzzle pieces
Police arrived in Mackay at the mystery man’s home. There, they gave him the coordinates of Chief Commissioner Robinson. Unfortunately, they couldn’t force him to join her. However, they were hopeful he would do so to finally close this case.

A few days later, Saunders grabbed his phone and contacted Robinson. As he spoke to the commissioner, he told her that his last 20 years had been completely blurry for him. Following this phone call, things got more than serious.”Robinson wanted to see me and talk to me at length Saunders told reporters in 2012.

The last two decades of Mr Saunders
During the call, Robinson learned a lot about Mr Ron Saunders. At the same time, the mystery man was working and living at Mackay’s River Life Church. However, as he explained to her, he spent most of his time outdoors, wandering from place to place without ever having a fixed abode. What is most intriguing is that this man who now called himself Gabriel Nagy had no memory of where he came from.

“There was something in the back of my head that told me I must have done something extremely serious to have lived the way I have for years gone by,” Saunders remembered. But this simple conversation was not enough to confirm that he was indeed Gabriel Nagy.

On the way to Mackay
After his phone call with the Police Commissioner, Saunders himself felt quite intrigued. After all, he too wanted to know his true identity. The two interlocutors, therefore, decided to meet in person, to finally solve this puzzle. Robinson walked quickly to Mackay to see if his hunch was true. Plus, she really wanted to help Saunders.

“The first thing she said when she arrived was’ You did not kill anybody. You’re not wanted by the police. You’re a missing person and this is not a crime”, Saunders explained. Still, he couldn’t help but be confused when the Chief Commissioner said.

Were they the same two men?
Robinson had to confirm that Saunders and Nagy were indeed the same people. So she started by showing some pictures of Nagy to Saunders, asking him questions about her past. By doing this, she hoped that the man would eventually remember his past life.

As he browsed through Nagy’s family photos, a strange feeling gripped Saunders. “It was like a cartoon where flashback bubbles appear overhead ” he explained. “Robinson gave me a letter from Jennifer, a letter from Pam, and letters from my father and mother-in-law.

The memories finally came back
As the man looked at the photos carefully, more and more memories came flooding back to his mind. First of all, he remembered buying camping equipment in Newcastle, just like Nagy. Then he remembered having suffered a head injury. And that’s when the chief commissioner realized that he was indeed the man they were looking for …

Eh yes! Saunders and Gabriel Nagy were the same people. Knowing this, Nagy vividly remembered waking up alone and lost in Sydney, with no memory of his past life. Now his family would finally understand why he had never contacted them! Because he just couldn’t.

No longer any notion of identity
As he was searched all over Sydney, Gabriel Nagy had no idea who he was. He found himself living on the streets, homeless, trying to figure out how he got there. “It was just the big white in my head,” he recalled in an interview with a local radio station.

From there, things got worse. “Every time I tried to think about this, I was like ‘Am I crazy? What the hell happened to me?’ And then I thought, ‘What did I do to get to this?’ I felt guilty and thought, ‘Maybe I committed a murder or robbed a bank, something like that” >he explained.

A traumatic brain condition
After speaking to a few doctors, Robinson suspected Nagy of having fallen into a dissociative psychological state (also known as “dissociation”). A dissociative state is a traumatic neurological condition that causes sufferers to forget their identity.

Besides, this condition causes individuals to wander, travel, and abandon their lives behind them. Psychologists describe this phenomenon as a “puzzled stroll”. It seems that this description fits perfectly with the was that Nagy found himself in.

A long journey
Nagy was learning more and more about himself as he worked alongside the doctors and the commissioner. He had travelled north from Newcastle and first landed in the town of Gladstone. Sometime later he moved to Rockhampton, where he was fortunate enough to find a place to live and where he worked on a farm. This meant that he stayed around the region for a while, and found some odd jobs there in construction and fishing.

Subsequently, Nagy moved again and found a new place to live called Saunders Beach. Since he had no idea who he was, he decided to become Ron Saunders. Obviously, he chose the name because its non-eccentricity.

Get back on your feet
Due to his various past drug addictions, Nagy had difficulty remembering parts of his past 20 years. For example, he couldn’t remember how or why he landed in Mackay. There he met Barry Hayhoe, the pastor of the church where he found some work. Although he did not consider himself to be homeless, he readily accepted meals given to him by Hayhoe and his wife.

“Apparently at the time I looked like a greyhound,” he said on the radio.” Only ribs, skin, and bones”. After accepting the meals, Nagy decided to stay to help Hayhoe Church. He later accepted the role of janitor proposed by the pastor, which allowed him to stay in the church.

When the memories come back on their own

The Chief Commissioner had just one last question: why Nagy had registered at the hospital with his real name, and not with his pseudonym “Ron Saunders”? It would seem that even before he met Robinson, the man had a few bits of his life from before, but only in the form of small flashbacks.

“I lived under this pseudonym for quite a while, but I had a few flashbacks of my own name; things were coming back to me bit by bit,” Nagy said sometime later. After nearly two decades, Nagy finally proclaimed his identity.

Claim your identity
He had so many people to thank: everyone who had helped him while he was homeless, Pastor Hayhoe, of course, but also the Chief Commissioner, Robinson. After a short stay at the hospital, Nagy finally managed to find a permanent contract, working part-time in a retirement home. In his spare time, he also went to help the pastor at church.

Now that his past life was slowly starting to settle in his head, Nagy only wanted one thing: to reconnect with his children, Jessica and Stephen. With any luck, they would be able to understand their father’s incredible life journey.

Write a letter
After the discussion between Robinson and Nagy, the commissioner made it clear that she would let Nagy choose for himself whether he wanted to contact his family. He thought about it for a moment. Would they like to talk to him again? After some time of reflection, he realized that he absolutely had to get back in touch. So he began to express his feelings in a letter.

“I sat down and wrote the longest letter of my life – seven and a half pages, double-sided, he recalled. Once he had finished writing it, he immediately sent it to his family, long lost to follow-up. A few days later, he received an SMS which stopped his heart.

Reconnect with the family
Nagy had no idea what to expect when he sent the letter. Fortunately, his family’s reaction was much better than he thought. “The message said, ‘Hi Dad,’ and that was enough to make me cry. Jennifer wrote to me saying that she had just read the letter and that she still loved me.”

“10 minutes later the phone rang, and it was Pam. We talked until the cell phone went off,” said Gabriel, not without emotion. After all these years, no one in the family had forgotten him. None of them had ever given up hope.

The return of the missing man
A few weeks later, Jennifer, now 32, decided to fly to Mackay to meet her father. After 23 years, father and daughter would finally be able to meet again.

“He picked me up at the airport with a big bouquet of flowers,” Jennifer told The Courier-Mail “It felt like the scene was in slow motion, and we hugged each other without thinking too much.”

Reconnect with family
At the same time, he also reconnected with his father. Unfortunately, his mother passed away a few years, before. Tragically enough, his little sister had also died of a tumour.

For the first time, he met his niece and nephew. “It was like in the Bible – the child prodigy coming back to the fold,” told a local radio station. “It was surreal.”

Take the time to get to know each other
Nagy and his family were grateful to have found each other again. Jennifer was just a child went she lost her father but today she was an accomplished woman. Gabriel Nagy was eager to discover the exceptional woman she had become.

They were both delighted at the idea of ​​(re) discovering each other. And, although many years had kept them apart, when they met again, it was as if they had never been separated.

Catch up
Although Nagy continued to live in Mackay, Pamela, their children, and himself were now in constant contact. Besides, they were trying to make up for the lost time. For them, it was a real miracle that Nagy emerged like this after 23 years of silence. So, based on their own experience, they urged all people who were in the same situation to keep hope and always have faith.

Additionally, Jennifer spoke about the importance of getting answers for the families of missing persons.” I want to give people hope, and remind them that sometimes great things happen – miracles can happen,” she said

A second chance
Gabriel Nagy thinks that this reunion is due to faith and religion. He is extremely grateful to Pastor Hayhoe for helping him and giving him a roof to live under.

He is convinced that it is thanks to his faith that he succeeded in finding his family. After all these years of wandering the streets, he feels like a new man and is finally excited to enjoy this next chapter in his life.

A better man
Of course, this experience has left a deep and scarring mark on Gabriel Nagy but he only remembers the positive. And, while he has managed to control many of his addictions, he still sometimes struggles with his mental health.

“I’m still a little crazy sometimes, but I feel a lot better than before. At least I’ve grown a little bit. I’m making better decisions.” Fortunately, he now has his family watching over him!