Is Olivia Newton-John’s missing lover alive?

Olivia Newton-John's former boyfriend, Patrick McDermott (left), who disappeared in mysterious circumstances four years ago, is believed to be alive and living on a boat on the South American coast. McDermott had been in a relationship for nine years with Newton-John (right), who starred opposite John Travolta in the 1978 hit film Grease, before he disappeared from a chartered fishing boat, The Freedom of California, in 2005.

No body was found at the time and the US Coast Guard ruled he had most likely drowned. However, a team of US investigators employed by NBC's current affairs show /Dateline/, claim they have tracked him down using via a website, which they set up as a high-tech trap to lure him out of hiding.

They claim that McDermott has been regularly logging on to the site, and that he is on a boat travelling along the Mexico coastline to South America.

"When you're running you always are looking over your shoulder and we're going to catch him looking at us," said the man leading the investigation team, Philip Klein, in an interview on Dateline on Monday night. "The most interesting hits have come directly from Cabo San Lucas (in Mexico), the last place anybody saw Patrick McDermott."

Klein said on the programme that 52-year-old McDermott, a former cameraman, faked his disappearance so he could avoid paying debts and enable his teenage son to receive a $150,000 life insurance payout. He added: "He's alive - there's no doubt in my mind, this guy's alive."

Klein said Newton-John, who refused to be interviewed for the investigation, had regularly been logging on to the site to get updates on the hunt for her ex-partner. Whether true or not, it appears that the Australian actress has moved on. Last year she married John Easterling, a multi-millionaire American businessman. ·