THE MYSTERY of what happened to the infamous Loch Ness monster hoaxer has finally been solved.
Frank Searle lived on Loch Ness during the 1970s and became a celebrity when he claimed to be the first person in history to capture real pictures of Nessie.
His most famous photograph, which many likened to a floating tree trunk, brought Searle
to the attention of the world's media and produced an adoring fan base. He even inspired a monster-hunter character played by Keith Allen in the 1996 Hollywood film Loch Ness, starring Ted Danson.
However, rumours soon started to emerge that his pictures were a hoax and The Loch Ness Story, a book by the BBC's Nicholas Witchell, labelled them fakes.
After being exposed as a hoaxer, Searle's own life became a mystery when he seemed to disappear without trace in 1983 after leaving Loch Ness.
He went missing shortly after Adrian Shine, of the Drumnadrochit-based Loch Ness Project, was injured in a petrol bomb attack following a war of words with Searle.
Suspicion fell upon Searle and friends and fellow monster hunters placed adverts in newspapers in an attempt to track him down, but he remained missing for 22 years.
But now a film crew, making a documentary on Searle, has discovered that he died a few weeks ago, aged 84, in the Lancashire town of Fleetwood.
Andrew Tullis, the film-maker behind the documentary The Man Who Captured Nessie, which is to be broadcast by Channel 4 later this year, said: "Rumours on his whereabouts ranged from treasure-hunting in Cornwall to lecturing on monsters in the United States, or even lying at the bottom of Loch Ness.
"But, during the production, a lead brought me to Fleetwood where I discovered that Searle had lived quietly for the last 18 years. And, in fact, he had died a few weeks before my arrival.
"Searle was loved and loathed in equal measure, but his place in the history of Loch Ness hoaxes is assured."
A former paratrooper, Searle gave up his job as a greengrocer in London in 1969 to relocate to Loch Ness and set up "The Frank Searle Loch Ness Investigation".
He produced 20 supposed images of Nessie, one of which even showed a UFO in the same shot. A dossier produced on Searle's work convinced many that his "monsters" were really constructed from fence posts, socks, tarpaulins and, on one occasion, the cutting and pasting of a dinosaur postcard on to an image of disturbed water.
Roland Watson, a fellow Loch Ness monster hunter from Edinburgh and friend of Searle's during his stay on Loch Ness, said: "Frank lived permanently by the north shore of Loch Ness in various tents and caravans from 1969 to 1983, whereupon he upped tent pegs and left the loch for good.
"Since that day nothing was ever heard from him. It was as if he vanished as quickly as a sight of the monster herself."
