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Today's footnote: James Sadleir, MP for Tipperary 1852-57. In Feb 1856, the bank he chaired collapsed after his brother abstracted £288,000 from it (and then killed himself); by the time anyone realised he had also been involved in the fraud, he'd vanished.
After charges were brought against him, Parliament tried to expel him in July 1856, but hesitated on the grounds that he had not actually been convicted. (However, the government did commit to not allowing him to resign, if he were to ask...) https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1856/jul/24/expulsion-of-james-sadleir
Perhaps unsurprisingly he never came back to answer further questions, and was eventually expelled in Feb 1857, allegedly last seen in Paris wearing a moustache (the horror). https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1857/feb/16/motion-that-he-be-expelled-this-house
His brother's entry in the ODNB solves the mystery: James eventually made it to Geneva, where he lived on a pension from his wife's family. (No word if he kept the moustache)
Fast forward to June 1881, and the papers report a minor news story from the Continent, about an Englishman who lived in "strictest privacy" on "independent means" and had been found dead, apparently killed for his watch.
The intriguing thing is that none of the papers seem to have made the connection - a couple of dozen papers reprinted one or both of these stories, but none of them connected it to the missing Sadleir.
It's not that he was completely forgotten - there are a few passing references to "the conduct of Sadleir and of Keogh" etc in that period, and the lawsuits had dragged on as late as 1872 - but apparently it just quietly slipped by.
Two followup thoughts: a) I wonder if the Irish papers would have made the connection had he not been reported as "an Englishman" in the first reports; certainly you'd assume more chance of them picking it up.
and b) @singlecrow immediately noted that the news story about finding the body is *perfect* as the setup to a classic detective novel. Hard to read it any other way now. Maybe one of the creditors did finally catch up with him on that lonely mountain path...
