AFTER seven years of searching, a man has successfully made contact with the Jersey-based family of the half-brother whose existence he had been unaware of for more than 60 years.
It was 2018 when Jim Murdock was first told about a closely-guarded family secret, sparking a quest to establish the identity of a previously unknown branch of his family, hundreds of miles from his home in Northern Ireland.
The revelation was that Mr Murdock’s father, John Stanley Murdock, had fathered a child during a visit to Jersey soon after the end of the Second World War. The baby was born “around 1947”, but Mr Murdock had precious little detail about his half-brother: no name, no date-of-birth, and no idea about the identity of the mother.
In spite of formidable odds and advice that he’d be more likely to find a needle in a haystack, Mr Murdock set about trying to find out more about his half-brother, who he knew would be around nine years older.
The JEP first covered the story in early 2020, when Mr Murdock appealed for clues from Islanders who may have known his father – who died in 1990 – or a couple named Jimmy and Doris Hughes, with whom he lodged.
“I would walk across broken glass to find him,” Mr Murdock said of his brother.
After a Covid-enforced delay to plans to visit Jersey, Mr Murdock came to the Island in June 2021, visiting the Tenby pub in St Aubin, where Mr Hughes had worked as a barman, with Mr Murdock senior a lodger in the Hughes’ flat above the pub.
Stimulated by a follow-up JEP article, the quest began to unearth snippets of information, with a key breakthrough coming from an Islander who learned of the story via Facebook and painstakingly went through birth records before finding a child with the forenames John Murdock.
A birth certificate would have offered vital clues, but Mr Murdoch was told this was in a sealed file which could not be opened until 2047 unless the person named on it gave consent.
Invaluable help also came from English researcher Sally Berman, who worked on TV series Long Lost Family prior to her death last year.
Working on the basis that John was adopted, Mr Murdock worked with the Fostering and Adoption agency and in October 2024 he received the news that his brother had died suddenly of a heart attack in 1999.
Although the news shattered any hope that he might meet his sibling, Mr Murdock had gleaned his brothers’s adopted surname and this meant he was able to find his grave and to make contact with family members.
Mr Murdock made his most recent trip to the Island in June, meeting his late brother’s wife and two nephews.
“They were lovely people and a joy to meet,” he said.
While tinged with sadness, Mr Murdock said the conclusion to the search had helped resolve questions that he feared would never be answered.
