Grieving English mother visits Kelowna to look for long lost son

KELOWNA – An anguished mother from England has returned to Kelowna to look for her son who has been missing for 26 years.

Charles Horvath, 20, was backpacking across Canada in May 1989 and staying at the Tiny Town Campground in Kelowna when he disappeared.

“I’m trying to come to terms with it. It will likely be my demise. I will go to my grave and never know where he is,” says Denise Horvath Allan.

On one of her previous visits, Horvath Allan received an anonymous note saying Charles was fatally struck on the head at the campsite and his body dumped in Okanagan Lake near the floating bridge.

Police divers searched the area but Horvath’s body wasn’t found.

Then on a 2010 visit, Horvath Allan received another tip from someone who knew of people who had overheard a conversation about Charles in the showers of Tiny Town years before.

“I’ve pleaded and asked that they would communicate again but sadly they’re afraid,” she says.

Horvath Allan, 65, doesn’t think she will ever return to Kelowna again due to health issues and the financial costs.

Before returning home, she will give the RCMP a petition requesting her son’s case be handed to the provincial cold case investigation team.

And she never stops hoping someone who knows what happened to Charles will come forward.

“Just to let us know where his remains lay and I could take him home and lay him to rest with his beloved grandmother.”