The father of a Calgary woman who went missing in Hamilton, Ont., says since his return from Alberta, there have been no new leads of 27-year-old Holly Ellsworth-Clark’s whereabouts since her disappearance Jan. 11.
Dave Clark said searches this coming week for his daughter will likely be limited to just the Hamilton area in light of the COVID-19 pandemic – the reason he made his recent cross-country trek by car rather than plane.
Between going home to Alberta in late March and his return to southern Ontario, Clark said he’s had tips, but after followups, none has brought him closer to Ellsworth-Clark.
“There were a number of leads but they’ve all come to nothing. There’s no real evidence that she’s been around here,” Clark said.
In the family’s initial visit to Hamilton in January, Clark expanded the search beyond central Hamilton streets where Ellsworth-Clark lived and travelled across much of southern Ontario including Toronto, Halton, Niagara and other regions reaching out to police and local shelters.
Clark said he plans to check in with many of those agencies but expects he won’t be doing it in-person as he begins the second week of another search.
“It’s a little bit challenging with the whole COVID-19 thing still going on. But, yeah, our plan is to check in with those,” Clark told Global News.
In the family’s first week back in Hamilton, Clark said they’ve hooked up with friends and volunteers who have kept the search going in their absence.
“We’ve already given out a bunch of flyers to volunteers who are putting them up around the city. Prior to that, we took flyers to homeless people who were still out on the streets and potentially in contact with the people.”
In an effort to stimulate tips, the family is offering a reward for photos, video, or any information that leads to Ellsworth-Clark’s whereabouts.
“We’ve offered a reward without being very specific about it just because we don’t want to spend our time fighting about a specific reward. But, you know, there are thousands of dollars on offer for information that leads to something about Holly,” said Clark.
Since leaving Hamilton in the second week of March, he said there’s been little in the way of credible tips.
The last significant tip was in mid-February when a man came forward saying he saw her asking for money outside the FreshCo on Barton and Gage.
After notifying police and looking through security-camera footage from nearby businesses, Clark said the lack of light and length of available footage made it too hard to confirm it was her.
“We eventually got some video of a couple of Dumpster divers and one of them looked strikingly like Holly, but it’s just for a brief moment and too dark to actually get a face.”
About a year and a half ago, Ellsworth-Clark moved from Calgary to Toronto and eventually on to Hamilton to pursue a music career with a boyfriend.
After following another love interest to Hamilton, Clark said he found out from Ellsworth-Clark sometime in December that her latest boyfriend didn’t want to mix the business of making music with a personal relationship, and that precipitated a break-up.
Not long after, Ellsworth-Clark took up residence with six people at a home at Barton and Sanford after responding to an ad for a roommate.
Since his return to Hamilton, Clark said some of his daughter’s acquaintances who’ve come forward have shared stories of her possible paranoia — something he and his wife did not sense in their daughter’s weekly phone calls at the time.
“She may well have been extremely paranoid. People say that she didn’t want to get into cars. She was doing a lot of walking,” according to Clark, “If there were serious mental-health issues in that time, she wasn’t showing it to us yet.”
However, in January, Clark said he got his first sense of paranoia when his daughter called in a panic, afraid for her life and believing two men had been following her.
“So the conversation we had — she was in quite a state, and panicked. So we weren’t sure if she was rational. But apparently, she was talking about this much earlier and in a rational state to other people.”
Hamilton police said Ellsworth-Clark left her home in the area of Sanford Avenue and Cannon Street around 4 p.m. on Jan. 11.
The last known sighting, according to police, was around 4:50 p.m. that same day, as seen by a security camera in an area around Wentworth and Shaw streets.
Clark said he plans to stay in Hamilton for at least another week and hopes for new leads or at least some closure.
“If she’s alive and well, we’d like to know it. And we’d also like to know if she’s not.”
Holly Ellsworth-Clark is 27 years old, about six feet tall and 200 lbs., with an athletic build. She was last seen wearing a black, long-sleeved shirt, black pants, and black boots and possibly carrying a black backpack.
Tips from the public can still be sent to bringhollyhome2020@gmail.com, and a Facebook group called Holly Clark Search will continue, according to family and friends.