She was waved off at Piccadilly Station, then vanished without a trace

It was a routine journey that she'd made countless times before.

Ellen Coss Brown set off from Manchester Piccadilly to Holyhead one chilly November afternoon in 1999. She then planned to catch the ferry to Dublin. But she never made the boat.

The journey took a tragic turn. Her sister Bertha, who bid her farewell at the station, could not have known it would be their final goodbye.

Ellen vanished without a trace that day, and for a quarter of a century, her family has tirelessly searched for her. The Dubliner, who had been living on a Greater Manchester council estate, left behind a mystery that crossed borders and decades.

Ellen's sister and son, Peter Coss, even faced the harrowing task of identifying a body in Bournemouth, which ultimately wasn't hers. This month marks 25-years since Ellen disappeared.

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Back in 2019, Peter spoke to the M.E.N. about his mother's disappearance. "I have seen a lot of things on television about people who have been missing for a long time," he said.

"They often feel like they can’t get in touch with family because they are ashamed."

"But if she’s still alive we would just be relieved she is okay and would just say to get in touch.

"First and foremost we would want to know that she is okay and we would love to see her again.

"Or, if the worst has happened and anyone who knows her or has information, then please just get in touch with the police."

At the time of her disappearance, Ellen was 51 and had been living with her sister Bertha in Langley, Middleton.

The mum-of-one had been struggling with depression following her mother's passing, and her family knew she was having a tough time. However, Ellen's disappearance was completely unexpected, prompting concern when she didn't return to Dublin, leading her brothers Thomas and James to alert the authorities.

"Mum didn’t like to fly when she was going abroad so she would get the boat and train - it was a journey she had done for years,” Peter said.

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"Bertha saw her off at the station. I was called that evening because Thomas was expecting her home.

"She had been staying with Bertha for a couple of months, almost living with them for a while.

"My mum had some mental health issues. She felt like a change of scenery would help because she had been depressed."

Peter, who was living in Penge, south London, at the time, remembered his last conversation with his mother the night before she vanished.

'Nobody had heard from her and she didn’t have a mobile phone'

"I suppose you place more significance on something like that afterwards," he said.

"But I remember at the end of the phone call her telling me she loved me, although she would often say that.

"We were talking about how she was feeling and I said ‘we all want you to get better but you have to want to get better - it’s down to you’. And she said ‘yes, it is down to me’."

The following day brought a call from his uncles; Ellen had not returned as anticipated.

Peter said: "She did sometimes go places on her own so not being around for a day was not incredibly unusual. But then it got to another day and nobody had heard from her and she didn’t have a mobile phone.

"We called the police but were advised to wait until the following day. We started getting concerned and started liaising with the police in Manchester and Ireland.

"We did wonder if she got on the boat. We asked the police to look at CCTV footage and for some reason they couldn’t get hold of it, or it was not working that night.

"So there was no CCTV footage. James and Thomas did a TV appeal and police did an appeal on BBC TV.

"I remember we were trying to push the police into doing an appeal at the time. We were getting a lot of false sightings.

"People saying they had seen her here and there and it always ended up being someone else."

Greater Manchester Police and the Garda have both investigated Ellen's disappearance but have never been able to locate her. Her brother Thomas previously told the Irish Mirror that he spent months trawling the streets of Ireland's capital in a desperate bid to locate his missing sister.

He told the Irish Mirror back in 2016: "I can remember when there was a lookalike of her in Dublin. I had to sleep rough to gain the trust of the homeless community and I wanted to see this woman.

"I did see her – very like my sister but not her. There were several sightings of her in Dublin but none of them turned out to be her."

Thomas' search spanned away from home, as he spent years travelling back and forth to Holyhead clinging to the hope of finding Ellen.

'It was an anxious wait. In the end it wasn't her'

Ellen, originally from Ballyfermot in Dublin, had only £20 and no passport when she disappeared. Peter, a customer service supervisor, says he is baffled as to where his mum could have ended up.

"It felt like I was constantly having to ring the police for updates. The police in Dublin wanted to close the case early. It didn’t feel like it was a priority,” he said.

"At one point me and Bertha had to view a body in Bournemouth. They had been in the water for sometime.

"I didn’t think it looked like her. We had to give DNA samples in case and it was an anxious wait. In the end it wasn’t her.

"It was difficult because you’re making that journey and on the one hand you’re hoping it isn’t her and on the other you just want to know what has happened. That was probably less than a year after she went missing, so about 2000."

'I didn’t know if she is alive or dead but either way I have still lost my mother'

Single mum Ellen had a close relationship with her son, and they would spend Christmas and birthdays together. These anniversaries, Peter said, remain challenging years after his mum's disappearance.

"We had a close relationship," he said. "I was an only child and mostly my mum brought me up.

"We spoke on the phone all the time. I would come home for Christmas and holidays when in Manchester I would go up and see her.

"I had seen her about a month before she went missing. She seemed down.

"She had not been herself. Then other times she would be fine. She was still quite independent."

Describing what it was trying to come to terms with her disappearance, he said: "I suppose I was in shock at first. Because it was so difficult to deal with I would not think about it and push it to the back of my mind.

"A year after she went missing it dawned on me - I didn’t know if she is alive or dead but either way I have still lost my mother. Now it’s still hard when there are anniversaries and birthdays, or Christmas, when we would be together.

"But now I can remember the good and the bad and the things that make me laugh so I can remember her as a real human being. She was quite a vivacious person.

"My mum loved music and I remember her singing around the house. And she was independent.

"She always seemed to look younger than she was. In the last year I could see the mood had taken a toll because she was not herself."

Peter said Ellen was well-acquainted with Manchester city centre, Middleton, and her native Dublin.

Anyone who believes they may have seen Ellen is urged to contact Greater Manchester Police on 101.

Alternatively, anyone with information can also contact the UK charity Missing People via their website (missingpeople.org.uk) or call/text the free and confidential number 116000.