RootsChat.Com

Thank you everyone, for your most helpful replies.  I'll certainly follow up on the links provided. 

As to finding out more from his Irish relatives, many still live in the same village and surrounding areas and either won't talk about him or don't know anything about what happened to his remains or what he was up to.  My co-researcher has been to Ireland and personally spoken to/contacted a great number of them but learned nothing.  He was born in Ireland but lived in Yorkshire for most of his adult life (he came over with his parents when a child) and it seems that not many of his Irish family kept in touch with him or his parents.

As to him being wanted by the Irish police, all that's been admitted by his relatives is that in his own region, there was a 'hit' out on him.  This, of course, opens up speculation that maybe the 'hit' was eventually carried out in Ireland and that the Swiss death notice is unconnected - but then there would presumably still have been a burial in Ireland that would have shown up in the records already examined by my co-researcher.  In any case, such a death would also have likely been reported in the Irish press.  But speculation of course, is apt to run wild.  It may be that the real story is far more prosaic.

Thank you again for all your suggestions.

Lindyboo

Thank you CaroleW.  There is no record of him in the UK indexes.  There's a death notice in an Irish newspaper, of a man with the same name, born in the same small village in Ireland, dying in Switzerland in 1992, but the Swiss records/newspapers have nothing online that matches (though they are a poor resource in themselves).  It's also thought that he was wanted by the police in Yorkshire in about 1995, but no further information has been found.

I know his date and place of birth and where he lived until the late 50s, but after that he is elusive.  He lived under several aliases and married under one of them in 1973 in Yorkshire, but after that he disappears.  He held several passports in false names.  His closest surviving relative - who is one of those who refused to claim his body - adamantly will not reveal anything.  His other relatives in Ireland have no information.

I and my co-researcher have scoured the internet for a decade and found nothing.  I think this is one mystery that will never be solved, alas.

Thank you Annie, I'll put it in the pot of ideas to consider.  I've got, I think, a couple of hundred certs so it would be quite a task to transcribe, though if it's the only option then I'd go for it.  Such a shame though, to know that the certs themselves will be just thrown away after I'm gone.
L

Thank you rosie and KGarrad.  I'll give thought to both of these options.

Thank you all.  Hanes Teulu, the newspaper archive link has given me the info I needed.  Thank you so much!
Lindyboo