‘Diver Dan’ on the case of finding missing Tasmanian Ian Nichols, missing since 1989

Following a tip that could potentially crack open a 35-year-old cold case, a YouTube star diver specialising in missing persons has now turned his attention to finding Tasmanian man Ian Nichols.

Daniel Pritchard, known as "Diver Dan", while searching the River Derwent for New Norfolk man Dale Nicholson. Picture: YouTube

Following a tip that could potentially crack open a 35-year-old cold case, a YouTube star diver specialising in missing persons has now turned his attention to finding Tasmanian man Ian Nichols.

It’s a development that has brought fresh hope to the daughter of Mr Nichols, Christine Behrens, who has spent 35 painful years of “sheer hell” without answers.

Retired policeman Daniel Pritchard and American diver William McIntosh, who jointly run the YouTube channel Exploring with a Mission, have successfully found remains in a number of cold cases.

One of those cases was the matter of long-term missing New Norfolk man, Dale Nicholson, who disappeared in 2016.

Missing person Ian Nichols

Mr Pritchard – often referred to as “Diver Dan” or “Downunder Dan Diving” – is also actively working on the case of Nicola Sallese, a Sheffield man who has been missing for almost 15 years.

Mr Nichols, 51, disappeared from a Vietnam veterans’ retreat known as the Red Rooster at Dago Point, Lake Sorell, in September 1989.

Mrs Behrens has always believed her dad was murdered by an armed man with a history of bragging about his kills.

She has also believed Mr Nichols was buried onsite at the Red Rooster.

In 2022, the Australian Federal Police deployed forensic search and imagery specialists to Tasmania, using ground-penetrating radar to search for Mr Nichols under a tank at the site.

But Mrs Behrens said not only did she believe the wrong tank had been searched, she had also been in contact with a man more recently who claimed his father, and another man, had jointly murdered her father and dumped his body in the lake.

The Red Rooster retreat for Vietnam veterans at Lake Sorell, Tasmania. Picture: Supplied

She said the man said he was a little boy with the two men when they wrapped Mr Nichols in black plastic filled with heavy rocks, wrapped it up in chicken wire, and used a row boat to dump the body in Lake Sorell – not too far from the Red Rooster.

Mrs Behrens said the man also saw his father take a war medal from Mr Nichols from inside the retreat, and that the two men also drowned the row boat.

Tasmania Police has not searched the lake on the belief the tip was a hoax, and that the man was simply “trolling” Mrs Behrens.

“I’ve been asking the police to do that for years, can you please search the lake,” she said.

“They said, going by the information that they had, that Dad was last seen running through the bush and they had no real cause to search the lake.

“They seemed to think it was highly unlikely Dad was in the lake.”

Lake Sorell near the Red Rooster Vietnam veterans' retreat, where Ian Nichols remains could have been dumped. Picture: Supplied

Mrs Behrens said back in the 1980s and 1990s, police didn’t have the type of scanning equipment that Mr Pritchard now had at his disposal – and would have had to deploy divers to search underneath the entire span of the lake.

She said she reached out to Mr Pritchard, who was in the area looking for Mr Sallese’s car.

Mr Pritchard, despite the doubts of police, has decided to take the project on.

“The family reached out to me about Ian and asked me if I could have a look,” he said.

Mr Pritchard said he was aware there were a few theories of what had happened to Mr Nichols, whether he’d been buried under a septic tank, drowned in a row boat, or dumped in the water, wrapped in a tarp.

Christine Behrens, with a picture of her father Ian Nichols. Picture: Chris Kidd

He said he was searching Lake Sorell on the back of the man’s tip about the latter two possibilities – using three types of sonar equipment.

“We’re looking for unnatural shapes underneath the water,” he said.

“Lake Sorell is pretty good in the sense there’s not a lot of debris on the bottom. If we identify something, we can dive on it and hopefully find Ian one day.”

Mr Pritchard, who relies entirely on community donations and asks families not to pay for his work, will return to Tasmania to continue searching for Mr Nichols as soon as he can arrange funding for his trip and his diesel costs.

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