North's most wanted found in Bangkok bar

Aug 22 2010 by Joanne Butcher, Sunday Sun

LOUNGING in the midday sunshine, this is fugitive rape suspect George Hoolahan enjoying the high life in Thailand.

Hoolahan was tracked down by the Sunday Sun to the Thai capital of Bangkok where he has been living since fleeing justice more than 10 years ago.

The 61-year-old divorcee became one of the North’s Most Wanted after he slipped the net in 1999 as he was about to stand trial accused of raping two teenagers in the seaside resort of Whitley Bay, North Tyneside.

But days before he was due to stand trial he fled and simply vanished, until being tracked down to Bangkok where he spends days and nights in some of the capital’s seedier bars and clubs.

He’s a regular in the city’s notorious Soi Cowboy red light district, a strip of bars filled with go-go dancers and prostitutes, where bar managers say he can often be spotted sitting outside the Tilac - Thai for “Darling” - go-go bar.

One manager said: “He goes there because he knows the German owner, but he won’t come here again.

“There are some girls here who hide when they see him. He has been demanding services not normally on offer, so I think he has a power complex.”

We flushed him out by posing as a wealthy businessman wanting to recruit him to carry out a lucrative £1million refit of luxury penthouses.

We lured him to a meeting at a posh bar, and he turned up wearing white trousers and a pink polo shirt adorned with a picture of the MP5 machine gun used by the US Navy’s elite special forces teams.

But when we told him the deal was off and confronted him about his past he claimed: “That’s all cleared up now. It was only a date rape kind of thing.”

Since disappearing he has been reportedly sighted in London and Nottingham and Northumbria Police even featured him on BBC’s Crimewatch – but to no avail.