An update from Chris:
Still no news on Ste but the Crete police have had boats searching the coast, a sniffer dog, and most recently helicopters searching the area.
Tonight (Friday 16th) Steve's brother Tony and cousin Mike flew out from Manchester to Crete to continue the search for Steve.
After the initial fact finding, touring bars and liasing with the police and consulate that myself, Tony, Phil Edwards (Steve's brother in law), my best friend Andy Fox and Steve's mate Ben Read have done the intention now is both to spread the word even further afield in Crete and to check all hospitals.
If we cannot gain access to hospitals the intention is to put new 'missing' posters up around hospital reception areas and where people working there will be parking their cars.
Each day Tony and Mike will be faxing a list of hospitals back home detailing what they have covered alongside reports of what they have done, whether they have been able to, in conference with the consulate, access wards etc. We will then be keeping a record of which searches have been done with which hospitals.
We have also been contacted by a local Sandbach man who works for a travel and airways agency with a view to distributing information about Steve to all outgoing flights to Crete but more importantly help overcome the difficulties that the family have had in booking flights at short notice.
Along similar lines an acquantance of Steve's friends, an air hostess from Sandbach, has offered to put flyers on all flights out to Crete.
Another voluonteer has come forward from
www.findstevecook.co.uk to say that she is flying out to Crete on the 20th and that she speaks Greek and would love to help. We will be looking to get her in contact with Tony and Mike so that she can assist in their enquiries.
Back home, well over £3000 has been raised to help Steve's friends and relatives continue the search, over £2500 has been raised by
www.ynwa.tv whilst other generous donations have come from the Cook family neighbourhood and his my place of work.
On Sunday, the owners of ynwa.tv and friends of me and Steve from the site have organised a mass distribution of leaflets - over 20,000 - to people attending the Liverpool Vs Manchster United match at Anfield. This match would have been Steve's first home match after he went on holiday. We have over 20 university friends, friends from going to the match as well as Liverpool fans from around the country helping out.
We have one possible lead of a third poster being put up in the hosonissos area of a young man with a badly bruised face. This originally came from a person from the Netherlands and we have since had several other confirmed sightings of the poster. The description is a white male with half of his face bruised and swollen, he has blue and white tubes coming out of his mouth and he is wearing what seems to be a yellow jumpsuit - whether this is a hospital garment we do not know.
At the moment we are trying to determine whether this could be Steve or a poster of the young Irish lad that Tony and I went to the university hospital to identify. Unfortunately the Irish lad has passed away as a result of his injuries from a biking accident since we went to see him.
The difference in descriptions of the initial poster put up in hosonissos of the Irish lad and the one which the Dutch claim to have seen are quite distinct. Local ex-pats and dutch holidaymakers are currently trying to trace the poster but to no avail. Helping us in this quest is Ayline whom without her help the whole poster thing would be a puzzle.
This weekend we will also be updating the
www.findstevecook.co.uk site to include a more detailed description of the events of the night he disappeared (after consulting with the UK police and the interviews with Steve's friends) as well as providing more photographs and details of Steve.
We have just had an offer of support from somebody that has contacts which may be of help in tracing Ste's whereabouts. We don't know where this will lead yet but it's another possibility.
There are lots of things and lots of people driving this whole search forward and it gives us even more hope that we'll be bringing the bro back home sooner rather than later.