The Lost American Part 1 : Running from the End of the World

Sometimes, but not always, real life is stranger than fiction.


When Echo journalist Mostafa Darwish was researching an
award-winning series on deaths of people in Direct Provision, he
discovered that one of those who passed away was an American. His
name was Thomas Stofiel.


When we dug deeper into his past, it opened up a strange and
often poignant story. Thomas was a man with illogical and
unsettling beliefs, someone often struggling with his mental
health, manacled to his convictions even as his life veered off
course. Our investigation kept turning up more elements, opening
more doors into his past - of his life in America, his life
online, and ultimately, his time in Ireland, living as an asylum
seeker in Tralee.


In Episode one of a two-part podcast series, we delve deep
into Thomas's troubled time in his native country, tracing his
often mysterious travels, before he finds himself in our own
Kingdom, Co Kerry.


Thomas had a habit of going missing, and he was also the
proverbial lost soul. This is the story of The Lost American.


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