ABOUT GONE: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF AERYN GILLERN

Saturday, November 12th from 9-11 PM ET/PT
(Directed, Written and Produced by Gretchen and John Morning)

On October 31, 2007, Kathy Gilleran received a call from Vienna, Austria, informing her that her 34-year-old son, Aeryn, was missing and the police had been notified. A retired policewoman who served for twenty years in Ithaca, New York, Kathy immediately flew overseas to aid in the search for Aeryn. But upon arriving in Vienna, she was shocked to learn that the local police had no interest in pursuing the case. That's when Kathy embarked on the most harrowing investigation of her life, overcoming a major language barrier and encountering a staggering pattern of overt police intimidation, lies and bigotry. Kathy's quest for the truth to what happened to her son is chronicled in the feature documentary.

The story that Austrian detectives told Kathy was that Aeryn had been at an exclusive men's sauna on October 29, 2007, when he suffered a sudden emotional breakdown, fled the sauna naked and then jumped to his death into the Danube Canal. They claimed that Aeryn committed "spontaneous" suicide, but to Kathy, the explanation made no sense, especially because no body was recovered. Honing her instincts as a mother and her skills as a cop, she ultimately discovers her own strength to keep fighting to learn her son's fate — even to this day, more than four years after he went missing.

Filmmakers Gretchen and John Morning first learned about Aeryn Gillern's plight and his mother's search for him in a local Syracuse, New York newspaper nearly ten months after he disappeared. In producing the documentary, the directors were guided by a simple, defining premise: to immerse viewers in Kathy's mesmerizing and incredibly personal quest for the truth.

GONE: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF AERYN GILLERN is directed, written and produced by Gretchen Morning and John Morning. The film is produced by Daniel J. Chalfen and executive produced by Jim Butterworth of Naked Edge Films. For Investigation Discovery, Ron Simon is executive producer, Sara Kozak is senior vice president of production and Henry Schleiff is president and general manager.