'Larry the chef' speaks out as case dropped in Northern Ireland

'I knew they had no case because I know I am innocent'

Zaitschek left his job at Castlereagh because he needed to return to New York for a short time.

“My father had health issues and I had a job lined up here so I needed to come back. That is why I handed in my formal resignation a month before I left. It wasn’t like I snuck out the back door and secretly fled to the U.S.”

Zaitschek, who was born in New York City but moved to Belfast in 1995 to friends and family, has not seen his son, Pearse, since the accusations. Pearce and his mother, Zaitschek’s ex-wife, were put into a witness protection program shortly after the break-in.

“Pearse was three-and-a-half when I last saw him,” said Zaitschek sadly. “And I miss him every single day since.”

Zaitschek, who now lives and works in New York since the incident, promises to focus all his energies on making contact with his lost son and will heed advise from his lawyers on whether or not he should return to Northern Ireland in the near future.

Zaitschek describes his life since the break-in as a constant battle.

“To be honest the most painful part of the whole thing was the separation from my son,” he said.

Zaitschek, who claims he has been harassed by the PSNI and has had his life threatened on several occasions, said the whole ordeal for past seven years has “hindered” him from moving forward with life.

“It has affected my ability to get job, my relationship with son, traveling, just every aspect of my life, and financially it’s devastated me also,” he said.

A few weeks after the break-in Zaitschek said FBI agents jumped him after getting off a subway in Manhattan. FBI agents and members of the special branch interrogated him.

“From then on my world just changed,” he said. “I’ve lost jobs because of it. I used to go on job interviews and then all would be great until someone would Google my name and there went the job.”

At one point Zaitschek’s relationship with IRA informant Denis Donaldson was up for question. But, said Zaitschek, he met Donaldson when he was living in New York in the early 1990s but didn’t see much of him after moving to Ireland. The last time he recalls seeing him was in 1997.

Zaitschek said he was shocked to find out that Donaldson admitted to being a British spy in 2005.

“I was very shocked when I heard he was apparently an informer. I never knew really what to believe about that,” he says.

​
Nster.com