Melbourne, Jan 28 : Actress Olivia Newton-John's former partner Patrick McDermott is still alive and on the run, say US investigators who have been trying to track him down.

McDermott had staged his own disappearance while on a fishing trip in June 2005, and a team of private investigators from Texas believe that he has been travelling along the Mexican and South American coastline since then.

The reason for the former cameraman's disappearance, according to lead investigator Philip Klein, is aimed at avoiding debts' repayment and enabling his teenage son Chance to receive a 100,000 dollars life insurance policy.

"He''s alive - there''s no doubt in my mind, this guy''s alive," the Herald Sun quoted Klein as saying.

"Everything was bad in this guy''s life. There was nothing good.

"Maybe in his mind if he stages his death, the insurance policy will pay off all his debts and he can leave his child a gift by pretending he''s dead," the investigator added.

In an episode devoted to the mystery this week, Klein revealed that his agency had set up a hi-tech trap to help locate McDermott by making a website called findpatrickmcdermott .com, which secretly showed investigators the locations of people accessing the site.

Klein said that he suspected McDermott has regularly been logging on to the "spider site", with the team tracking hits from what he believed was a boat travelling along the Mexican coastline as far as South America.

"We put what we call a trap on the web site where we can tell each I-address that comes in to the web site," Klein said.

"The rule of thumb is always this - when you''re running you always are looking over your shoulder and we''re going to catch him looking at us.

"The most interesting hits have come directly from Cabo San Lucas (in Mexico) last place anybody saw Patrick McDermott," he added. (ANI)