Missing (11 page)
Authors: Barry Cummins
Mark Pender loved motorcycles. The one he was riding that day in June 1995 was a limited-edition Fireblade. It was a sunny day, and he and a friend had just stopped for ice cream and petrol in
Killeigh, south of Tullamore. After finishing their ice cream they got back on the bike and headed for Tullamore. A few moments later the bike hit a grass verge and swerved into the path of an
oncoming lorry. The passenger escaped with minor injuries, but Mark Pender died. He was twenty-one years old and the proud father of three-year-old Dean. Mark and Dean’s mother, Gillian, were
due to be married the following May. A week after Mark’s death an insurance agent—unaware of Mark’s death—called to say that the couple had been given approval for a
mortgage.
Fiona Pender took the death of her younger brother very badly. With only two years between them, Fiona and Mark were close. Fiona shared his interest in motorbikes; she even bought her own, but
she got rid of it after Mark’s death. It was through her interest in motorbikes that she had met John Thompson, a farmer from Grange in north Co. Laois. It was Mark who introduced her to
John, who he knew from working with motorbikes, fixing them up. Fiona and John hit it off immediately. They started going out in October 1993, they went on a date to Birr, and the relationship
continued up to the time Fiona vanished almost three years later.
After Mark’s death there were nights when Fiona could be found at his grave in Durrow, just outside Tullamore. It was in Durrow that Mark and Gillian were to be married. As Fiona spoke to
her brother at his graveside she promised she would be a great aunt and would always look out for Dean, now that Mark was gone.
The sitting-room in the Pender home in Tullamore is cosy and welcoming. The room is dominated by photographs and paintings. Most of the photographs are of Fiona, who modelled
for magazines. The four paintings are by Seán Pender, a talented artist. There are two landscapes and a painting of boats tied up by a snowy pier; the fourth is an adaptation of the Mona
Lisa. They were mostly painted in 1998—two years after Fiona’s disappearance, and two years before Seán would end his own life.
It was in this room that Fiona Pender sat with her mother and father on the afternoon of Thursday 22 August 1996. While they were still suffering the loss of Mark, there was a lot to look
forward to. Mark’s son, Dean, was three years old. He and Gillian were living close by, and the Penders could visit Dean whenever they wanted. Now Dean would have a new cousin, and
Seán and Josephine would have a second grandchild.
Fiona’s baby was due on 22 October 1996. There was great excitement. If it was a girl, Fiona said she was going to call it Emma, or perhaps Laura. If she had a boy she said she’d
know immediately whether or not to call him Mark. The future looked bright. It would be a bit of a strain to find a new house or flat for herself and John and the baby; but the baby appeared to be
perfectly healthy, and that was the main thing. Fiona had been through a scare in the first three months: she was told she was in danger of having a miscarriage. But she came through it.
As Josephine and myself sat in the room that had held such excitement in August 1996, she recounted, with clarity, what was to be the last day she would spend with her only
daughter.
Well, we sat here after coming back from the Bridge Centre earlier that day. It had been raining, but it eased off a bit. We had a chat and a laugh here, and we had a bit of
lunch. Seán was getting ready to go off fishing. I said to Fiona that I needed to get a new pair of trousers for John; school was starting back in a couple of weeks. Fiona said she could
get a few more things for the baby as well, so we decided to head back up to the Bridge Shopping Centre. I remember clearly I bought the baby a little grey track suit, and we got Fiona a pair
of shoes that she’d be able to wear after the baby was born. And Fiona got some things for the baby: she got nappy wipes, and gripe water, and Sudocrem. Those things were still in the bag
unpacked when gardaí later searched her flat. My son John joined us, and the three of us walked Fiona back to her flat at Church Street. We walked into the flat with her. It was around
seven o’clock. I gave her a kiss. I remember clearly, as myself and John walked across the road I waved back at her. And that’s the last memory I have of Fiona: her little face at
the door.
The flat in Church Street where Fiona Pender was last seen is in the centre of Tullamore. It’s a three-minute walk to the Garda station, and the Bridge Shopping Centre is
even closer. The flat is on the ground floor of a large converted building that houses twelve self-contained bed-sitters. Standing at the front door you can see that there are only two routes that
Fiona and her killer could have taken. Coming out of the flat, turning left brings you towards the town centre, while turning right brings you to a roundabout that leads on to the roads towards
Port Laoise and Portarlington. Church Street is a busy street, with pubs, restaurants, and flats. Despite this, no-one has ever come forward to say they saw Fiona leave her flat. There was no
evidence of any violent attack in the flat; no evidence that an intruder broke in; no evidence of any type of disturbance. There was no evidence that she was placed in anything before being brought
from the flat. It is believed, therefore, that she left the flat after someone coaxed her outside. She probably got into a vehicle with someone she knew. It most probably headed to the right,
towards one of the roads leading to Co. Laois; this would be the quieter route. But this is just speculation, based on probabilities, not certainties. There is no eye-witness that we know of.
Having said goodbye to Fiona in the flat in Tullamore, John Thompson arrived at his family’s farm in Killeigh early on the morning of Friday 23 August. He had a lot of
work to do. It was a busy time for him, with a baby on the way. John and Fiona had lived in London for four months in late 1995 and early 1996. They had tried to find a place so they could stay a
bit longer in London, but it didn’t work out. John was now working long hours at the farm owned by his father, Archie Thompson, who had played a large part in raising his family because of
his wife’s ill-health. John was his only son, and during August 1996 they were at silage. During this busy time, and while Fiona was resting in Tullamore in preparation for the baby’s
arrival, John was working in Grange from early to late. He would need to take time off once the baby was born; right now, he had to work. He had no time to contact Fiona or to check on her that
Friday. He thought she was with her mother.
In Tullamore, Josephine Pender went out to the shops on the Friday afternoon. She bought cabbage plants for Seán to sow in the garden. She walked down Church Street and knocked on
Fiona’s door. There was no answer. The blinds were still closed. Josephine headed home. It was not unusual, at the weekend, for a day or so to go by with Fiona and her mother not meeting or
talking on the phone. Josephine remembered that a few of Fiona’s friends were home from America that weekend; perhaps Fiona was with them.
The next day, Saturday, Josephine and John went to evening Mass. They walked down to Fiona’s flat to say hello. Again it was in darkness. The blinds were closed, and there was no answer.
This was very unusual; something wasn’t right. They walked the ten minutes home to Connolly Park, and Josephine rang John Thompson in Grange. ‘Where’s Fiona?’ she asked.
‘She’s not at the flat.’ ‘I thought she was with you,’ he replied. ‘I’ll be in to you shortly.’ Josephine remembers that later that night they
searched all around Tullamore for Fiona.
John Thompson came in, and I went with him to the flat at Church Street. I didn’t see any kind of disturbance. The stuff Fiona bought for the baby on the previous
Thursday was still there. But Fiona was nowhere to be seen. We went to the graveyard in Durrow: Fiona used to go and visit Mark’s grave there late at night, but she hadn’t been
doing that for a good few months. She wasn’t there. We then checked the hospital and her friends’ houses, but she wasn’t anywhere to be found. I said I wanted to go to the
barracks, so myself and John Thompson and Seán and my son John went to the Garda station. I told the garda there that Fiona was missing. I remember the garda didn’t take us too
seriously. He said something like she was twenty-five and an adult. But I knew something was wrong. She was seven months pregnant.
Though the Gardaí were informed on the Saturday night that Fiona was missing, it was the following Monday before a public appeal was made. One detective involved in the
subsequent investigation believes vital hours were lost, but this was perhaps unavoidable.
Hindsight is a great thing. But you have to understand, back then there was no similar type disappearance. Okay, Jo Jo Dullard was abducted the previous November in Kildare,
but the circumstances were different. In Jo Jo’s case it was obvious almost from the start that she was the victim of a crime. But in Fiona’s case there was no crime suspected at
the start, and I mean the first few hours. There was no crime scene, no disturbance at her flat, no cry for help, no sound of a screeching vehicle. We had a missing pregnant woman who had been
very upset when she lost her little brother the year before. And remember, her friends were home from America. If we had had a sniff or a hint of some violent attack on Fiona, things would have
been different. But there was nothing immediately suspicious. And that’s what I believe her killer wanted. They gained those first few valuable hours. Here we had a heavily pregnant
woman, who was effectively on her own in her flat for a large part of each day. The last reported sighting was on a Friday morning, and the first report to the Gardaí was on the Saturday
night. And it’s the next day before a full missing person search is organised. Valuable hours were lost. If only we had been on it from the Friday!
One of the pictures of Fiona that hangs in her mother’s sitting-room is a black-and-white photograph of Fiona modelling a wedding outfit. It was taken for a women’s
magazine, but this photograph tells a hidden story. Fiona Pender had a dream of making a happy life as a mother and wife. She wanted to get married, and she wanted herself and John to find a nice
house and have a family. As she looked forward to the birth of their first child, Fiona’s thoughts would often turn to getting engaged and getting married.
Many of the photographs of Fiona that her mother now treasures are posed shots. Fiona had been modelling since her late teens; she modelled dresses, hats, jackets, and casual wear. She did
wedding fairs and other modelling events and had built up a large portfolio. It had started when a friend of hers, Emer Condron, set up her own agency in Tullamore. Emer did modelling work herself,
and she soon got Fiona involved. As well as her modelling work Fiona was also a talented hairdresser. She had left the Sacred Heart Secondary School in Tullamore after doing her Inter Cert and
became an apprentice with Kassard’s hairdressers in Tullamore.
By Monday 26 August it was clear to the Gardaí in Tullamore that Fiona Pender was not in any of the places that she might reasonably be expected to be. A heavily
pregnant woman was missing. It was now more than seventy-two hours since John Thompson said goodbye to Fiona as he left for work the previous Friday. At the time of Fiona’s disappearance,
Superintendent Gerry Murray, who by then had thirty-six years’ experience, was the senior officer at Tullamore Garda Station.
On the Monday I sent two gardaí up to Josephine Pender in Connolly Park and got her agreement for a nationwide public appeal for information on Fiona’s
whereabouts. The case was on the news that lunch-time. We immediately took possession of the flat Fiona shared with John Thompson. We combed that flat, looking for any indication of where Fiona
might have gone, but we found nothing. We began an extensive search of land in the greater Tullamore area. We searched all the local lakes. We went up to the Bord na Móna site and we
searched silt ponds up there. And the Tullamore river, which runs at the back of the flat, where Fiona was last seen—well, we searched that inch by inch. We searched it from the back of
the flat right down to where it flows to Rahan. When we found nothing I got the sub-aqua divers in a second time. We went over it, but again there was nothing. We searched the canal, and a
local reservoir, all unsuccessfully. We checked out all Fiona’s friends. One of her friends had left for Spain, and we tracked her down, but Fiona hadn’t been in contact. We had no
crime scene, no body. No expense was spared in this search. We spent more money on searching for Fiona than we did on a couple of murder cases that we solved.
As gardaí in Tullamore began an extensive search of all surrounding public land for any trace of Fiona, her family travelled about twelve miles south on a hunch. After
Mark Pender’s death in June the previous year, the Penders had buried his biker gear and the bike at a spot in the Slieve Bloom Mountains close to Clonaslee, Co. Laois. Perhaps Fiona had
travelled there. It was just a hunch, but at a time of desperation every possibility had to be investigated. However, there was no trace of Fiona.
Gardaí privately admit they believe the Penders may have been looking in the right direction when they headed towards the Slieve Bloom Mountains. There are vast areas of mountainous
terrain that are densely forested, and other parts where steep inclines give way to deep gorges. The mountains extend west for almost twenty-miles from their eastern tip near Rosenallis, Co. Laois,
past the Ridge of Capard and Wolftrap Mountain, down to the south-west tip of Co. Offaly. While the Gardaí have also never ruled out the possibility that after killing Fiona Pender the
murderer may have taken her to private farmland in an effort to hide her body, one detective who worked in the Laois-Offaly Division for more than thirty years believes the Slieve Bloom Mountains
may hold the answer.
If the killer brought Fiona to private land, be it farmland or whatever, there would always be the chance that someone else would have spotted him digging the ground, or
using machinery at an odd time, or whatever. We never had any reports of such activity that we didn’t check out fully. Also, if you bury a body on open ground there is a strong chance
that, with soil movement and the like, that the ground will sink and suspicions will be aroused.
There are two other possibilities that we always considered and until she is found will be strong contenders. Co. Offaly is so flat, and there is so much bogland, the answer may lie there;
or look south to the Slieve Blooms. There are areas of that mountainside that contain gorges and areas almost totally inaccessible. There are parts of that mountain that mightn’t see a
human for ten or fifteen years.
