Missing (3 page)

In May 2002 a man from Co. Laois was charged with the murder of a fifteen-year-old Co. Tyrone schoolgirl, Arlene Arkinson, whose body has never been found. This followed almost eight years of
investigative work in a number of countries. The body is believed to be buried in the Republic, most probably in Co. Donegal. Arlene was last seen alive on 14 August 1994, having travelled across
the border from her home in Castlederg, Co. Tyrone, to a disco in the Co. Donegal seaside resort of Bundoran. She never returned home. Gardaí and Northern police believe her body may lie in
the Pettigo area of south-east Co. Donegal, south of Lough Derg and close to the border. Despite a number of extensive searches, no trace has been found. The evidence to be brought in the
prosecution case against the man does not contain details of a crime scene.

While Arlene Arkinson is one of the youngest missing people in Ireland, there are two cases of younger long-term missing children who are not the victims of parental abduction. The disappearance
of seven-year-old Mary Boyle in March 1977 and the abduction of thirteen-year-old Philip Cairns in October 1986 have baffled the detectives who have investigated them for decades, as well as
causing untold anguish to the parents and the brothers and sisters of the missing children.

Mary Boyle was last seen walking near her grandparents’ home near Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal, on a bright afternoon in March 1977. For more than a quarter of a century her disappearance has
devastated her parents, Ann and Charlie Boyle, her twin sister, Ann, and her older brother, Patrick. There is still no firm evidence of an abduction, yet numerous searches of lakes and surrounding
bogland have failed to yield any results. Whether it was through an accident or through a violent act, what happened to Mary Boyle, and where she lies, remain a terrible mystery.

A more sinister cloud hangs over the case of the second of Ireland’s long-term missing children, Philip Cairns, who was just thirteen when someone snatched him from the roadside as he
walked to school in Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin, in October 1986. He was walking along a busy road at lunchtime when he vanished, after an unknown abductor swooped in a matter of seconds. A week after
his disappearance, his schoolbag was left in a laneway close to his home, left there either by the abductor or by someone who found it after the crime and therefore has crucial information that
could help the Gardaí solve this tragic case. Philip’s parents, Alice and Philip Cairns, and his four sisters and brother accept the disturbing fact that Philip was abducted from the
roadside. But that is the only definite thing about this child abduction. Whatever happened to Philip, wherever he was taken and whatever emotional or physical pain he later suffered, are a mystery
known only to his abductor.

While it seems likely that Philip Cairns was murdered by his abductor, in the absence of a crime scene or the discovery of his body he is still officially missing, and indeed his parents still
hold out hope that such a terrible fate did not befall their son.

Every parent’s worst nightmare has been visited on the Boyle and Cairns families, whose lives have been turned upside down. As well as dealing with Ireland’s missing women who are
believed to have been murdered, this book also examines the cases of these two missing children—a girl last seen eating a packet of sweets near her grandparents’ house in Co. Donegal,
and a boy violently abducted as he walked to school along a busy Co. Dublin road.

It has long been feared by many gardaí that one or more people might be travelling to Ireland to commit violent crimes, such as abductions and murders, and then leaving the jurisdiction.
Experienced gardaí are mindful of the two convicted English serial killers who brought terror to Ireland in 1976, committing two heinous murders before they were caught in Co. Galway. John
Shaw and Geoffrey Evans were two long-term criminals who started their criminal life by committing small-time robberies but later made an evil pact to rape and murder one woman every week. This
depraved union saw the pair abduct and murder their first victim near Brittas Bay, Co. Wicklow, in August 1976. Elizabeth Plunkett was a 23-year-old Dublin woman whom they abducted from the
roadside and then raped and strangled in a wooded area nearby. They then tied a lawnmower to her body and rowed out to sea, where they threw her weighted body overboard. It would be weeks before
her body was recovered from the sea. Shaw and Evans went on to commit a spate of robberies over the next few weeks, as gardaí in Co. Wicklow investigated the case of the missing Elizabeth
Plunkett. In September 1976 they committed their second rape and murder when they abducted 23-year-old Mary Duffy from the roadside at Castlebar, Co. Mayo. She was tied up and driven to
Ballynahinch, Co. Galway, where the horrific assault continued. She was then suffocated, and the two murderers took her body to Lough Inagh, where they stole a boat, rowed out onto the lake, and
threw the body overboard, weighted down with a large block.

Shaw and Evans were captured at Barna, Co. Galway, before they could kill a third woman. They are now Ireland’s longest-serving prisoners. Any temporary release granted to John Shaw or
Geoffrey Evans will evoke strong protest whenever such a prospect appears.

In more recent times Ireland was shocked by the chilling actions of Michael Bambrick, who killed his wife, Patricia McGauley, at their home in Dublin in September 1991 and then, in July 1992,
killed another woman, Mary Cummins, also at his home. Both women were classified as missing from the time of their disappearance until the truth caught up with Bambrick when his young daughter
bravely began to tell gardaí how her daddy had killed her two pets, and other terrible things he was doing. They soon established a link between Bambrick and Mary Cummins, whom he had met
only on the day he killed her. Soon after his arrest he claimed he had killed both women during bondage sex sessions that had gone wrong. He dismembered their bodies and disposed of them in an old
drain close to Balgaddy Dump in west Co. Dublin. It was not until May 1994, when he was finally caught and admitted killing the two women, that their remains were found. In 1996 Bambrick was jailed
for eighteen years on two charges of manslaughter; he is now in Arbour Hill Prison, Dublin. The Gardaí have him earmarked as a suspect for unsolved crimes in the late 1980s and early
90s.

The term ‘serial killer’ can often be bandied about, causing unnecessary fear in a community. This book examines the evidence supporting the belief that at least one serial killer is
responsible for one or more of the missing persons cases it describes. The most likely cases are those of Annie McCarrick, Jo Jo Dullard, and the missing Droichead Nua woman. But these are not the
only cases where random killers may have struck. Coupled with these three cases where women were apparently snatched from the roadside there have been a number of chilling murders of women where
bodies have eventually been found but no killer has yet been caught.

Antoinette Smith was last seen alive in Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin, on 12 July 1987. A 27-year-old mother of two, she had just returned from a David Bowie concert in Slane, Co. Meath. She got into
a taxi with two men in Westmorland Street, Dublin, and they travelled to Rathfarnham. Those two men have never come forward. Antoinette Smith’s body was found nearly nine months later on 3
April 1988 at the Feather Bed, near Glencree in the Dublin Mountains. She had been strangled, and a bag had been placed over her head. Her body had then been buried in a turf bank that later
subsided, leading to its discovery. From the evidence gathered so far it is the firm belief of a number of gardaí that two men were involved in the killing. A number of men were questioned
as part of the investigation, but no charges were brought. The murder caused terrible anguish for Antoinette’s estranged husband and her two children, who are now adults. The abduction and
murder have also weighed heavily on the minds of gardaí, who, under the law, could not compel people to give a blood sample as part of the investigation.

Four years after the murder of Antoinette Smith, another mother of two was strangled and her body was also buried in the Dublin Mountains. Patricia O’Doherty, a thirty-year-old prison
officer, was last seen alive on 23 December 1991. That day she had been making preparations for Christmas, travelling to the shopping centre at the Square, Tallaght, to buy Santa hats for her two
children. At some point later that night she left her home at Allenton Lawns, Tallaght, and was not seen again. When he did not see her the next day—Christmas Eve—her husband, Paddy
Doherty, assumed she had gone to work at Mountjoy Prison. It was not until Christmas Day that she was reported missing. The case remained that of a missing person until the following June, when a
man out cutting turf near the Lemass Cross at Killakee in the Dublin Mountains made the terrible discovery. Patricia Doherty’s body was found in a bog drain within a mile of where Antoinette
Smith’s body had been hidden in July 1987; the key to her front door was found close by. No-one has ever been arrested in connection with the murder of Patricia Doherty.

There is a third recent case of a missing woman who was abducted and murdered and whose killer remains at large. In June 1994 a man was visiting his son who was cutting turf at Pim’s Lane
near Portarlington, Co. Laois, when in a bog drain he discovered the body of 34-year-old Marie Kilmartin, who had been missing from her home in Port Laoise since the previous December. Whoever
murdered her had placed a concrete block over her chest to submerge her body in the water. As with the previous discovery of the bodies of Antoinette Smith and Patricia Doherty, the scene of the
discovery of Marie Kilmartin’s body was one that severely affected the most hardened detectives. She was still wearing the heavy coat and boots she was last seen wearing as she entered her
house at the Stradbally Road in Port Laoise on 16 December 1993. Some time shortly after she was last seen she was lured out of her house by a phone call made to her home from a nearby call box.
She was strangled and her body was later left at the bog near Portarlington. Two men from Co. Laois were arrested within days of the discovery of the body; both were released without charge. There
is a prime suspect for the horrific murder of Marie Kilmartin, who remains at large.

Not only are there three unsolved murders where missing women are now officially classed as murdered but there are other cases of women who are still missing—outside the six Operation
Trace cases—whose families now fear they also have been murdered. One such case is that of Eva Brennan, who was thirty-nine when she was last seen storming out of her parents’ house in
Terenure, Dublin, in July 1993 after a trivial dispute about what they were going to have for Sunday lunch. Her family assumed she had gone home to her own apartment in nearby Rathgar. It is now
believed that she may indeed have made it home to her apartment but decided to go back out, perhaps for a walk. Her handbag and keys have never been found. She had previously had bouts of
depression, and one line of inquiry remains that she may have chosen to go away somewhere by herself. However, Eva Brennan’s case has privately been looked at by detectives investigating the
case of other missing women. She disappeared less than four months after the abduction and murder of Annie McCarrick, who was also last seen in south Co. Dublin; she was also last seen just a few
miles from where Antoinette Smith was last seen alive six years before. Eva Brennan’s family fear that she was abducted while walking along the roadside and now lies buried in the Dublin
Mountains.

The discovery of the bodies of Antoinette Smith, Patricia Doherty and Marie Kilmartin reclassified their cases from that of missing women to murdered women. While the official status of the
cases that formed part of Operation Trace is that of missing women, the devastated families of four of those women accept that their loved ones have been murdered. And, including the fears of Eva
Brennan’s family that she was also the victim of a violent attack, there exists the distinct possibility that the murderers of at least eight women in Leinster have not been caught. There is
also the continuing search for the person who abducted Philip Cairns. Some of the most evil people in Ireland remain at large.

The searches for the missing people who are believed to have been the victims of violent crime have been exhaustive. Detectives have followed thousands of lines of inquiry, dug up acres of land,
employed infra-red machines to detect soil movements, used sniffer dogs, and questioned a number of suspects. Yet, despite prime suspects being identified in many of the cases, no charges have been
brought, and the bodies of many of Ireland’s murder victims have not been found. The failure to find the remains of those believed murdered is a cause of constant anguish to their families
and of constant frustration to detectives.

With the co-operation of the families concerned, this book examines the cases of five of the missing women that formed the basis of Operation Trace. It also examines the two
oldest cases of

Ireland’s missing children who are not the victims of parental abduction. In being so selective I am conscious that the great majority of missing persons are not the victims of crime,
though the anguish felt by their families is no less acute. To this end I also look at the developments in honouring the memory of all missing people, and at the sterling work of some of the
families of missing people to keep their loved ones on the media and political agenda. I consider what more can be done from an investigative and humanitarian point of view by the Gardaí and
the state, not only to find Ireland’s missing but to honour their memory.

More than 1,800 people are reported missing in Ireland every year—the equivalent of five people being reported missing every day. But only a small number, between five and fifteen, remain
unaccounted for at the end of each year. Of this number there are some people who will never come home, and whose bodies may never be found, people who have most probably met a violent death and
have disappeared without a trace.