Missing (31 page)
Authors: Barry Cummins
The feeling of Garda headquarters is that investigations into missing people are best left to the Garda division in the area in which the person disappeared. It is argued that
local gardaí have a particular knowledge of their areas as well as of local people and can therefore better ascertain why a person might be missing.
Mary Phelan has spent thousands of hours writing, phoning and faxing politicians seeking whatever support she can for her campaign for a Missing Persons Unit. She and her husband, Martin Phelan,
spend day after day travelling to meet families of other missing people and fund-raising for various ventures to ensure that the memory of missing people will never diminish. Through the Jo Jo
Dullard Memorial Trust the Phelans led the campaign for the National Missing Persons Monument in Kilkenny. They have also campaigned tirelessly for the establishment of a National Missing Persons
Day, to commemorate every person who is missing in Ireland.
As part of their campaign for the establishment of a Missing Persons Unit, the Phelans organised a trip to the United States with John McGuinness TD in 2003 to meet members of the FBI and to
learn of techniques used by the American police in tracing missing people. They have also established contacts with the families of American missing people, while many American politicians voice
concerns about the abduction and murder in the Dublin-Wicklow Mountains of the missing American woman Annie McCarrick. Mary Phelan told me they will continue to fight for more to be done to find
Ireland’s missing people.
We want to see helicopters out searching for the missing people, and special sniffer dogs, and we want to see continuous searches, in any place where missing people might
be. And some of the missing people, like poor Jo Jo, have been murdered. It’s just not right that these killers can walk around free like that. And they will do it again if they are not
caught. Ireland is only an island, and there are far too many of these missing persons, and none of them have been solved.
John McGuinness told me that their trip to the United States is part of a continuous effort to fight for missing people.
I never met Jo Jo Dullard, and I only got involved after I really listened to the terrible story that Mary and Martin have to tell of how their lives and the lives of so
many others have been affected by losing a loved one in such a way. I’ve done what I can through questions in the Dáil and the like, but it shouldn’t be left to me or any
other backbencher to keep this issue alive in the Dáil. The Government has a moral duty to respond in a tangible way to these people. I believe that expertise from abroad in how to find
missing people should be brought in or bought in. Ireland is not that big. More can and should be done to find these people.
A number of suggestions about what more can be done have been privately considered by senior gardaí. One of these is enlisting the assistance of the Defence Forces in
searching large tracts of land where a body might conceivably be buried. There are thousands of such areas around the country, including hundreds of acres of bogland and forested land. Soldiers
have occasionally been used to conduct certain searches alongside gardaí, at the request of Garda headquarters. One senior garda told me the issue should definitely be looked at more
closely.
This should not be about territorial disputes, or who is in charge. The army can only ever be used within Ireland as an aid to the civil power. The Gardaí will always
be in charge within our borders; but the Defence Forces could be of immense assistance to us. I’m not only talking about manpower. Of course the more people out searching for missing
people the better, but what I mean is that soldiers, like gardaí, are trained to observe the smallest of details. Our soldiers have proven themselves again and again, from East Timor to
Eritrea, and such attention, discipline, patience and methodical thought could be of immense assistance in finding what might be the tiniest signs of a body being buried somewhere. Ideally the
army could be helping to search for the missing people while gardaí conduct the criminal investigations, trying to establish who might be responsible for these murders, and where the
most likely burial areas might be.
The two most likely areas where killers have buried bodies of their victims are on bogland and in mountainous areas. The killer of Marie Kilmartin in Co. Laois in December 1993
hid her body in a bog drain, where it remained for six months. The killers of Antoinette Smith in south Co. Dublin in July 1987 hid her body in a bog in the Dublin Mountains, where it lay
undiscovered for nine months. And whoever killed Patricia Doherty in 1991, also in south Co. Dublin, chose to hide her body close to where Antoinette Smith’s body was hidden, where it was
discovered six months after her disappearance. It is entirely possible that if members of the Defence Forces, or others, were to conduct extensive continuous searches of bogs and mountains they
would eventually find bodies or crime scenes, or other evidence.
A good example of how such minute searching can yield results came during the late 1980s in the Dublin Mountains. A team of detectives were carrying out an inch-by-inch search for paintings that
had been stolen from the Beit Collection at Russborough House, near Blessington, Co. Wicklow. The Gardaí had established that the paintings had been stolen by a gang led by the Dublin
criminal Martin Cahill, who had later hidden them in the mountains. They were combing the woodland and dense undergrowth at a section of the mountains just south of Rathfarnham when one eagle-eyed
garda noticed clothing. She looked more closely and saw that it was the partially decomposed body of a man.
The area was immediately sealed off, and the body was examined. It would later emerge that the man had died from a gunshot wound to the back of the head. His killer had hidden his body in the
mountains, where it remained undiscovered for several months. The victim was later identified as a Dublin man; but what amazed detectives was that he had never been reported missing by his family
or friends. If the Gardaí had known earlier that he was missing, with their knowledge of the man they would have feared the worst and conducted searches in the mountains for his body. As it
was, it was only because of the search for the Beit paintings that this murder victim was found.
The Dublin Mountains have long been used by killers as a place in which to hide the bodies of their victims. The extraordinary events this area witnessed in 1971 show that the
use of such mountainous terrain for hiding bodies is not new. In a crime that shocked the country, the bodies of two young people from Co. Meath were left at Tibradden, Co. Dublin, in separate but
linked killings. The first victim was a young woman, Una Lynskey, who disappeared from her home near Ratoath, Co. Meath, in October 1971. It was not until two months later, on 10 December, that
James Williams, out walking in the Pine Forest at Tibradden, found the shallow grave. The Gardaí later established that tarred felt had been used in an attempt to cover the unmarked grave. A
watch and a ring taken from the body were identified as being Una Lynskey’s, but because the body had lain undiscovered for two months the State Pathologist, Professor Maurice Hickey, could
not establish the exact cause of death.
Two young Co. Meath men were later tried for the murder of Una Lynskey. Both were found guilty of manslaughter and jailed for three years. Detectives who investigated Una’s death also
investigated a second violent death which occurred in December 1971. Nine days after Una Lynskey’s body was found in Tibradden, a 22-year-old man was abducted by a group of men in Co. Meath
and driven to the same spot in the mountains, where he was beaten and left to die. Three young men, including two brothers, were later convicted of the manslaughter of this man and were jailed for
between two and three years.
The murder of Patricia Furlong at nearby Glencullen in 1982, and the murders of Antoinette Smith in 1987 and Patricia Doherty in 1991, also resulted in the Dublin Mountains being used by
murderers for concealing the evidence of the killings. It is possible that somewhere close by, the body of Annie McCarrick is hidden, and perhaps also that of Eva Brennan, who disappeared in July
1993. There are other missing persons cases where the Gardaí privately admit they believe the bodies most probably lie in the mountains and forests of Cos. Dublin and Wicklow. Though it is
easier said than done, if soldiers were taken out of their barracks to take part in extensive and continuous searches in areas such as the Dublin and Wicklow Mountains, for weeks or months at a
time, many more bodies might be found.
Another tool that might aid the Gardaí in their efforts to trace missing people could be new legislation allowing for specific periods of detention for suspects.
Detectives often speak of their frustration at being able to hold murder suspects only for twelve hours before having to set them free. Such a short time for questioning is even more frustrating
for the gardaí who are investigating possible murders when there is no body, no murder weapon, and no crime scene. One detective who believes he knows the identity of the killer of one of
Ireland’s missing women says the hands of the Gardaí are tied by some of the laws they work with.
The Criminal Justice Act allows us to hold a murder suspect for a maximum of twelve hours before they can be charged or released. If we think a firearm has been used in the
murder of someone who is missing we can hold the person for up to seventy-two hours. But very often we believe we have a prime suspect who is very much in the frame for some missing
person’s abduction and murder, and we can only bring them in for questioning for twelve hours, for the simple reason that we don’t know how they have killed the missing person.
Compare those laws to the drug legislation, where suspects can be held for up to a week before being charged or released. If we had a week with some of the murder suspects who have just sat
across the table and smirked at us when they are under arrest, things might be different. Their consciences might get the better of them, and they might crack.
Another issue that angers detectives is the right to silence that suspects enjoy. If a murder suspect remains silent during questioning, the only sanction they might face is
that an inference might be drawn by a jury if the case ever went to trial.
But the issue that angers gardaí most is the right of a murder suspect to refuse to give a blood sample. Obtaining such samples is critically important in solving cases of missing women
who may have been raped and murdered. Detectives are acutely aware that if ever the bodies of these murder victims are discovered, there may still be evidence that could catch their killers. There
is one case of a murdered woman in which the killer left a sample of his DNA at the murder scene, but this cannot be matched with the suspect because he cannot be compelled to give a blood
sample.
Detective-Sergeant Pat Campbell, who has investigated many murder and other serious crime cases in south Co. Dublin, agrees that the Gardaí need more investigative tools.
It’s very frustrating that we could be sitting across a table from a man who we believe to be a cruel murderer and he has the right to silence and the right to refuse
to give us a blood sample. It’s absolute madness. You get a far greater penalty if you refuse to give a sample in a drink-driving case. I think a data-base of blood samples would help
solve a lot of crimes, not just murders or rapes but even burglaries as well. If we do not get the powers to compel suspects to give a sample, I think more women will be abducted and murdered,
other young women will go missing. It would also be a great preventive measure.
It is worth noting that, in relation to two women who were first classified as missing but whose bodies were later found, the killers were caught only because they volunteered a
blood sample. If John Crerar had not volunteered a sample in 1980 he would not have been convicted twenty-two years later of the murder of Phyllis Murphy. If David Lawler had not volunteered a
blood sample to detectives in Blanchardstown in 1996 he would not have been identified as the rapist and murderer of Marilyn Rynn, whose body lay undiscovered close to her home for seventeen days
after she was attacked in December 1995. Lawler volunteered a blood sample only after reading on the internet that semen samples would not have survived intact by the time Marilyn’s body was
discovered. But he had not reckoned on the freezing temperatures that preserved the sample at the crime scene, and he is now serving a life sentence for murder. This was also one of the cases in
which the Gardaí failed to find a body that lay close to where the victim was last seen alive. The public can breathe a sigh of relief that her body was discovered before the crucial
evidence could be lost. It should also be noted that if John Crerar or David Lawler had declined to give a blood sample they would still be walking the streets, as other killers who have refused to
give such samples do, free to attack other women.
The difficulties faced by detectives in finding the bodies of missing people is not confined to one police force. A case in which the body of a missing person in the United States lay
undiscovered for more than a year involved the disappearance of Chandra Levy, a young woman who had a close relationship with Senator Gary Condit. She had been working in his Washington office, and
after her disappearance it emerged that Condit had not at first admitted how close their relationship had been. Chandra Levy disappeared in May 2001, but it was more than a year before her body was
found in a heavily wooded area in a park in Washington. The police had earlier said that Condit was not a suspect, and they had already searched more than 1,700 acres of Rock Creek Park following
her disappearance. She was known to jog in the park, but for more than a year her body lay undiscovered in underbrush, and it was found only after a man who was looking for turtles while out
walking his dog discovered her skull. The body was identified through dental records.
