Missing (32 page)

In recent years the police in England have been faced with a number of horrendous murders of girls whose bodies lay undiscovered for weeks or months, each case providing an example of how
difficult it is to find a body if the killer goes to any lengths to hide his tracks. One of the biggest manhunts in English history was undertaken in August 2002 for the ten-year-old schoolgirls
Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, who disappeared from their home in the village of Soham, Cambridgeshire, on the evening of 4 August. For thirteen days the bodies of the two friends lay
undiscovered off an isolated path in an area of countryside just a few miles away, despite the combing of the countryside by hundreds of police and hundreds of volunteers. Because the two bodies
were exposed to the elements for so long, it was a number of days before they could be formally identified. Their school caretaker, Ian Huntley, was later charged with murdering the two girls; his
girl-friend, Maxine Carr, a teaching assistant at the school, was also charged in connection with the killings.

For six months the body of fourteen-year-old Milly Dowler lay undiscovered twenty miles from where she disappeared near her home at Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, outside London. She was last seen
walking from the local railway station on 21 March 2002. For six months she was classified as missing, but in September that year a man out walking his dog in a forested area made the shocking
discovery that reclassified the case as a murder inquiry. The police believe the body lay undiscovered in the forest from soon after her disappearance in March. The six months before the discovery
saw one of the most intensive police investigations in England, yet the body lay undiscovered in a forest only twenty miles from where she was last seen.

Other evil killers go to more extreme lengths to hide their crimes. In November 2000, 46-year-old John Taylor from Leeds abducted sixteen-year-old Leanne Tiernan as she was walking down a
darkened alley on her way home from a Christmas shopping trip. He brought her to his house, where he blindfolded her, bound her hands with plastic ties, and sexually assaulted her. He also placed a
dog collar around her neck, which was later to be of crucial value to the police investigation. Within hours of abducting the teenager he strangled her and placed her body in a freezer in his
house. Some months later he removed the body and put it in a sleeping-bag and bin-liners bound with twine. Nine months after the girl’s abduction and murder her body was found beneath a
canopy of trees near Otley, Yorkshire, seventeen miles from where she was last seen alive. The police began an extensive investigation, part of which involved a scientific examination of the dog
collar, which was still around the girl’s neck when her body was found. They soon narrowed their list of suspects to a small number of people who had bought such a collar from a particular
shop. One of those was John Taylor, who was later jailed for life after he admitted murdering Leanne Tiernan. It would later emerge that he had spent three weeks, under the pretext of walking his
dog, roaming in a secluded wooded area in Leeds before selecting Leanne Tiernan for a random attack.

Another recent case of a teenage girl abducted and murdered in England is that of fifteen-year-old Danielle Jones, who was murdered in June 2001. Apart from the trauma of not knowing where the
body of their daughter lies, her parents are faced with the awful reality that it was a close relative who abducted and murdered their daughter and hid her body in a secret place. In December 2002
Danielle Jones’s 42-year-old uncle, Stuart Campbell, was convicted of murdering his niece. The police had earmarked him as a suspect within days of Danielle’s disappearance from her
home at East Tilbury, a few miles east of London, on 18 June 2001, after they had discovered indecent photographs of children during a search of his home. The murder trial heard that Campbell had a
fascination with teenage girls and had become obsessed with his fifteen-year-old niece. The girl’s father later revealed that he had suspected that his brother-in-law was indecently touching
Danielle, but she was abducted and murdered before he could confront him. But despite initial optimism that Campbell might confess where he buried his niece’s body, he has continued to
protest his innocence since being jailed for life in December 2002. Despite hundreds of hours of searches of rivers, lakes and fields in Essex and Kent, Danielle Jones’s unmarked grave has
not been found. The awful reality that the killer of the fifteen-year-old was a close relative is a stark reminder that evil-minded people are not always strangers.

These and similar abductions and murders are ever-present in the thoughts of the Gardaí, who fear that similar killers may strike in Ireland. Detectives are extremely concerned about a
number of abductions and attempted abductions of young children in recent years. In the summer of 2002 a man from Co. Tyrone living in Dublin tried to abduct two girls in Dundalk. The same man also
tried to lure a boy and girl into his car in Coolmine, Co. Dublin, by asking them to help him look for his cat. In a separate investigation a man from Tullamore, Co. Offaly, was charged with
abducting a girl in 2001 and another in 2002, both in the midlands. Both victims were found by the roadside some hours after they were allegedly abducted and subjected to physical assaults.

One idea that could help tackle such roadside abductions might be the placing of electronic warning notices along main roads throughout the country. These notices could alert
motorists to the fact that a person had been abducted and could give a description of the car, the abductor, or the missing person. Such a concept would not have to be confined to missing people
but could be used to trace cars used in bank robberies and other crimes in which criminals use motorways to make quick getaways. Such notices are a common feature of highways in America and have
led to many killers and other criminals being caught through the quick actions of alert motorists.

The other common practice in the United States for helping to find missing people is for their photograph to be printed on milk cartons. Such appeals have been conducted in Ireland but not in a
systematic manner. The families of missing people would dearly love to see such appeals printed on milk cartons or the packaging of other household items as part of an organised effort to find
missing people.

A similar idea is for photographs of missing people to be featured on postage stamps or as part of the franking of envelopes. Fiona Pender’s friend Emer Condron has already raised this
question with An Post, and still hopes there may be a positive outcome. Such initiatives and ideas are the brainchild of relatives and friends of missing people. Emer Condron has also run a
mini-marathon wearing a T-shirt bearing Fiona Pender’s photograph to keep her memory alive, while Trevor Deely’s family have arranged for his photograph to appear on milk cartons sold
by the Iceland chain. Father Aquinas Duffy runs a web site to help families of missing people and to reach out to those missing people who have chosen to disappear.

Compared with many other countries, the number of people who disappear without trace in Ireland is low. However, the rate of such disappearances is increasing. Over the
seventy-year period 1929–99, of the tens of thousands of people officially reported as missing only 298 cases were left unsolved; of this figure only eighteen would be categorised as
suspicious. These include the six cases investigated by Operation Trace, the case of seven-year-old Mary Boyle, and the abducted thirteen-year-old schoolboy Philip Cairns. The fact that so many of
the ‘suspicious’ unsolved disappearances were in the second half of the twentieth century suggests that potentially there are now more violent people at large than before who remain
undetected. Operation Trace failed to clearly establish whether a serial killer was attacking women; but the alternative is equally disturbing. Despite the recent successes of the Gardaí in
tackling drugs dealers, dissident republican organisations and organised criminal gangs, one thing remains clear: there remain up to ten murderers at large. These are killers who have left no crime
scene, who have hidden the bodies of their victims, and who, if they are not caught, may kill again.

One detective who has worked on a number of investigations into the activities of suspected serial killers believes the Gardaí have done everything in their power to find any such
killers, but he accepts that more must be done.

The Gardaí have spent tens of thousands of hours trying to find missing people. Many detectives have worked on their days off to chase up leads in the hope that a crucial
break might come. These gardaí have established strong relationships with many of the families of missing people, while some other families just do not see eye to eye with detectives. The
dedication shown by the Gardaí cannot be questioned. The fact that one of the most senior detectives in Ireland is an uncle of one of the missing women shows that the families of
gardaí can also suffer unexplained loss.

While the Gardaí have failed to come up with the answers that the public want and, more importantly, the families of missing people want, they remain dogged in their determination to find
the answers, to find the missing people, and to find the invisible killers.

In years to come, advances in forensic science will see more and more killers taken off the streets. Murderers will be caught by anything from beads of sweat or tears to ear
wax or mucus, which they will inadvertently leave at the scene of their crimes. But the advances that the laboratories will provide will need to be matched by legislation to allow for saliva or
blood samples to be forcibly taken from murder suspects. Such advances will doubtless be of assistance in solving some of the missing persons cases, but very often in such cases there is no crime
scene. The Gardaí would like to have more powers to compel suspects to account for their movements and more powers to hold suspects, to offer such suspects ample time in which to examine
their conscience, instead of just picking a spot on a wall and staring at it for twelve hours.

In the cases of Fiona Pender, Ciara Breen and Fiona Sinnott there are suspects who may have information relating to what happened to the three young women. Suspicion alone does not make a case,
and there is always the possibility that these suspects are not the guilty parties. Based on the powers the Gardaí have at present for arrest and detention, there is a converse argument that
these suspects are in turn denied the opportunity to fully convince detectives of their innocence.

For more than a quarter of a century Ann and Charlie Boyle have wondered every day what happened to their seven-year-old daughter, Mary. Alice and Philip Cairns, the parents of
thirteen-year-old Philip Cairns, who was abducted in 1986, have prayed every day for some news of their son. The same feeling of unrelenting anguish is felt by Annie McCarrick’s parents, John
and Nancy McCarrick, in New York. Eva Brennan’s family have suffered her loss since she vanished, also in 1993. Jo Jo Dullard’s three sisters and brother have constantly thought of
their little sister since she was abducted and murdered in 1995. Josephine Pender and her son John continue to mourn the loss of Fiona Pender, who was seven months pregnant when she was murdered in
1996. Bernadette Breen lost her only child, and her best friend, when her seventeen-year-old daughter, Ciara, was abducted and murdered in Dundalk in 1997. Emma Rose Carroll lost her mother, Fiona
Sinnott, when she vanished in Co. Wexford in 1998, leaving not only her young daughter but also her own parents and her two brothers and sisters.

And there are other missing people, some of whom have chosen to disappear because of depression, others perhaps because of amnesia. Each family continues to suffer an aching and unexplained
loss. Despite the best efforts of the Gardaí, and despite the unique Operation Trace computer initiative, all these cases remain unsolved. Amid calls for more action to be taken by the state
and the Gardaí, the devastating effects of the loss of a loved one are evident in the homes and the hearts of the families of Ireland’s missing.

For further information visit www.barrycummins.com

You may reach me at [email protected]

Please also visit

www.missing.ie

www.missingpersons.ie

www.searchingforthemissing.net

www.garda.ie

Contact the Missing Persons Helpline at 1890 442 552

Contact Searching For The Missing on 085 2092119

Contact the Missing Persons Association on 087 9609885

The Garda Confidential Line is 1800 666 111