Missing (8 page)
Authors: Barry Cummins
The strain of years of campaigning is evident on both their faces. Before Jo Jo vanished, Mary and Martin Phelan were farmers, tending to cows and sheep on their ninety-acre farm. They were also
parents, rearing their two children. Imelda was eight and Melvin was five when their aunt Jo Jo was taken from them. Since November 1995 Mary and Martin Phelan have spent most of every day
planning, pressuring, fund-raising, phoning, faxing and pleading with the power-holders in society for help in finding Jo Jo. Mary told me of the shock she felt when a garda told her they knew more
than they were saying.
This senior garda told me that they thought they knew where Jo Jo might be buried. It’s a section of private land. The garda also told me that a man had made
contradictory statements. We later hired a private detective, who approached this man on the pretext of seeking directions to a golf course. All the detective could tell us was that he got a
very uneasy feeling about the man. He also said the man had a deep scratch on his face. It could be something, or it could be nothing, but all we want is for this private land to be searched.
Surely if someone makes two different statements there is at least grounds for serious suspicion.
The Phelans have long campaigned for all land within a twenty-mile radius of Moone to be combed thoroughly for clues to Jo Jo’s whereabouts. This search would extend over
both public and private land in Cos. Kildare and Wicklow. Mary and Martin Phelan have met successive Ministers for Justice and the Garda Commissioner to argue their point. The lands remain
unsearched. One senior officer who reviewed the case strenuously denies that the Gardaí were in any way reluctant to follow this line of inquiry.
Yes, this man did make two different statements about what he did and where he was on the night Jo Jo disappeared. We now know he was in Moone at around the time Jo Jo was.
He had earlier been over in Co. Offaly and was heading home. There were certain discrepancies in his statements. He told us he had been genuinely mistaken in his first statement and was sorry,
that it wasn’t malicious. You need more than that to get a search warrant. That’s the law we work under.
It was at the Phelans’ home in Grange that Jo Jo lived from the age of sixteen, having moved from Kathleen and Séamus Bergin’s house in Callan. For months
after Jo Jo’s disappearance Mary couldn’t face going into Jo Jo’s old bedroom, or looking at her old schoolbooks, or clothes, or posters. Eventually the precious keepsakes were
gathered up and put away for safe keeping.
When the Gardaí began their investigation into the disappearance of Jo Jo Dullard, a number of people came forward with information that suggests she may have accepted not three but four
lifts that November night. Detectives had quickly traced the two motorists who had given her lifts from Naas to Kilcullen and from Kilcullen to Moone. But a number of people were now reporting
seeing a woman hitching a lift in Castledermot, Co. Kildare, five miles south of Moone, at about 11:55 p.m. This time would correspond with Jo Jo getting a lift in Moone at about 11:40 p.m. Four
people reported seeing a woman matching Jo Jo’s description in Castledermot that night; two of those witnesses saw the unidentified young woman thumbing a lift on the Carlow side of the town,
near the Schoolhouse restaurant.
This new information threw a different light on the investigation, one that remains to this day. If the woman in Castledermot was Jo Jo Dullard, whoever gave her a lift from Moone to
Castledermot has never come forward. Why is this? Did the same person circle back to Castledermot and offer her a further lift and then attack her? If the person is entirely innocent, why do they
remain silent? Do they know the identity of the person who gave Jo Jo the fourth lift, or did they spot anything that might be of use to the Gardaí? One detective agreed that the person may
have crucial information.
We must assume first that the woman hitching in Castledermot is Jo Jo. Certainly, the timing is right: it’s just before midnight. And whoever that woman was, she has
never been located. And not one but four people saw this unidentified woman in the town. Neither the woman nor whoever picked her up have ever been located. That mystery driver could be the
breaking of this case.
In February 1997, fifteen months after the disappearance of Jo Jo Dullard, the Gardaí released new information that raised the distinct possibility that Jo Jo might have
been taken against her will a further fifty miles south, as far as Co. Waterford. The news came after a taxi driver contacted the Gardaí with a deeply disturbing story that raised the
possibility that Jo Jo might have been attacked by not one but two men. He gave a story that he had kept to himself for over a year. At about 1:20 a.m. on the morning of 10 November 1995 he was
driving along the main road at Kilmacow, three miles north of Waterford, when he saw a red car with English number-plates parked at the side of the road. One man was urinating beside the car.
Suddenly he saw a woman running from the left-hand rear door of the car towards the front. She had bare feet, and seemed distressed. Within seconds a second man appeared, also from the back of the
car. He followed the woman, grabbed her by the hair, and got her in a bear hug; he then dragged her back to the car. It then took off in the direction of Waterford. The taxi driver had seen all
this happen in a matter of seconds as he drove past the car; yet it would be more than a year before he reported it. A senior officer who has worked on Jo Jo Dullard’s case from the beginning
believes this reported sighting may yet yield results.
The report by the taxi driver opens up a number of lines of inquiry. It is more than disappointing that the man waited over a year to come forward. I think he was advised by
someone close to him that it was none of his concern and that he should keep out of it, but he eventually came forward, and better late than never. We have our suspicions as to who the two men
were. The car was described as a red-coloured Ford Sierra Sapphire or Ford Grenada, with English registration plates. Despite the foreign registration, we believe the two men in the car were
Irish. But it just makes you think. If it was Jo Jo who was spotted by the taxi driver, she was taken over fifty miles from where she made the phone call in Moone.
In February 2000, more than four years after Jo Jo Dullard disappeared, 35-year-old Larry Murphy, a self-employed carpenter and father of two, abducted a woman in Carlow. He
disarmed her by punching her in the face, fracturing her nose. He bound and gagged the terrified woman, who he placed in the boot of his car, then drove her first to an isolated spot at
Beaconstown, Athy, and then to a forest at Kilranelagh, near Baltinglass, Co. Wicklow. At both places he subjected the woman to prolonged sexual assaults. He then attempted to murder her by putting
a bag over her head. Two men stumbled upon Murphy and his victim, and Murphy fled. He was arrested the following day, and once the full picture of his terrible crime was established, detectives
from Operation Trace were immediately alerted. They were conscious that the route Murphy had travelled that night, with his victim in the boot of his car, was very close to both Moone and
Castledermot. In driving her from Athy to Kilranelagh he had crossed over the N9 road close to where Jo Jo Dullard had been hitching a lift in November 1995. Murphy had never come to the attention
of the Gardaí before he repeatedly raped and attempted to murder the woman in February 2000. After he had been sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment, two senior gardaí went
to meet him in prison. He politely told them he had no information about any missing women.
A total of nine people, including a number of women, were formally arrested for questioning by detectives from Operation Trace investigating a number of crimes, including the murder of Jo Jo
Dullard. Two of the men who were questioned are members of a criminal gang from the Waterford area. They are believed to have been socialising in Dublin on the Thursday afternoon and evening.
Detectives suspect they were travelling through Moone and Castledermot later that night. One garda explained that it is very difficult to bring this any further right now.
Basically, these two fellows are travelling criminals. Many of the answers they gave us are evasive, but that could be because they don’t want to reveal a totally
separate crime they may have been involved in. But we received certain information that outlined in very clear detail an allegation that these two men had abducted Jo Jo and had killed her. The
two men deny any knowledge of Jo Jo. We need a witness, or we need a confession, or we need a body. We are definitely watching these men.
In the days and weeks immediately after Jo Jo vanished, her family made many appeals for information. Jo Jo’s disappearance was reported extensively by both the national
and local media. Over time, as Mary and Martin Phelan would continue their campaign, constantly urging Gardaí to do more to search for Jo Jo, they found that there were many other families
also suffering the loss of a missing loved one. They met with families of men and woman who had vanished from other parts of the country, and indeed from other parts of the world. The Phelans
started looking at how things were done in other countries, how other police forces investigated such disappearances. Through their public campaign for more to be done, Mary and Martin were also
providing a voice and a support network for other families. They recognised that the circumstances of every person’s disappearance were different, but what united all families was the need to
know what had happened to their loved ones. The Phelans have consistently called for the establishment of a National Missing Persons Remembrance Day to publicly remember every person who has
vanished.
At the Phelan home, Mary showed me a collage of photos of Jo Jo. The images record Jo Jo as a young girl, as a teenager and as a young woman. At the top of the collage she is pictured as a baby
in the arms of her mother, Nora. Another image records Jo Jo on the day of her First Holy Communion. Another photo shows Jo Jo in her school uniform, and the bottom of the collage shows images of
Jo Jo as an adult. In each of the photographs, Jo Jo is smiling. The standard Garda missing person’s report which was filled in for Jo Jo recorded her height and weight, hair and eye colour,
and facial features. Such forms are important in terms of Garda investigations, but it is only through studying photographs that a person’s various expressions including their smile become
apparent. In the months after Jo Jo vanished in Co. Kildare her image would become known throughout the country, with treasured family photos becoming a means to highlight the family’s
ongoing appeal for information. As we sat at the kitchen table Mary showed me more photographs.
Back in Callan, Kathleen Bergin told me that Jo Jo had been thinking of not going to Dublin at all that fateful Thursday.
Jo Jo had to get to Harold’s Cross at some stage to get her last dole payment. She had just got a new job in Callan and so had to get to Dublin to tie up loose ends
whenever she got a chance. She was actually meant to go earlier in the week, but she had to cover in work for a girl who was sick. The day before she went I told her that if she didn’t go
to Dublin next day we could meet for a coffee in Callan town. But Jo Jo went to Dublin, and I never saw her before she went.
Jo Jo Dullard lived in Dublin for two years. She and her friend Mary Cullinane both arrived in Dublin from Co. Kilkenny with dreams of becoming beauticians. Both young women
signed up for a beauty course in Crumlin, but they found that the cost of books and materials was just too great; so they dropped out and got jobs working in pubs in Dublin. If they made enough
money they could always go back to the course. Jo Jo got a job at the Red Parrot in Dorset Street, where members of the staff remember her as a courteous young woman who was a hard worker. She and
Mary Cullinane first lived in Dolphin’s Barn for about a year then later moved to Phibsborough, and then to Rialto. Another friend of theirs, called Claire, who now lives in Boston, also
lived with them for a time.
It was during her time in Dublin that Jo Jo met her only long-term boy-friend. Mike was an American who was travelling around the world. He found himself in Dublin and loved it so much he
decided to stay longer than intended. He met Jo Jo Dullard, and they soon began going out. Kathleen Bergin remembers that Jo Jo was very excited when she first brought Mike down to Co.
Kilkenny.
She phoned me one time and she told me she was coming down to see us that weekend. Then she said, ‘Do you mind if I bring a friend?’ They both came down, and we
met Mike. He really was a nice chap. We all went out for a pint. I know that Jo Jo was very keen on Mike. When they broke up I know Jo Jo was really upset. When we saw her with Mike we
couldn’t believe how grown up she was: we all felt so proud of her. Jo Jo had a hard life, with Mam dying when Jo Jo was so young and Dad dying just before Jo Jo was born. Going up to
live in Dublin is never an easy thing for a young girl to do, but Jo Jo was so brave, so grown up.
By the time Jo Jo disappeared, Mike had left Ireland to continue his travels on the Continent. The Gardaí would later track him down in Spain, after a farmer made a
discovery that detectives hoped might be a development in the case. In the summer of 1996 a farmer found a watch in a dyke on the Carlow side of Castledermot, seven miles from the phone box in
Moone. The farmer thought nothing of his find until he saw a fresh appeal for information on Jo Jo Dullard’s disappearance in late 1996. He contacted the Gardaí, who immediately set
about trying to establish whether the watch was Jo Jo’s. Detectives learnt that her former boy-friend, Mike, had given her a watch. They found him in Spain, where they asked him if he could
identify the watch, but he couldn’t. He later wrote to Kathleen and Séamus Bergin to say how sorry he was to hear of Jo Jo’s disappearance.
