Missing (14 page)
Authors: Barry Cummins
Bernadette Breen doted on her only child. They shared much; but Bernadette knows Ciara was keeping something from her. Ciara left her bedroom that night in February 1997 to meet
someone Bernadette wouldn’t have approved of; but all the indications are that she intended to return to her bedroom before her mother woke the next morning. She was never to know that her
mother woke up during the night and looked in on her, only to find her missing. Bernadette then sat in the dark waiting for her to return and to give her a stern talking to. Even the next day, when
she still hadn’t returned, Bernadette thought she might be back; she left a message with Ciara’s FÁS tutor, Rosaleen Bishop, to say that if she turned up she was to tell her
Bernadette was very angry and they would talk about it later. Bernadette had to go to Dublin for the results of her cancer test.
I was hoping Ciara would be back by the time I got back from Dublin. My daddy brought me down to the Blackrock Clinic, and I didn’t tell him Ciara had sneaked out of
the house. I went in for the results, and all I could think about was Ciara; I wanted to get back to Dundalk and find her safe and well. I remember I went into the doctor and he said he was
sorry to tell me that they had detected cancerous cells. I hardly heard him: I just wanted to get back to Dundalk. A few weeks later that doctor told me he thought that I was the coolest
cucumber he ever told such news to, but he now understood why. Going back in the car, I told Daddy Ciara was missing.
Though Bernadette and Ciara lived alone at Bachelor’s Walk, they had a large extended family living in the general locality of Dundalk. Bernadette’s parents, Brendan
and Marie Coburn, lived just around the corner in St Mary’s Road, where Bernadette lives now. She also has three brothers living in the area, and a sister in the United States. In the late
1970s Bernadette married a Dundalk man; by the time the short-lived marriage broke up they had a baby girl they named Ciara. Ciara’s father left for America and never saw his daughter.
Bernadette told me that Ciara was beginning to ask more and more about her father.
We never had any contact with him from the time Ciara was very young. He left Ireland. It was just me and Ciara. But she was beginning to get curious about him. And I always
told her that if she wanted to see him, or get in contact, or know more, that she could go to her granddad, my daddy, and he would know what to do. Her granddad would know how to make contact.
Around the time Ciara disappeared, her father was to travel to Ireland for a wedding. But she never got to meet him. I’ve spoken to him on the phone once or twice since she’s gone.
But that’s all. We haven’t met again.
Ciara’s father arrived back in Dundalk some weeks after Ciara’s disappearance to attend a family wedding in Co. Louth. He had never met his daughter, who he knew was
now almost eighteen. He held out the hope that his daughter might like to see him just once. As he stepped off the train in late February he was full of expectation and trepidation. The first thing
he saw at the station was a poster with a photograph of a girl and beside it the words
Missing—Ciara Breen.
As detectives began investigating Ciara’s disappearance they spoke to the girls with whom she had been mixing during her few unsettled months. Conscious that Ciara had
once run away with a friend, the Gardaí investigated all the places she might have visited voluntarily. One detective told me there was a great degree of urgency about the search.
We knew that Ciara had run away by herself once before. But even if she had done this again, she was still a child. She was only seventeen, and we knew that she might be in
danger, even if she had chosen to go somewhere. But we were also faced with a number of clear indications that Ciara had not chosen to run away this time. She didn’t take any money with
her from her bedroom. There was no note for her mother, and remember, she knew her mother had an important hospital appointment the next day. Every instinct we had told us Ciara was not hiding
out somewhere. Not this time.
With the assistance of the RUC, searches were undertaken in a number of places in Cos. Armagh and Down, including Newry and Warrenpoint. The girl with whom Ciara had previously
run away knew nothing about her fresh disappearance. She did suggest that Ciara might have had contact with a woman in Dungannon. The Gardaí investigated this possibility, but it led
nowhere. As detectives questioned Ciara’s friends they discovered that she had recently met a young man from Kilkeel, Co. Down, at a disco in Carrickdale. Eventually this man was tracked
down. He had not seen Ciara.
As detectives continued to try to trace her movements after she left her house, they developed a good relationship with the young friends Ciara had been hanging around with during the time she
had run away from home in 1995. They knew that from late 1995 to the middle of 1996, by which time she had turned seventeen, Ciara went through a ‘wild’ period. The girls she befriended
knew a particular group of boys and young men that the Gardaí regard as part of the ‘rough element’ of Dundalk. For Ciara Breen, her new friends were a radical departure from the
quiet life she had lived up to then. And even though her mother managed to get her out of this life, Ciara still maintained contact with the girls. It was inevitable that she would bump into them
on the street, or at a disco. Later on, after she was murdered, it was one of the girls from this group who told the Gardaí she believed Ciara sneaked out of her house to meet a particular
man. These girls were able to give the Gardaí information that was to be of assistance in understanding why Ciara might have sneaked out of the house.
In the house in St Mary’s Road in which Bernadette Breen grew up, she fought back tears as she told me that she stayed alone at Bachelor’s Walk for three years after Ciara’s
disappearance.
Ciara disappeared a month and a half before her eighteenth birthday. The home we lived in at Bachelor’s Walk was a lovely comfortable home, close to my parents’
home here. For months and months after Ciara vanished I couldn’t go into her bedroom. I stayed in the house though. I wanted to keep the house going for Ciara. It was our home. But as I
began to realise Ciara wasn’t coming home I began to think about leaving. But I stayed in the house until what would have been Ciara’s twenty-first birthday. It’s just
something I felt compelled to do. She was my baby. I even kept her on my VHI until she was twenty-one. I left the house on Ciara’s twenty-first, on the thirty-first of March 2000. I came
home here to care for my Mam.
As the Gardaí began to look at possible suspects for the abduction and murder of Ciara Breen, the name of one man began to crop up. A number of people had described
seeing Ciara in this man’s company. A derelict house in the village of Louth, six miles south-west of Dundalk, was searched. This house was owned by a relative of the suspect, who denied he
had any contact with Ciara. Nothing was found in the house.
In a strange coincidence, one man who emerged as a suspect was found to have previously had links with a convicted double murderer, John Duffy. Duffy, a native of Dundalk, left Ireland for
England at an early age. He is now serving two life sentences in England after being convicted in 1988 of murdering nineteen-year-old Alison Day in 1985 and fifteen-year-old Maartje Tamboezer in
1986. He also later admitted murdering 29-year-old Anne Lock. Under the gentle but persistent coaxing of a prison psychologist he later broke an ‘oath of silence’ and gave evidence
against his accomplice, David Mulcahy, who will also be kept in prison in England for the rest of his life. During their investigations into the disappearance of Ciara Breen, detectives discovered
that a man who had been seen speaking to Ciara would have been known to John Duffy. However, they are satisfied that this is just a coincidence. John Duffy was jailed in 1988, having left Dundalk
many years before. The man who was investigated for Ciara Breen’s disappearance would have been in his late teens when he last had contact with Duffy.
Detectives also travelled to a town in south Co. Meath to question two cousins. They had received information suggesting that the two men had been in the greater Dundalk area at about the time
Ciara disappeared. These two men were members of the travelling community, and detectives from Operation Trace would also later question them about their movements at the time Jo Jo Dullard was
abducted and murdered in November 1995. The two men were able to provide alibi witnesses relating to their movements.
More than two years after Ciara Breen’s disappearance, a young man contacted the Gardaí with a story that continues to intrigue detectives. He said he wanted to
tell them about an incident that occurred some days or weeks after Ciara Breen’s disappearance, related to a comment a particular man had made about it. What immediately grabbed the attention
of the detectives was the identity of this other man, as he had already been considered as a suspect.
The young man who came forward said that about two years previously, in 1997, he had been in a pub in Dundalk when there was a report on the television news about Ciara Breen’s
disappearance. A man sitting beside him in the pub said something to the effect that Ciara would not be coming back. The Gardaí wondered if the comment might imply that the man had
particular knowledge of Ciara’s whereabouts, or whether he was merely expressing an opinion. Because he was already a suspect, the Gardaí decided to interview him again. Under lengthy
questioning, he denied any knowledge of Ciara’s whereabouts, but he continues to be a suspect.
Bernadette Breen is aware of the identity of the prime suspect for the murder of her child. The man has denied to the Gardaí that he ever had a relationship with Ciara; but this denial is
a flat contradiction of the claim of one witness who confronted this man in the presence of gardaí. The man’s denial is also in conflict with the firm suspicion of Ciara’s
mother, who says that more than a year before Ciara disappeared she had to chase this man away from her house.
I remember one evening when Ciara was sixteen I heard Ciara at the front door talking to someone. I heard this man’s voice. He was saying to Ciara, ‘Are you
going with somebody?’ I went to the door; I knew from the voice it wasn’t a boy she was talking to. And sure enough it was this man. I chased him away from the door, telling him he
was almost old enough for me, and to leave Ciara alone. I was thirty-eight years old at the time, and this man was in his thirties too; and there he was trying to chat Ciara up. And for him
then to later claim that he never knew her, never met her! I saw him talking to her. I chased him from my own doorstep. I never liked the look of him. Three days after Ciara’s
disappearance he passed by my house at Bachelor’s Walk and he looked at me. My blood turned to ice. Every hair on my body stood to attention.
In early September 1999 detectives from Operation Trace had a meeting with detectives in Dundalk. After a number of issues relating to the disappearance of Ciara Breen were
discussed, a decision was taken to arrest a man and to question him about Ciara’s whereabouts. He is a man in his mid-thirties from the Dundalk area. At eight o’clock on the morning of
Monday 12 September 1999 the man was taken to Dundalk Garda Station, where he was held for questioning for twelve hours. Word of the arrest quickly spread; two-and-a-half years after Ciara’s
disappearance, it took many people by surprise. The man was released without charge later that night. A file was sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who decided that no charges should be
brought. Bernadette Breen was later told about the arrest.
I was told about his arrest just twenty minutes before it appeared on the news. A local detective and a woman from Operation Trace came to the house. When they told me, my
heart hit my knees. That whole day was just so difficult. And then he was released without charge.
The arrest of this man is significant with regard to an assessment of the progress of all the investigations into missing women in the Leinster area. Of the six cases that
formed the object of Operation Trace, the disappearance of Ciara Breen is the only one that resulted in a file being sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions during the lifetime of the special
operation. One detective told me:
Bear in mind that we arrested this fellow over two-and-a-half years after Ciara disappeared. We believed we had enough information to warrant his arrest at that stage. So it
took us that long to get adequate information to lead to that arrest. We also believed we possibly had enough information to warrant a prosecution. The Director of Public Prosecutions said no.
But the very fact [that] we got the case that far at that time, without a body, is significant. This case is still very much active.
As the Gardaí continued to investigate the disappearance of Ciara Breen, a number of searches were conducted after confidential information was received. A piggery on the
Dublin road just outside Dundalk was searched. The Gardaí knew that young people used to gather in the area after dark. That premises is now gone, with a block of apartments on its site.
Nothing was found during an extensive search of the area. A section of land near Crossan’s Garage just outside Dundalk was also searched after the Gardaí received reports about the
movements of a particular person. Again, nothing was found. The Gardaí were also conscious of the vast mountainside and forested areas in the north-eastern corner of Co. Louth that lie just
past Dundalk and out towards Carlingford. But without an indication of where to begin, a search of such a vast area would not yield results.
North Co. Louth has an unenviable distinction in relation to the disappearance of a number of people who were murdered and whose bodies have not been found. Two of the
best-known cases are those of two people killed by the IRA in the 1970s, both of whom are buried in Co. Louth. In March 1972 Jean McConville, a mother of ten, was abducted from her home in Belfast
and killed by the IRA. They say her body is buried at Templeton beach in north Co. Louth; but despite a large-scale excavation of the beach, it has not been found. Five years later Captain Robert
Nairac of the SAS was abducted from a bar in Drumintee, Co. Armagh, and taken to Ravensdale, just north of Dundalk, where he was shot dead. His body has not been found, and it is now widely
believed that it was disposed of using some type of cutting machinery. The killing of Nairac is significant in that a man was convicted of the murder even though a body was never found. Liam
Townson, a native of Meigh, Co. Armagh, who was living in Dundalk, was given a life sentence by the Special Criminal Court in Dublin in November 1977, convicted on the strength of a confession made
to the Gardaí and also the discovery of the crime scene under a bridge at Ravensdale, where blood stains and trampled grass were discovered.
