Missing (15 page)
Authors: Barry Cummins
The cases of Jean McConville and Robert Nairac are examples of how difficult it is to find a body, even when a general area has been identified within which it most probably lies.
At her home in Dundalk, Bernadette Breen told me how upset she became when she discovered that Ciara’s disappearance was being linked with the possibility of a serial
killer.
I was never told about the setting up of Operation Trace. I remember clearly it was October 1998, and I was watching the RTÉ news at six o’clock. That’s
where I learnt about it—from the media. I was distraught. They were talking about all these poor girls and whether their disappearances were connected. I smashed so many cups and plates
that night—anything I could find—I was so angry. To hear Ciara’s name being linked with a serial killer; and for me to hear about it on television! I’m still angry about
it. Even the local gardaí didn’t know. One local detective arrived twenty minutes after the news report. He was too late. He didn’t know about this Operation Trace either. I
was given no warning about that news report. Is that right?
A couple of months after Ciara’s disappearance her grandfather, Brendan Coburn—Bernadette’s father—became ill. A well-known and popular salesman in the
shoe industry, he died two years later, in November 1999, two months after the arrest of the Dundalk man suspected of murdering Ciara. Since Ciara’s disappearance her grandmother, Marie
Coburn, has suffered a stroke. Bernadette Breen returned to St Mary’s Road to care for her mother; and it is here that she still keeps some of Ciara’s clothes, the special outfits she
wore. She gave other items of Ciara’s clothing away, but only on condition that they be sold in charity shops outside Dundalk. She couldn’t bear seeing another girl wearing
Ciara’s clothes.
Ciara Breen was three weeks into an early school-leavers’ course with Ógra Dhún Dealgan when she disappeared. She had put her name down many months before,
and a place became available with the small group of ten or so in January 1997. She was learning how to sew and also to use computers, and she was doing life and social skills. It was a one-year
course, certified by FÁS. Ciara had liked history and English in school but wasn’t academically minded, and she left St Vincent’s Secondary School in Dundalk at the end of fifth
year. She loved working with make-up, especially eye make-up, and wondered about the possibility of working as a beautician. She had only to walk a short distance every day to the Ógra
centre in Chapel Street, the old Boys’ Technical School. Rosaleen Bishop was Ciara’s tutor on the Ógra course; and though she knew Ciara only for a short time, she had a few good
chats with her.
I remember Ciara was a quiet young girl. She was shy, and she was conscious of her teeth and that they needed some work done on them. She would put her hand up to her mouth
when she’d be talking to you. She was very fond of her mother. I remember the day before she disappeared Ciara came into my office and told me her mother wasn’t very well. She said
she had to get some results from hospital. Ciara told me that she was going to go home and put on a nice fire for her Mam and tidy up the house for her, to make her feel a little better. Ciara
never mentioned her Dad. I wouldn’t say Ciara was a ‘street-wise’ kid. She wouldn’t be gullible either but maybe would have a trusting nature. She was a lovely wee girl.
She was very good at crafts and flower arranging, and she did T-shirt prints as well. I remember when the gardaí came in to question me and the other staff they were so thorough, they
wanted to know everything—like the tone of a voice and facial expressions.
As part of her search for her child, Bernadette Breen hired a private detective, but he failed to find any real leads. She even turned to psychics for help, going as far as the
United States to speak to a ‘medium’.
When Ciara Breen sneaked out of the house that night she was wearing a three-quarter-length leather jacket and jeans. She was also wearing a limited-edition watch, which also has never been
found. The watch was one of 2,500 sold in Florida to mark the holding of the World Cup competition in the United States in 1994. It has a square face with a green background featuring Mickey Mouse
on the left-hand side, and has a black leather strap. Ciara got the watch when she and her mother were in Florida four months before she disappeared. As well as the distinctive watch she was
wearing a white T-shirt from Sea World in Florida, showing a group of men surrounding a woman and with Ciara’s face superimposed on the model.
Detective-Sergeant Con Nolan has been stationed in the Louth area for thirty-seven years and has worked on many murder investigations and other serious crimes. He was part of
the team that arrested the man in September 1999 for questioning in connection with Ciara Breen’s disappearance. He told me that Ciara’s disappearance is unlike any other missing person
case he has dealt with.
There have, of course, been other missing people. But Ciara’s case is distinctive. I was brought in to work full-time on Ciara’s case because I had been working
on a separate case involving young people. During my other investigation I had made contact with young girls who were friendly with Ciara. They were able to tell us certain things which were of
assistance to us in our investigations. We were trying to learn who Ciara might have left her bedroom to meet that night. We looked at, and continue to look at, a number of possibilities. This
case is very much still open and active.
On 17 October 2001 the partially clothed body of a 28-year-old German journalist, Bettina Poeschel, was found in dense undergrowth in Donore, Co. Meath, a few miles from
Drogheda. She had last been seen alive three weeks before, on 25 September, as she made her way from Drogheda railway station in the direction of the passage tomb at Newgrange in the Boyne Valley.
The place where the body was discovered is very close to where she was last seen. This area had been searched in the initial investigation into her whereabouts; it was during a second search that
her remains were found by a garda. This case, which occurred in the Louth-Meath Garda division, serves as a stark reminder that even though searches are carried out for missing people, the searches
are not always as thorough as they might be. The fact that this body lay undiscovered for twenty-three days means that it was a number of weeks before it could be formally identified. Bettina
Poeschel was identified by the use of DNA. It would be a number of months before a full scientific examination of the body was complete, after which her remains were returned to her parents for
burial in Munich.
Bernadette Breen both cries and smiles as she remembers some of the wonderful times she had with Ciara. The mother and daughter were much like sisters: they laughed together,
joked together, and cried together. Bernadette told me that Ciara was an open, loving and trusting person.
Ciara couldn’t see anything wrong in anyone. She was the type of girl who fed stray dogs. She loved animals, from dogs and cats to sharks. She loved make-up, but she
wouldn’t wear anything that had been tested on animals. She kept a few dogs. Ciara was her own person, but she was my daughter. She was my baby.
Some of the girls Ciara hung around with during her wild period are now dead. Three of them died in a horrific car crash just north of Dundalk while travelling in a car being
driven by a teenage boy who had no driving licence. One detective told me that many young people in Dundalk hurt themselves by falling in with the wrong crowd.
What gets to you is that these were fundamentally good kids. But that’s just it: they were kids. And they found themselves doing things that even right-thinking adults
would not be doing. So many of them have been hurt or killed in accidents. I met many of them during our investigation into Ciara’s disappearance. They wouldn’t have always seen eye
to eye with the Gardaí, but when it came to the search for Ciara, they really tried to help us. We knew that Ciara probably left her house to meet someone her mother wouldn’t have
approved of, and we thought her former pals would be ones who might know something. I’ll never forget the bravery of some of those girls in giving us information about the people they
hung around with, and who Ciara might have hung around with. Information they gave us may yet be crucial in catching the person responsible. It’s just sad that so many of them have the
lives they have.
Bernadette Breen keeps a journal, a record of her innermost thoughts about her daughter’s disappearance. Sometimes there are days on which she cannot write at all. The
journal is there to be read by her family after her death.
Every child that goes missing reminds Bernadette of Ciara; every missing child is Ciara. Bernadette has also kept a snip of Ciara’s hair, which she keeps in a locket. It may well be of
significance in identifying Ciara if she is found. Bernadette believes the local gardaí involved in the search for Ciara have been wonderful, but she has reservations about the wider
investigations into the cases of missing people.
I really think the Government come out with things every now and then to keep the families of missing people quiet. I think there should be detectives working for maybe
eighteen months or two years at a time in a dedicated unit, and then bring in fresh people. It’s little things that really upset you: the fact that families learn things from the media
rather than the Gardaí. It just hurts sometimes. But then there are gardaí who are great. You know they really care. There is one detective who I know keeps a photograph of Ciara
with him, just to remind him that it’s a teenage child who is missing.
Bernadette showed me a large black-and-white photograph hanging on a wall, of Ciara on her First Communion day, smiling proudly in her white dress. Another favourite photograph
is one of Ciara wearing a Mexican hat. In another room hangs a large photograph of Bernadette’s grandfather, James Coburn—Ciara’s great-grandfather, who was a Fine Gael TD for
Louth for twenty-seven years. He died in office; his son George—Bernadette’s uncle—succeeded him in the by-election.
Bernadette told me she cries mostly at night.
Every day I think that’s another day gone without Ciara. I always think I might get some news tomorrow. Maybe ‘tomorrow’ is what keeps me going. I just
can’t bear to think of her lying out there somewhere. Two things I definitely know are that Ciara wasn’t on drugs, and she was not pregnant. But I know she sneaked out of the house
to meet someone I wouldn’t have approved of. I’d like younger people reading this to remember that parents don’t warn about evil people just for the sake of it. Ciara was
stupid once and paid the highest price possible. When I’m at my lowest I can smell her. Ciara wore ‘White Musk’, and I can still smell her. I would give anything in the world
just to hear just two words again: ‘Hi, Mam.’
Fiona Sinnott
O
f all the missing women who it is feared were the victims of a violent death, Fiona Sinnott is the only one who has left behind a child. Emma was
eleven months old when her nineteen-year-old mother vanished in February 1998. Fiona Sinnott was last seen in the isolated home she was renting at Ballyhitt, four miles south-west of Rosslare, Co.
Wexford. Apart from complaining of a still unexplained pain in her arm, she had been in good form, socialising with friends in a pub in the nearby village of Broadway.
A number of men have been questioned about the disappearance of Fiona Sinnott, who previously suffered a number of brutal assaults at the hands of one former boy-friend. There are various
credible explanations for what might have happened. On different occasions she was hospitalised for injuries, including a damaged jaw and twisted ankle, but she discharged herself. The
Gardaí are aware of the violence she was subjected to; but without Fiona to testify, charges will never be brought.
Despite the litany of abuse she had endured, Fiona Sinnott had much to look forward to. She doted on her baby daughter, and she was planning to get solid work as a chef. Though she and
Emma’s father, Seán Carroll, had ended their relationship when Emma was eight months old, they remained on relatively good terms, and Emma spent her time between the Carroll and the
Sinnott families. All the indications are that Fiona Sinnott did not choose to disappear. She was looking forward to Emma’s first birthday, and her sister Diane was having her twenty-first
birthday later the same month. Her disappearance has devastated her parents and her two brothers and two sisters.
The Gardaí have two main hypotheses. Fiona may have been murdered, possibly by one or more local people; or she may have suffered an accidental death, and the person or persons who were
with her panicked and concealed her body. Detectives remain convinced that there are people in Co. Wexford who know what happened to Fiona Sinnott, and who know who is responsible.
Fiona Sinnott’s former partner, the father of her baby daughter, is the last person that the Gardaí know of to see her. The account he gave is that Fiona was not
feeling very well and was planning to head towards a doctor in a town about eight miles from her home. It was about 9:15 on the morning of Monday 9 February 1998, and Seán Carroll was
standing in Fiona’s bedroom. He had spent the night on a sofa downstairs and went up to wake Fiona before he left the house. He had stayed the night because Fiona had been complaining of a
pain in her chest and arm the night before, and he had agreed to escort her home from a local pub. By Monday morning she said she was still not feeling well. ‘I think I’ll go to the
doctor in Bridgetown,’ she said. ‘I’ll thumb over.’ ‘Have you any money?’ Seán asked her. She replied that she hadn’t. He gave her about £5
and headed out the door, to where his mother was waiting in her car to collect him. And that is the last reported sighting of Fiona Sinnott.
