Missing (17 page)
Authors: Barry Cummins
On Friday 6 February 1998 Fiona Sinnott and a number of her friends travelled by minibus from Broadway to the Tuskar House Hotel in Rosslare to attend a pool tournament. During the evening Fiona
met a Welsh lorry-driver, Gary James. At the end of the night, when the bus was heading back to Broadway, he called out to Fiona and invited her into his lorry. She agreed and got in. Some time
later someone started banging on the lorry, shouting, ‘Come out of there, Fiona.’ They peeped out of the lorry and saw a man that Fiona identified. She stayed in the lorry, and the man
who was shouting outside eventually walked off.
In March 1998 Gary James made a statement to the Gardaí about his recollections of that night. He told them that the next morning he had driven Fiona to Kilrane, a village a mile outside
Rosslare Harbour in the direction of Broadway. He had not seen her again.
As the search for Fiona Sinnott continued, her daughter, Emma, had her first birthday. Though she was missing her mother, Emma had many loving relatives to help her enjoy her
birthday. On her father’s side she had her grandparents, Seán and Kitty Carroll, and her aunts Yvonne and Sharon. On her mother’s side there were her other proud grandparents,
Pat and Mary Sinnott, and her aunts Caroline and Diane and uncles Séamus and Norman.
As time wore on, the Sinnott and Carroll families would see less and less of each other. Emma would be cared for by her father’s family. Later it would be arranged that Pat and Mary
Sinnott would see their granddaughter in a hotel for about an hour every fortnight.
Everyone is proud of Emma. One treasured photograph of her at an art competition, which was published in the
Wexford People,
shows a little girl having fun with her classmates at
primary school—a little girl doing ordinary things; a little girl whose mother never got the chance to see her daughter grow up.
In June 1998 senior detectives held a conference with members of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation in Dublin. The investigation into the disappearance of Fiona
Sinnott had yielded nothing in the way of solid information on her whereabouts. However, as happens when a trawl for any information is undertaken, facts about other alleged criminal acts had come
to the attention of the Gardaí. After a detailed discussion it was decided that six men in south Co. Wexford should be arrested and questioned about alleged drug-dealing.
This is the kind of stuff that might go on in any rural area. There are local fellows who know where to source drugs. It’s usually small-time stuff, but the fact that
this was happening close to where Fiona disappeared could not be ignored. So we decided to lift them. We were legitimately questioning them about drugs in Co. Wexford, but you never know who
might be keeping another secret.
A team of experienced detectives from the NBCI travelled to Co. Wexford to question the six men, who were arrested at different places and taken to Wexford Garda Station. Among
them was a man who was a suspect in Fiona Sinnott’s disappearance. He had no previous convictions, but aspects of his character, and certain allegations made against him, had made him a
suspect. He was questioned at length over two days by two sets of detectives. The gardaí who took part in the questioning were involved in many of the most important criminal investigations
of recent times; two of them were among those who would later question John Crerar, who was subsequently convicted of the murder of Phyllis Murphy in 1979.
These senior gardaí were questioning men believed to be involved in relatively small-scale drug-dealing. One local garda noted:
The irony would have been lost on the boys we were questioning. But we weren’t leaving this to chance. One of them might have known something about Fiona, but it was
for them to tell us. We couldn’t come out and just ask them. They were not being held in connection with Fiona’s disappearance. We hoped one of them might know something and come
clean. We still wonder if one of them might know something. These fellows would have been aware of covert means of travelling around the countryside, without drawing attention to yourself. If
anyone had seen anything that Monday, or any other day, we thought those fellows would have seen it. But we brought in the best interviewers we had, and we got nothing.
One of the men questioned later died of a drug-related illness. He had known Fiona Sinnott, as they were from the same general area; he would occasionally give her a lift if he
was heading her way. One person who knew both believes this man may have known something about Fiona’s disappearance.
He seemed to be edgy whenever anybody would mention Fiona. He seemed to take her disappearance quite hard. But it’s only afterwards that you start to analyse like
this. The poor man was into drugs in a bad way, and that’s what cost him his life. Maybe it was the drugs that were causing him to act edgy—perhaps that’s a more likely
answer. But we just don’t know, and now will never know.
Fiona Sinnott’s parents, Pat and Mary Sinnott, met in Co. Donegal. Pat was a fisherman from Co. Wexford; Mary lived in the fishing village of Killybegs. Caroline Sinnott
smiled as she told me how her father sailed into Killybegs a single man and left with his wife-to-be.
Dad met Mam when he was working in Donegal. His brother met one of Mam’s sisters, and they’re married now as well—two Wexford brothers married to two
Donegal sisters. Mam and Dad went on their honeymoon to Dublin, and they settled here in Wexford. They’re both retired now. They’ve a number of grandchildren, but they’re
missing one of their children, and it really hurts them. When the monument for missing people was unveiled in Kilkenny, we all went up.
A year after the disappearance of Fiona Sinnott, a suspected serial killer was found to be living in Co. Wexford. Detectives have investigated this man’s movements and
have tried to trace where he was when a number of women disappeared in Leinster in the 1990s. But it appears to be pure coincidence that he was living close to where Fiona Sinnott had lived the
year before. The Gardaí have established that he was living in England at the time of Fiona’s disappearance, and there is no evidence that he travelled to Co. Wexford before he was
identified by the Gardaí in Wexford in 1999. This man is a native of Co. Laois but had been living abroad for a number of years. He is suspected of having murdered two teenage girls in other
jurisdictions. He already has convictions for assaults on teenage girls in Northern Ireland; he also served a ten-year prison sentence for a vicious attack on an elderly woman in Co. Cork in the
early 1970s.
In 1999 this dangerous man arrived in Barntown, Co. Wexford, ten miles north of where Fiona Sinnott was last seen, having travelled to Rosslare by ferry from Britain with his partner and other
family members. It is alleged that at this time he had already killed one young girl in another jurisdiction; he would later be charged with murdering another girl in England.
After the Gardaí in Co. Wexford became aware that this suspected serial killer was in the area, they paid him a visit. They informed him that they knew who he was and that they would be
monitoring his movements. The man left Ireland a short time afterwards, returning to England, where it is now feared that he abducted and murdered a fourteen-year-old girl in April 2001; her body
was found at a cement works in Kent in March 2002.
Though the extent of this man’s alleged crimes is still being examined by the Gardaí, the PSNI, and police in Britain, it appears that he was not in Co. Wexford at the time of Fiona
Sinnott’s disappearance.
In June 1998, four months after Fiona Sinnott’s disappearance, the man who is alleged to have assaulted her on a number of occasions met the Gardaí. During their
discussion this man, who is from south Co. Wexford, was asked directly whether he knew anything about Fiona’s disappearance. He replied that he ‘couldn’t talk about it.’ One
detective asked him, ‘Why can’t you talk to us about Fiona?’
‘I’ve nothing to say,’ he replied. More questions met with a similar reply.
‘Have you anything to do with Fiona’s disappearance?’
‘I’ve nothing to say.’
‘It would be better to come clean about this …’
‘Lads, I can’t talk about it.’
‘Why can’t you talk about it?’
‘I have nothing to say … I have nothing to say.’
‘Are you concerned about her disappearance?’
‘I have nothing to say.’
One line of inquiry the Gardaí believe may still be a valid one is that the person responsible for Fiona Sinnott’s disappearance may have had assistance from one
or more other people. It has long been wondered whether the person responsible might have summoned assistance after the crime had been committed, and perhaps there is someone who got caught up in
something they didn’t realise was a crime until it was too late. Perhaps someone was asked to help move Fiona from one place to another, or was asked to hide certain evidence, or was asked to
provide an alibi.
As part of this line of inquiry the Gardaí identified a number of people living in Co. Wexford who it was felt might have something to hide. These people denied any involvement when they
were questioned. Detectives dug up a septic tank on private land during this part of the investigation, and part of the foundations of a house were also searched, but nothing was found.
Caroline Sinnott told me that she and the rest of the family think that more than one person may know the secret of what happened to Fiona.
We believe we know the person who might be responsible for the disappearance of Fiona. We’ve often wondered if this person might have had assistance from another
person in south Co. Wexford. This other person might have been brought into it even after Fiona had been abducted or hurt. Someone knows something; someone has a guilty conscience. There are
people in the county of Wexford who know what happened to our sister.
In the weeks before Fiona Sinnott went missing she confided in one person that she wanted to change aspects of her life and essentially to take more responsibility for herself
and her baby. However, there was nothing to suggest that she was under any threat from anyone. Her only recent trip to the doctor was for a bout of tonsillitis the month before she disappeared. A
farmer in the area later came forward to say that he saw Fiona holding her arm and looking distressed on the weekend she disappeared. Whatever was causing the pain in her arm as described by this
witness, and by Fiona’s friends in the pub that fateful night, has never been established. Had she been assaulted? Was it some kind of accidental injury she had suffered? Has it anything to
do with her disappearance?
The disappearance of Fiona Sinnott is only one of a number of upsetting incidents to occur in the general area of south Co. Wexford. In June 2001, 35-year-old Alan Wright from
Tomhaggard, four miles from where Fiona Sinnott disappeared, died after taking a heroin overdose. He had travelled with two friends to Crumlin in Dublin, where they bought heroin; he died as they
were driving back to Co. Wexford. The death traumatised his family and shocked the local community, unused to such distressing events. Coupled with the sinister disappearance of Fiona Sinnott, this
area has suffered greatly in recent years.
At Wexford Garda Station one filing cabinet is filled to the brim with witness statements, questionnaires and ‘job-sheets’ that the investigation into Fiona
Sinnott’s disappearance has generated. A job-sheet is what is used when a piece of information has to be followed up to establish whether it might be true or not. Such investigations in the
Fiona Sinnott case have involved liaison with police in Wales, England, and France. The possibility that Fiona’s abductor might have taken her by car or lorry on the ferry from Rosslare has
not been ignored, and Interpol was issued with Fiona’s description almost as soon as she was reported missing. But, frustratingly, because she was not reported missing until nine days after
she was last seen, detectives fear that the trail had grown too cold.
The Gardaí also spoke to a married man from Co. Wexford who was rumoured to be linked romantically with Fiona. This man, a self-employed businessman, denies the rumour emphatically. The
interest of the Gardaí was sparked when it was learnt that he had travelled by ferry to Britain at about the time of Fiona’s disappearance; but this line of inquiry has led
nowhere.
The loss of Fiona Sinnott is not the first misfortune to be visited on the Sinnott family. Fiona’s father, Paddy Sinnott, is one of fourteen children. One of his
brothers, Fintan, then aged twenty-one, drowned in 1977 while responding to an emergency call. In a terrible irony, it turned out to be a false alarm; but Fintan, who had rushed to give whatever
assistance he could, drowned in the first few moments. Such disasters are unfortunately common in fishing communities, and the loss of Fintan was something the Sinnott family could understand in a
certain way and eventually come to terms with; but the loss of nineteen-year-old Fiona is an agonising mystery that has devastated the family. There are no answers, no body, no clearly identified
culprit, and no explanation.
Paddy Sinnott doesn’t talk much about Fiona’s disappearance. Neither does her brother Norman. Fiona’s other brother, Séamus, often wonders what might have been if he had
gone down to Butler’s pub that night. Might things have been different? Did Fiona need help? Was there something he might have been able to do?
Fiona Sinnott left Bridgetown Vocational School before doing her Inter Cert. Finding that she had a talent for baking, she sought work in restaurants and was thinking of pursuing a full-time
career as a chef. Just before she disappeared she was planning to take positive steps to better herself and improve not only her own prospects but those of her young daughter.
Fiona Sinnott was the second-last woman to disappear in Leinster before the Garda authorities decided to set up a special investigation to see if the cases might be linked.
Hers is the only such disappearance in the Co. Wexford area; the closest other missing woman case is twenty miles away in Waterford, where Imelda Keenan disappeared from her home in January 1994.
Despite the best efforts of the Gardaí, no trace of Imelda Keenan has been found. She was last seen at her home in William Street, Waterford, when she was wearing leopard-skin trousers and a
denim jacket. Though her details were also privately analysed by detectives from Operation Trace, there was no evidence that she might have been the victim of a crime. While her disappearance is no
less painful for her family, from an investigative point of view the Gardaí do not believe that Imelda Keenan’s disappearance is linked to Fiona Sinnott’s. In Fiona’s case
there was a clear history of violence against her by one person who was known to her, and this is where a degree of suspicion still lies.
