Missing (21 page)

Though the murder of Patricia Furlong occurred sixteen years before the establishment of Operation Trace, detectives were still conscious that officially the case remains unsolved, and that
there was a distinct possibility that Patricia Furlong’s murderer was still free. It was also on the minds of many detectives that this victim was strangled close to where the missing
American woman Annie McCarrick was seen at Johnnie Fox’s pub in Glencullen in March 1993. Could Patricia Furlong’s killer have struck again in the same general area eleven years
afterwards? If so, why did he go to the extreme lengths of hiding her body?

As well as examining the unsolved murders that might fit the profile of a serial killer, detectives from Operation Trace considered whether there were any other missing women
who might have fallen prey to a random attacker. It was later felt that one case not included in the original six of Operation Trace should be analysed thoroughly. Though the age profile did not
fit that of the other missing women, the timing and place of the disappearance of Eva Brennan in July 1993 was too significant to be ignored.

Eva Brennan, who looked younger than her thirty-nine years, was last seen alive on 25 July 1993, when she angrily left her parents’ house at Rathdown Park, Terenure, Dublin, after a minor
argument. She had looked in the oven and said something like, ‘Oh, no, not lamb again,’ and one of her brothers had responded, ‘If you don’t want it you don’t have to
stay.’ It was a trivial dispute, the kind that happens every day; but Eva Brennan left the house and walked down Templeogue Road towards her own apartment at Madison Avenue in Rathgar. The
Gardaí are satisfied she arrived safely, as a raincoat she had been wearing was in the apartment when it was later checked; but her handbag, keys and bus pass were missing. It was almost a
week after she went missing that her family reported her disappearance. In an effort to do everything they could to assist the Gardaí, they told them she had suffered on and off from
depression since she was a teenager. Detectives at first feared she had gone off by herself and might have done herself harm. Eva’s sister, Collette McCann, believes the answer may be more
sinister.

The OVID computer system, which compared Eva Brennan’s disappearance with those of the other missing women, did so in a non-judgmental way. It wasn’t concerned with
whether she suffered from depression or not: it was merely trying to establish whether any of Eva’s habits or acquaintances might have cropped up in any other investigations. No such links
were established.

There was no suspect in connection with Eva Brennan’s disappearance. A man from Co. Donegal who had met her at a prayer group was tracked down, but he had no information for the
Gardaí. A former boy-friend was found in Liverpool, but he also had no information. Detectives who worked on the case looked at the convicted double killer Michael Bambrick as a possible
suspect. He was not caught until May 1994, when his daughter told detectives about her father’s violent behaviour. Bambrick later admitted killing two missing women—his wife, Patricia
McGauley, in September 1991 and Mary Cummins in July 1992. Both victims were killed at Bambrick’s home in Ronanstown, Dublin. The fact that he had not known his second victim until hours
before he killed her made the Gardaí wonder whether he might be able to assist them in finding Eva Brennan. But this line of inquiry led nowhere.

As detectives continued to assimilate thousands of pieces of information and to enter it in the OVID system, a number of violent convicted criminals contacted the Gardaí
claiming to have information about some of the missing women. Over the following months detectives would find themselves in communication with criminals in Ireland, England and Canada who claimed
to know something about one or more of the cases. Frustratingly, just like the hoax calls that came from members of the public, each of the criminals had concocted an elaborate story of lies, a
figment of their disturbed imagination. Yet the Gardaí are acutely aware that some of those people who made up stories about abducting and murdering women are capable of acting out such
violent deeds. One of them was a young man from Athlone who would later be jailed for twelve years for one of the most shocking crimes to be committed in Ireland in recent times.

At the time this teenage criminal contacted detectives from Operation Trace he was serving a prison sentence and was also being treated at the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum, Dublin. He
claimed that a man he knew was responsible for at least one of the disappearances of women in Leinster. Detectives met the man, and he eventually named two sites at which they might find some
evidence. He was taken to Athlone to pinpoint the places where the evidence might lie. Looking back now, one detective told me that at first this man had a lot of people convinced he had solid
information.

It was in June 2001 that this young criminal proved he was capable not only of fantasising about evil deeds but of carrying them out. Though the victim in this case was a young
man, the circumstances of the assault prove that fantasists can become killers.

In June 2001 the young Athlone criminal had recently been released from prison. Detectives from Operation Trace were satisfied by this time that he had no credible information that would help
them in their search for missing women. In the early hours of the morning of 30 June 2001 he abducted at knife-point a seventeen-year-old youth who had travelled into Athlone to buy chips. He sat
behind the terrified teenager on his parked scooter and forced him to drive first to Moate, then to Clara, and eventually to Creggan bog, off the Athlone–Dublin road. The teenager was forced
to push his bike out of view of the roadside and was then frogmarched further into a remote part of the bog. The criminal forced his petrified victim to take off his runners and his football
jersey, which was used to gag him. His hands were chained behind his back with the chain from the scooter, and his feet were tied together with the laces from his runners. The criminal then pushed
his victim into a bog-hole, and pushed the scooter in on top of him. As the teenager fought to keep his head above the water his attacker said to him: ‘Goodbye, and good luck.’

Sergeant Seán Leydon and Garda Brian Lee were on patrol around Athlone that night when they noticed the criminal loitering on the street. The young man was well known to both
gardaí, and they were aware that he was back on the streets after serving a prison sentence in Dublin. As they approached him to assess what he was doing out so late at night he said to
them, ‘I’ve done it this time. Now you’ll believe me.’ Within seconds the young man was confessing that he had left a teenager bound and gagged in a bog-hole.

The story shocked the two gardaí, who asked the criminal to show them where he had committed this crime. When they arrived at the scene, only the victim’s face was above the water,
but they managed to pull him to safety. One of this criminal’s first questions for the gardaí when he was arrested was ‘How long will I get for this?’ In July 2002 the now
22-year-old criminal was jailed for twelve years for false imprisonment, reckless endangerment, and assault. His young victim was too upset to give evidence in court.

This episode graphically reminded the Gardaí that while some people who contacted Operation Trace might have concocted stories because they were attention-seekers, there was still the
possibility that some of them might one day try to act out their sick fantasies.

Another extremely violent man who contacted the Operation Trace team with false information was a convicted child serial killer in Canada. The first time detectives came across
the name Clifford Robert Olson was when a sergeant at Baltinglass Garda Station in Co. Wicklow answered the phone one day to find himself speaking directly to one of the most dangerous men alive.
From his prison cell in Québec, Olson had managed to obtain access to information on the internet about the Garda operation to find Ireland’s missing women. He concocted an elaborate
tale, saying that a now deceased friend of his, Colin Miller, had murdered five women in Ireland.

Detectives at first kept an open mind about Olson’s claims, but eventually they ruled out his ‘information’ as nothing more than twisted fantasy. The fact that Olson is serving
a life sentence for murdering eleven children in Canada in the late 1970s and early 80s had at first made the Gardaí sit up and listen. Here was a self-confessed serial killer claiming to be
in a position to solve the mystery of certain missing women in Ireland. His own crimes had caused waves of panic in the Vancouver area before he was caught and jailed in January 1982. In a deal
that later caused widespread debate, Olson was paid by the Canadian authorities to identify the unmarked graves of the children he had murdered. The money was not paid directly to Olson but was put
in trust for members of his family. The arrangement sparked intense debate about whether killers should be rewarded for giving such information. The Canadian police were satisfied in the knowledge
that the recovery of the children’s bodies brought some form of relief for the devastated families, while Olson would never again set foot out of jail. However, the deals negotiated by Olson
allowed him to obtain access to the outside world by way of the telephone and the internet; and so years later, when he saw an opportunity to cause mischief, he was able to make contact with the
Gardaí without any difficulty.

Clifford Olson claimed he knew where the bodies of five missing women were. He claimed that the five women—whom he named—were buried in Co. Kildare. But he wanted to be brought over
to Ireland to find the bodies, something the Gardaí were not prepared to contemplate. One detective told me that Olson wasted a lot of their time.

Detectives with Operation Trace travelled to meet a prisoner in Britain who also contacted them with information about missing women in Ireland. As with the conversations with
the young Athlone criminal and with Clifford Olson, the ‘information’ this person had amounted to nothing.

As the Gardaí examined the files of all known sex offenders who might be capable of killing their victims, the name of one man came strongly to the fore. Already a
suspect in the murder of a teenage girl who disappeared in Northern Ireland, he would later be charged with murdering another teenage girl in London in April 2001. This man is a recidivist criminal
who previously served a ten-year sentence for raping an elderly woman in Co. Cork in 1974. He had broken into the woman’s house and subjected her to a prolonged attack before robbing her. He
was later convicted of raping a young girl and given a three-year sentence in 1995. This criminal also has a number of convictions for robbery, and in between his many spells in prison he has lived
in Ireland, Scotland, and England. He was earmarked as a suspect for the murder of a teenage girl in Northern Ireland early on in the investigation but was not charged, and he later travelled to
Scotland and then to London. That girl’s body has never been recovered.

During the 1990s he returned to Ireland and spent time in a number of places in the midlands and the south-east. He was known to the Gardaí as a convicted rapist, but he was not
identified with any crimes in the Republic during the 1990s. However, it is now believed that in April 2001, after returning to England, he murdered another teenage girl, this time a
fourteen-year-old. Her body was found at a cement factory in March 2002, and shortly afterwards the man was charged with her murder. The Gardaí, RUC and English police met in Dublin for a
day-long conference, at which they discussed their information relating to this extremely violent man.