Missing (29 page)
Authors: Barry Cummins
Just because a journalist writes something doesn’t make it true. We’ve had a number of people come into us with their theory about what happened to Philip.
We’ve had everything suggested to us, from a foreign child-trafficking ring to aliens. It’s all wild speculation, and it doesn’t help. These journalists need to remember that
there is a family left behind here, and there is a memory of a young boy to be honoured and protected. In relation to the ‘paedophile ring’, there is absolutely no proof. Certain
journalists quote unnamed sources, people who have never contacted us with this information. Show me the proof.
Alice and Philip Cairns’s five remaining children are by now all adults, making lives for themselves. Philip Cairns senior retired from his job as a purchasing manager at
the end of 1994. In 2003 he and Alice celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary. Their first child, Mary, was born in 1965, and over the next nine years they had three more
daughters—Sandra, Helen, and Suzanne—and two sons—Philip and Eoin. In October 1986 the world of this happy and loving family was cruelly turned upside down.
The other boys in Philip Cairns’s class in 1986 are now grown men; most are married, most have families of their own. And all the while, the search for Philip continues.
At Rathfarnham Garda Station, Detective-Sergeant Tom Doyle told me that the investigation into Philip Cairns’s disappearance is very much active.
I will go anywhere, at any time, to meet with anyone who has information about Philip. They can talk to me in confidence, and there are other gardaí here who also
work on this case on a regular basis. This case is alive: we are continuously checking out leads. We undertake searches as new information comes in. We keep in regular touch with the Cairns
family. Detective-Garda Mary Fallon is the liaison officer, and she would speak often with Philip’s parents and with his sisters and brother.
It all comes down to one thing: someone knows something that can help us solve this mystery. In all probability there is some person who is tormented every day by their secret and would love
to speak out in confidence. It could be a seemingly trivial piece of information that someone has that might fit what we’re looking for. Despite the passage of time, the search for Philip
will never end.
One day a number of years ago the Cairns family came face to face with another family who continue to suffer similar pain. Alice and Philip Cairns met Ann and Charlie Boyle, the
parents of Mary Boyle, who was seven years old when she disappeared in Co. Donegal in March 1977. The families met in the RTÉ grounds in Donnybrook, Dublin, where they had taken part in a
radio discussion about missing people. It was a deeply emotional meeting, and many tears were shed. Later, at Ballyroan Road, the two families talked late into the evening. It was an extraordinary
meeting of two families both living a life of uncertainty and both clinging to a chink of hope that their children will some day be found.
Ireland’s Missing
F
ive people on average are reported missing in Ireland every day. Most of them have left of their own accord, for personal reasons, for space, or
time to reflect. It is not a crime for an adult of sound mind to go missing. Most such people return to their home after a few days or weeks, or at least contact their family to let them know they
are safe. Many missing people are depressed, some suffering from long-term depression, while others are upset after a family funeral or a dispute with another family member.
The families of these missing people suffer the same unrelenting pain that is felt by the families of missing people who have been murdered. There is no closure, no definite information;
families grieve but cannot say their last goodbyes. They do not know if their loved ones are still alive, or if not, where their bodies might lie.
Of the two thousand people reported missing in Ireland every year, between five and fifteen will never be found. Some of these will have gone away by themselves, perhaps not being in full
health, while others will have disappeared because they have been murdered. More than a dozen of Ireland’s long-term missing people, such as Annie McCarrick, Jo Jo Dullard, Fiona Pender, and
Ciara Breen, did not choose to go away but were murdered, their bodies hidden in unmarked graves in unknown places.
In other long-term missing persons cases it is less clear what happened: it is as if these people just vanished off the face of the earth. But that didn’t happen: these missing people must
be somewhere. They include an elderly couple who disappeared from their home in Co. Cork in 1991, a young man who vanished while walking home from a Christmas party in Dublin, and a number of young
men in different parts of the country who disappeared without a trace.
There are many questions and few answers. But the answers lie somewhere. Thanks to the sterling work of the families of missing people, it is certain that their missing loved ones will never be
forgotten; but what more can the state, the Gardaí and the public do to find them and bring them home?
In May 2002 a landmark event took place in Kilkenny that formally acknowledged the legacy of Ireland’s missing people. Amid emotional scenes, dozens of families who have
lost a member through violence, illness or accident came together to share their grief. The event that brought these brave families together was the unveiling of the National Missing Persons
Monument in the grounds of Kilkenny Castle. After a memorial Mass for all missing people, the families travelled to a quiet part of the castle grounds that will commemorate for ever those people
who have vanished in cruel and unexplained circumstances.
The sun shone on a calm afternoon as President Mary McAleese unveiled the monument, while dozens of families of missing people looked on, some of them quietly sobbing. The steel monument
features the handprints of members of the families of missing people, the hands of people who have written countless letters, made thousands of phone calls and conducted numerous searches of their
own in a desperate effort to find their loved ones. In her speech, President McAleese acknowledged that every family of a missing person has a different story: each case is different. But uniting
all families is the need to know what happened to their loved ones.
The creation of the National Missing Persons Monument was the brainchild of Mary Phelan, whose younger sister Jo Jo Dullard was murdered in November 1995. Mary Phelan is a quiet-spoken woman who
has found herself thrown into the spotlight. Though at first she found interviews daunting, she was compelled to speak out by the need to find her sister, and she has transformed herself from a
hard-working farmer’s wife into a voice for many families who cannot cope with intrusion by the media. As she made a short speech from the podium in the grounds of Kilkenny Castle she thought
of Jo Jo, her 21-year-old sister brutally murdered by a person who has not been caught. With tears streaming down her face, Mary Phelan thanked everybody who came to the unveiling of the
monument.
Later that afternoon, President McAleese had a private meeting with a number of the families. Among those she was introduced to were Bernadette Breen, whose seventeen-year-old daughter Ciara was
abducted and murdered in Dundalk in February 1997, and Alice Cairns, whose thirteen-year-old son Philip was abducted from a roadside in south Co. Dublin in October 1986. Also there was Josephine
Pender, whose only daughter, Fiona, was abducted and murdered in Tullamore in August 1996 while seven months pregnant. Josephine’s only surviving child, John, now a young man, was there to
support his mother.
Another brave woman in Kilkenny that day was Christine O’Sullivan, whose six-year-old daughter Deirdre was shot dead by her father, Christopher Crowley, in August 2001, who seconds later
took his own life. From December 1999 to August 2001 Deirdre Crowley was classified as a missing child. All the Gardaí knew was that she had been abducted by her father from her home in Co.
Cork, after Christine and Christopher had separated. The Gardaí mounted an extensive search for Deirdre, both in Ireland and abroad. It failed to find her; and when they eventually stumbled
on the little girl and her father at a rented house in Clonmel in August 2001 it was too late. Two gardaí called to the house and spoke briefly to Christopher Crowley, who was using an
alias. Seconds after they left the house Crowley took a shotgun and fired at his daughter, killing her instantly; he then turned the gun on himself. The failure to find Deirdre Crowley before her
father harmed her has been the subject of much debate within the Gardaí and has deeply affected many detectives who were close to finding her before her father killed her.
Christine O’Sullivan had made many friends among the families of other missing people in the time since her daughter was taken from her in December 1999. For almost two years she suffered
the same uncertainty that every family of a missing person suffers. For two years she prayed that her little daughter would be brought home to her. The shocking death of Deirdre Crowley has
affected the public, who once again were shaken by such unexplained violence against a child.
The unveiling of the National Missing Persons Monument brought together families who might not otherwise have met. While some missing people may have been suffering from
depression or may have fled because they were frightened of something, others were taken from their family by murderers. The families of missing people do not differentiate between the
circumstances of the disappearances: indeed many families still cannot say for certain why their son or daughter, or brother or sister, vanished without a trace. The monument seeks to honour their
memory and offers the opportunity for families to remember their loved ones and all missing people.
The names of many missing people in Ireland are well known to the public—names such as Annie McCarrick, Jo Jo Dullard, and Fiona Pender, women who were murdered by men
who have not been found or charged. There is also Philip Cairns, a thirteen-year-old schoolboy snatched from the roadside in October 1986 and not seen since. Mary Boyle, not quite seven years old,
who disappeared in the most perplexing of circumstances in Co. Donegal in March 1977, is another missing person whose name is well known for all the wrong reasons. There are many other people who
have simply vanished, some names well known because of the publicity generated by their distraught families. An examination of some of the other cases of missing people also makes for worrying
reading. Clearly, something more needs to be done.
A recent case that captured the hearts of the public is that of 22-year-old Trevor Deely from Naas, Co. Kildare, who disappeared while walking home from a Christmas party in Dublin in the early
hours of 8 December 2000. His movements in the hours before he disappeared have been well documented; they show no indication that he planned to disappear of his own free will. When last seen at
4:15 a.m. he was walking down Haddington Road, close to Baggot Street Bridge. Earlier that night he had been socialising with colleagues from the Asset Management Department of the Bank of Ireland.
He had started his night at Copper-Face Jack’s pub in Harcourt Street at about 7 p.m., later going to the Hilton Hotel in Charlemont Place at 9 p.m. At 12:28 a.m. he went to the bank machine
at the ACC bank in Charlemont Street, then returned to the Hilton. At 2:15 a.m. he left the Hilton and went to Buck Whaley’s night club in Leeson Street. He left there at 3:30 a.m. and went
back to his office, where he checked his e-mail and picked up a blue ACC golf umbrella. It was a stormy night as he left the office at 4 a.m. An unidentified man was seen on videotape close to the
building as Trevor went in and went out. Trevor Deely was last spotted on closed-circuit television walking down Haddington Road alone at 4:15 a.m. A man and a woman are seen on the tape walking in
the same direction a few moments later. Neither of these two people has come forward.
A massive search for Trevor Deely included house-to-house inquiries and an extensive search of the Grand Canal, but nothing was found. Trevor’s family, friends and colleagues conducted a
huge poster campaign in an effort to find him. Despite the biggest publicity campaign in recent times in relation to the search for a missing person, no trace of Trevor Deely was found.
Trevor Deely is one of a number of young men who have disappeared in recent years in unexplained circumstances. Another is 22-year-old Aengus (Gussie) Shanahan, whose disappearance in Limerick
in February 2000 later spurred his cousin Father Aquinas Duffy to set up a special web site to help find missing people. The site (at www.missing.ws) has provided a constant source of information
on missing people. A special section of the Garda web site (at www.garda.ie) also features the cases of missing people.
Another young man to disappear in Limerick was Patrick O’Donoghue, who was also twenty-two when he vanished one month before Gussie Shanahan. And before that, 27-year-old Desmond Walsh
went missing in Limerick in September 1999 after leaving a night club.
