Missing (30 page)

Other young men to vanish in recent years include Shane Curran from Co. Waterford, who was twenty-two when he was last seen in December 1999 in Dunmore East, and Stephen Finnegan from Howth, Co.
Dublin, who was twenty when he vanished in February 2000.

A number of cases of missing women have not received the same attention as others because there is no evidence that they were the victims of a crime; but their disappearance is
no less painful for their families. Imelda Keenan was last seen at her home in William Street, Waterford, in January 1994. 28-year-old Sandra Collins from Killala, Co. Mayo, disappeared from her
home in December 2000.

Ellen Coss from Ballyfermot, Dublin, was last seen in November 1999 as she boarded a train in Manchester for Holyhead, where she was to get the ferry to Dublin. It is now believed that she never
arrived in Dublin. In the meantime her family travelled to the unveiling of the National Missing Persons Monument, unaware of the fresh trauma they were soon to endure. In June 2002 Ellen’s
brothers and sisters were notified of the discovery of a woman’s body on a beach at Eastbourne, Sussex, but they were told it would be some time before DNA tests would tell whether the body
was that of their missing sister. It was three agonising months before tests proved that the body was not that of Ellen Coss. Ellen remains missing.

There are further cases in which, despite the best efforts of the Gardaí, no trace has been found of people who have disappeared. One that continues to baffle detectives
in Co. Cork is that of a married couple, Conor and Sheila Dwyer from Fermoy, who were in their sixties when they were last seen in April 1991. When gardaí searched their home they found all
their personal belongings, such as clothes, money, and passports, still in the house. The only thing missing was the couple’s car—a Toyota Cressida, registration number ZT-5797. Despite
the assistance of the police in other countries, no trace of the car, or of the missing couple, has been found.

Another long-term missing person is Michael Farrell from Donaghmede, Dublin, who was thirty when he disappeared from the B&I ferry
Isle of Inishmore
in September 1994 while the ship
was en route from Rosslare to Pembroke. He worked as a cinema projectionist on board the ferry, and his disappearance has left his family devastated. Despite a thorough search of the ship and the
sea, no trace of Michael Farrell has been found.

In January 1996, 73-year-old Alpho O’Reilly, who suffered from amnesia, disappeared from his home in Strand Road, Sandymount, Dublin. His car, a green Mitsubishi Colt, registration number
95-D-6446, is also unaccounted for. What many people find disturbing about this case, and that of the Dwyers in Co. Cork, is that two cars, whose registration numbers are known, have not been found
anywhere. Neither car has turned up abandoned or stolen. How can cars vanish?

While the great majority of people who go missing return home safely of their own free will, or are found by the Gardaí, there are some who will not return alive. Some
missing people have taken their own lives; others have died in accidents; others still have been murdered. Whatever the circumstances of the deaths of these missing people, the fact that many of
their bodies have not been found is a source of great distress to their families.

Unfortunately, there have been a number of significant instances in which the Gardaí have failed to find the bodies of missing people even when they are within a few hundred yards of the
search areas. While detectives stress that they have learnt from their mistakes, it is still unfortunate, to say the least, that murder, accident and suicide victims have lain undiscovered for days
or weeks before being found. These failures deny the distraught families the opportunity to grieve properly for their loved ones.

For almost three weeks Paul McQuaid’s body lay in a lane a few hundred yards from Grafton Street, Dublin. While thousands of people walked along one of the city’s busiest streets
during May 2001, a young man who had wandered down the lane and fallen off a railing lay dead a short distance away. Though the body was found on private property belonging to a bank, it seems
almost incredible that an isolated lane so close to where the man disappeared was not searched. Paul McQuaid had last been seen outside Judge Roy Bean’s bar in Nassau Street. It seems clear
that later that night he wandered up Grafton Street and turned to the right down Wicklow Street. For some unexplained reason he then turned right again into a dark lane and tried to climb a high
fence at the end but fell and suffered fatal injuries.

One of the most distressing aspects of this case is the fact that it was later discovered that there was closed-circuit television tape of a figure—later confirmed as that of Paul
McQuaid—walking towards the lane. Detectives had conducted an intensive search, including the River Liffey and numerous areas between Judge Roy Bean’s and Paul McQuaid’s home in
Clontarf in north Dublin. But one of the gardaí who worked on the case accepts that they failed to fully search the immediate area around Nassau Street.

Another recent case in which the Gardaí sadly failed to find a body very close to their search area was that of the murder of the 28-year-old German journalist Bettina
Poeschel in Donore, Co. Meath, in September 2001. For twenty-three days the body lay in dense undergrowth about fifteen yards off the main Drogheda road close to Donore. A massive investigation had
been launched soon after her disappearance on 25 September, yet search parties failed to find the murdered woman until a garda made the shocking discovery while searching the almost inaccessible
terrain on 17 October. The fact that it took the Gardaí more than three weeks to find the body caused a great deal of discussion among detectives. Unlike the case of Paul McQuaid, Bettina
Poeschel’s body was found very close to where she was most probably travelling. The Gardaí knew she had taken the train from Dublin to Drogheda, and she had told a friend she was
planning to visit the passage tomb at Newgrange, about three miles from Donore. Yet for twenty-three days the body lay hidden in undergrowth in Donore, exposed to the elements. During that time the
woman’s distraught father and sister travelled from Munich to appeal for help in finding her. The failure to find the body sooner was to lead in turn to a delay of several months before it
was released to her family by the coroner for bringing back to Germany. Because the body had lain exposed for so long, it took longer than usual to conduct all the necessary examinations for the
purpose of assessing the exact cause of her death, and other elements of the criminal investigation. The family later thanked the Gardaí for their hard work in eventually finding Bettina; a
memorial now stands close to where she met her death.

There are two recent examples of young men who have been murdered as part of the activity of criminal gangs in Dublin but whose bodies remained undiscovered for long periods
relatively close to where they disappeared. Seventeen-year-old Patrick ‘Whacker’ Lawlor was murdered in January 1999, and for three years his body lay in a shallow grave close to the
Ninth Lock of the Grand Canal at Clondalkin, Dublin. He was murdered after getting involved with a violent heroin dealer who was distributing drugs in west Dublin. It was in January 2002 that the
Gardaí found Lawlor’s remains after a tip-off. From the time of his disappearance three years before, detectives believed he had been murdered and his body buried somewhere in west
Dublin, but all searches for his body were fruitless. It was eventually recovered only because the tip-off was extremely precise in identifying where it was buried. For three years people walked
and drove by the spot where this body lay, and for three years the Garda investigation was hampered by the failure to find the body. The investigation into the murder of Patrick Lawlor
continues.

The other recent example was the killing of 22-year-old Neil Hanlon from Crumlin, Dublin. For five months his body lay in a shallow grave on open land close to Crumlin Vocational School in the
centre of a heavily populated area. He was last seen in September 2001 close to his home, less than a quarter of a mile from where his body was found. He had been abducted and murdered in a
horrific attack after he was involved in a dispute with a Dublin drug-dealer. He suffered a prolonged attack before being murdered, after which his grave was dug under cover of darkness. As with
the discovery of the body of Patrick Lawlor, detectives found Neil Hanlon’s body in February 2002 only after precise information was received about where they should search. For five months
children played close to the unmarked grave, while pedestrians and motorists travelled along the busy Sundrive Road, a few hundred yards away.

The fact that these two young Dublin men could be abducted and murdered and their bodies buried so close to the murder scenes is a source of extreme concern to the Gardaí, who naturally
want to find such bodies as soon as possible, not only to aid their investigations but also for the sake of the grieving families. One detective pointed out that neither body would have been found
but for very precise information.

The clearest example of the problems faced by the Gardaí is the difficulties they had in trying to find the remains of people who were abducted and killed by the
Provisional IRA in the 1970s and early 80s. In March 1999 the IRA admitted that it was responsible for the deaths of nine missing people who were abducted and murdered between 1972 and 1980. The
organisation forwarded information to the Gardaí about a number of places where the remains had been buried in unmarked graves in Cos. Monaghan, Louth, Wicklow, and Meath. By the time
detectives had finished extensive searches of each of the sites, only three of the nine bodies had been found.

A mysterious and sinister story remains to be told about the disappearance and suspected murder of a number of men in Cork in the mid-1990s. In April 1994, 23-year-old Cathal
O’Brien from Co. Wexford and 42-year-old Kevin Ball both disappeared from a house in Wellington Terrace, Cork. In December the same year 32-year-old Patrick O’Driscoll, who lived in the
same house, also vanished. The Gardaí began an intensive investigation, and within months Fred Flannery, who had also been living in Wellington Terrace, was charged with the murder of
Patrick O’Driscoll. When his trial began at the Central Criminal Court in June 1996 his seventeen-year-old nephew Michael told the jury he had seen body parts in a cupboard in the house, and
he had been shown a coal-bag in which, he was told, Patrick O’Driscoll’s body was hidden.

However, the trial was halted amid extraordinary scenes after Mr Justice Robert Barr found that certain evidence had been suppressed. Mr Justice Barr directed that Fred Flannery be acquitted of
the murder charge, and he walked free from court.

A month later Patrick O’Driscoll’s dismembered body was found buried in a sports bag in a shallow grave in the grounds of Lotabeg House in Cork. Cathal O’Brien was a graduate
of Waterford RTC and was a socially concerned young man who worked with the Simon Community in Cork. During his work he met and befriended Kevin Ball. The failure to find their remains is a source
of great distress to their families and a hindrance to the Garda investigation in bringing charges against their killer. Detectives are also conscious of the disappearance of Frank
‘Blackie’ McCarthy, who vanished in Cork in February 1993 and is believed to have been murdered also.

The reluctance of the Garda authorities to establish a National Missing Persons Unit, to be involved in continuous searches for missing people, is a source of anger and
frustration to many families of missing people. From her home in Co. Kilkenny, Jo Jo Dullard’s sister Mary Phelan is leading a campaign for the establishment of such a unit. In relation to
her own sister, who was abducted and murdered in November 1995, Mary Phelan believes that detectives have not searched every area they should have in their efforts to find Jo Jo.