Introduction

Between March 1993 and July 1998 six young women aged between seventeen and twenty-six disappeared without a trace in Ireland. It is feared that all six women were abducted and murdered. Despite intensive Garda investigations, massive media coverage and public appeals, the bodies of the six women have not been found. Their disappearance has brought untold anguish to their families and shocked a country unused to such unexplained and seemingly random violence. And, of course, there is the disturbing reality that the killers responsible have not been caught. There live among us killers who have gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal their crimes, who have not left an identifiable crime scene behind, who have somehow hidden the bodies of their defenceless victims.

Four of the families of the missing women accept the terrible fact that their loved ones have been murdered. A fifth family fear that the same fate befell their loved one but still hold out a glimmer of hope that she may be alive. The sixth family maintain that any speculation about their missing teenager being murdered is simply that—speculation.

The trauma of the families of the six women has been laid bare in the glare of the media. Hundreds of buildings and thousands of acres of land have been painstakingly searched; suspects have been arrested and questioned; but still the mystery of the disappearance of the women remains. We will never know the emotional and physical pain they suffered in the hours or minutes after they were last seen alive. The recovery of the bodies of the missing women is crucial for the distraught families, who long for some kind of closure; it might also help prevent similar murders being committed in the future. Wherever the missing women now lie, there is evidence to link the killer or killers to each individual crime. Recovering the bodies is a must for the Gardaí, who know that some of the most heinous crimes to be committed in Ireland remain unexplained, undetected, and unsolved.

This book confronts the disturbing fact that a number of Ireland’s most evil murderers have not been caught. In each of the cases of young women believed to have been abducted and murdered in Leinster, suspects have been identified by the Gardaí. In three of the cases prime suspects have been identified, yet no charges have been brought. Without the bodies of the women being discovered, and without the exact crime scenes being found, the job of bringing a case before the courts is an almost impossible one. Yet each of these cases remains an active one for the detectives involved.

The first of the six women to disappear was an American woman, Annie McCarrick, who was twenty-six when she was abducted and murdered somewhere near the Wicklow Mountains in March 1993. Her disappearance devastated her parents, John and Nancy McCarrick, who are now divorced. Annie was an only child, and the fact that her body has never been found has caused great distress for her parents, who live in Long Island, New York. Growing up in an Irish-American community, Annie developed a passion for Ireland. When she was nineteen she arrived in Dublin for the first time and fell in love with Irish culture and the Irish people. She lived in Ireland for three years while she studied in Dublin and Maynooth. She developed serious relationships with two men during that time, and had a wide circle of friends. By Christmas 1992 she was back in New York and trying to decide what she wanted to do with her life. She was thinking of becoming a teacher, and she decided, once and for all, that she was going to go back to Ireland to see if she could settle down and make her life here. She arrived in Dublin in January 1993. Less than three months later she was abducted and murdered, after heading out for a walk in Enniskerry, Co. Wicklow. Her body has never been found, and her killer has never been caught.

The second woman to disappear in similar chilling circumstances was the 21-year-old Co. Kilkenny woman Jo Jo Dullard. Late at night on 9 November 1995 she was trying to hitch a lift home in Moone, Co. Kildare, when her killer stopped to offer her a lift. She had already hitched lifts from Naas to Kilcullen, and then from Kilcullen to Moone, but she was still more than forty miles from her home in Callan, Co. Kilkenny. Whoever stopped to offer her a lift at about 11:40 p.m. managed to conceal his murderous intentions. Jo Jo Dullard’s body has never been found, leading to one of her sisters, Mary Phelan, publicly criticising the failure of the Gardaí to conduct an extensive search within a twenty-mile radius of where she was last seen. Mary has also spearheaded a campaign for the establishment of a specialist Garda National Missing Persons Unit. Jo Jo’s disappearance has traumatised her three sisters and brother and her nieces and nephews. There are a number of suspects for this abduction and murder, but without Jo Jo’s body being found the killer or killers remain at large.

In August 1996 25-year-old Fiona Pender, who at the time was seven months pregnant, was lured out of her flat in Tullamore by someone she knew. At some unknown place in the midlands she was murdered, and her body was concealed. Her violent death was the second tragedy to hit the Pender family: her younger brother, Mark, was killed in a motorbike accident in June 1995; but the murder of Fiona Pender and her unborn baby was not the last tragedy to befall the Penders. In March 2000 Fiona’s father, Seán Pender, took his own life at the family home in Connolly Park, Tullamore.

The abduction and murder of Fiona Pender differ from those of Annie McCarrick and Jo Jo Dullard, in that the Gardaí believe Fiona knew her attacker. While Annie McCarrick and Jo Jo Dullard were both out walking or standing on the roadside when they were attacked by their killers, Fiona Pender was last seen at home in her flat in Church Street, Tullamore. There was no sign of a struggle or disturbance; the most credible hypothesis is that Fiona either left the flat in the company of her would-be killer or left to meet that person by arrangement. A prime suspect has been identified, but no charges have been brought.

The fourth woman to disappear was technically a child when she was abducted and murdered. Ciara Breen was a few weeks short of her eighteenth birthday when she sneaked out of her bedroom window in Dundalk in the early hours of the morning in February 1997. Whoever she was going to meet, and wherever she was going, she didn’t want her mother to know about it. The Gardaí believe she was going to meet an older man, and that this is the person who is responsible for her abduction and murder. A prime suspect has been identified and has been questioned at length, but he denies that he even knew Ciara. Her murder has devastated her mother, who has lost her only child in the most callous of circumstances. Whoever killed Ciara Breen has taken not only Bernadette Breen’s only child but her best friend, her whole life.

A year after Ciara Breen’s murder another teenager disappeared in sinister circumstances, this time at the other end of Leinster. Fiona Sinnott was nineteen and the proud mother of eleven-month-old Emma Rose when she vanished from her home in Broadway, Co. Wexford, in February 1998. She is the only one of the six missing women who has left behind a child. A number of people have been questioned about her suspected abduction, but no charges have been brought. A major operation leading to the draining of a lake in the locality also led nowhere. A prime suspect has been identified, but, as in the other cases, without a crime scene, or a witness, or a body, a prosecution is unlikely.

The sixth woman to vanish in the Leinster area within the five years between 1993 and 1998 disappeared in circumstances that have instilled fear throughout the country. In deference to a specific request from this woman’s family, she is not referred to by name in this book. She was just eighteen when, on a Tuesday afternoon in July 1998, she vanished from the front gate of her home at Roseberry, near Droichead Nua, Co. Kildare. She was within yards of her front door, having walked home along the side of the road from Droichead Nua, when something happened that prevented her making it into the safety of her home. Unlike the previous five missing women cases, this time the Garda response was immediate, with detectives combing the area for clues within hours of the disappearance. In the five other cases the alarm was not raised for hours or even days, and for more than a week in the case of Fiona Sinnott.

Despite an intensive search of bogland and forest in Cos. Kildare and Wicklow, and raids on the homes of a number of criminals, nothing was found to show exactly what had happened to the young woman, who came from a loving family and was looking forward to studying to become a teacher. Whatever happened that afternoon in 1998, a heartbreaking mystery remains for the young woman’s family. This case was hampered for a number of months when a Co. Fermanagh man made a number of hoax phone calls claiming he had information about the disappearance. In a separate aspect of the case, it was not until almost two years later that it emerged that one of the country’s most dangerous men, who is now serving a fifteen-year prison sentence for a random attack on another woman, was working in the area at the time. This man has been questioned in prison by detectives but has denied any knowledge of any of the missing women. Detectives fear that whoever is responsible for the disappearance of other missing women—particularly of Annie McCarrick and Jo Jo Dullard— may be responsible for the Droichead Nua case too.

Indeed it is such speculation that led in September 1998 to the establishment of a special Garda initiative—Operation Trace—to explore the possibility that the cases of any of the six missing women might be linked. A six-member team analysed the movements of more than seven thousand convicted or suspected sex offenders who had lived or travelled in Ireland since the early 1980s. Using a computer program that they nicknamed OVID (for Offenders, Victims and Incidents Data-base), they compiled and analysed information on all known offenders, all known victims, and all violent incidents known to have occurred in the previous two decades. It was a massive task, with every scrap of information being logged in the hope that a previously unseen link might be established between any of the cases. From the Operation Trace headquarters at Naas, Co. Kildare, detectives would co-ordinate the arrests of nine men and women in connection with the investigations, but no charges were brought.

Despite the massive amount of information collected, no clear links could be established between any of the missing women. Members of the Operation Trace team were always conscious that they were only analysing information relating to known sex offenders and that there were many other offenders who had not yet been caught and who might be responsible for one or more of the disappearances. Indeed in the years since Operation Trace was set up a number of violent men who had never before come to the attention of the Gardaí have been caught for some of the most shocking crimes Ireland has known. These offenders are usually married men with children, who somehow have been able to keep their evil and violent tendencies hidden from even their closest family members. Detectives remain convinced that more of these men of seemingly unblemished character will be caught in the future.

There are so many questions and so few concrete answers. Are the men who killed some of Ireland’s missing women family men? Do their parents or wives or children suspect them? Are they men with no previous convictions, having never come to the attention of the Gardaí? Are they local people who know the area around the site of each disappearance? Or are they living a vagrant life, travelling around Ireland or beyond, evading detection? Have some of them already taken their secret to their grave? Or are they in prison serving sentences for other crimes, and remaining for ever silent about their evil deeds?

Detectives investigating many unsolved missing and murder cases will often state publicly that somebody knows something that could help solve the crime. A perfect example of the truth of this belief was seen at the Central Criminal Court in October 2002 when John Crerar, a former army sergeant and father of five from Co. Kildare with no previous convictions, was convicted of the murder of 23-year-old Phyllis Murphy, who was raped and murdered in December 1979. For twenty-three years John Crerar evaded capture for one of Ireland’s oldest unsolved crimes, but he was finally caught after two crucial developments. The first came when advances in forensic science finally identified semen taken from Phyllis Murphy’s body as being Crerar’s. The second was that one man’s conscience finally got the better of him.

From December 1979 until July 1999 a former workmate of John Crerar’s, Paddy Bolger, gave Crerar an alibi for the night Phyllis Murphy was abducted and murdered. He said Crerar had been working alongside him as a security guard at the Black and Decker plant in Kildare throughout the night of 22 December 1979. It was only when detectives put it to Bolger in July 1999 that they had scientific evidence to suggest that Crerar was the murderer that Paddy Bolger suddenly admitted that he was lying, and had been lying for twenty years. Lies like these have protected other murderers, and may continue to protect some of Ireland’s most evil killers. Paddy Bolger did not think his colleague could have been the vicious killer who took the life of Phyllis Murphy; by the time his suspicions began to form, the lie was already established, and for almost twenty years he kept his mouth shut.

The successful prosecution of John Crerar is vital in considering the difficulties faced by detectives investigating the murders of missing women in Leinster. For twenty-seven days Phyllis Murphy’s naked body lay undiscovered in a wooded area near the Wicklow Gap. Despite the length of time it took to find her remains, the forces of nature conspired eventually to put her killer behind bars. During the four weeks that her body lay hidden by ferns in a dense forested area, freezing temperatures preserved her body and in turn the valuable evidence that twenty-three years later would lead to John Crerar being jailed for the murder. Within hours of the body being discovered a sheet of snow lay across the eastern part of Ireland. If the body had still been lying in the forest, the blanket of snow would most probably have concealed it from view. As it was, the recovery of Phyllis Murphy’s body was a source of comfort to her grieving family, who already knew in their hearts that something terrible had happened to her.

From the point of view of the Garda investigation, the recovery of Phyllis Murphy’s body was crucial. In 1979, because of the small amount of the sample recovered from the body, the type of scientific analysis available could not establish the DNA profile of the killer to be matched with any of the many local men who volunteered a blood sample. In March 1980 John Crerar volunteered a blood sample at a Garda station. However, it would be another nineteen years before advances in DNA technology enabled forensic scientists to match his blood with the swabs taken from Phyllis Murphy’s body. It was thanks to the foresight of a number of gardaí, including Christy Sheridan (now retired), who stored the swabs in a Garda safe ‘just in case,’ that a 23-year murder mystery was eventually solved.

The investigation into the murder of Phyllis Murphy is a perfect example of how crucial it is to have a body or a crime scene when investigating a murder. For the four weeks before the body was found in January 1980 Phyllis Murphy was classified as a missing person. From the circumstances of her disappearance while she was travelling home from Droichead Nua to Kildare for Christmas it was clear that something terrible had happened. Yet for those four weeks she was in the same category that Annie McCarrick would be fourteen years later, and later Jo Jo Dullard and the other missing women. It was only when her body was found that any real progress could be made in catching Phyllis Murphy’s killer.

Another of Ireland’s most violent men was not known to Gardaí when Operation Trace was set up. Larry Murphy, a 36-year-old father of two from Baltinglass, Co. Wicklow, is now serving a fifteen-year prison sentence for one of the most horrific crimes to be committed in Ireland. Whether or not he has any relevant information relating to any missing women, the circumstances of his shocking crime in February 2000 provide solid evidence that cold and calculating would-be killers live among us.

Just before midnight on 11 February 2000, Ken Jones and Trevor Moody were hunting in a secluded forest area of Kilranelagh in west Co. Wicklow. It was a quiet night, and both men thought there was no-one else for miles. Suddenly they heard a piercing scream, followed by the sound of a car revving up. Almost as quickly, the two hunters saw a car approaching them. As it sped past, both men got a look at the driver of the car—and they both recognised him. It was Larry Murphy from Woodside, a small community a few miles away in Baltinglass. Just then the two men saw the naked woman. She was stumbling towards them, her face bloodied. As they spotted her, she too saw them. Still trying to comprehend what was going on, the two men approached the woman and—not knowing what else to say—asked her if she was all right. She recoiled in terror: in her terrified state she thought they were with her abductor, who over the previous three hours had severely beaten, repeatedly raped and then tried to kill her.

The woman screamed repeatedly, her cries echoing in the secluded forest. Having put down their guns, the two men managed to convince her that they were not going to harm her. They covered her with one of their jackets, brought her to their car, and set off for the Garda station in Baltinglass, where they were met by three gardaí. They told them the identity of the man who fled the forest. The woman told them her name and—despite the agony of a fractured nose and the physical injuries resulting from a multiple rape—began telling a harrowing story of what she had endured. It began to dawn on the gardaí that the two hunters had just saved the woman’s life. Detectives investigating the abductions and suspected murders of a number of women in Leinster were alerted.

Thirteen months later, on 11 May 2001, Larry Murphy was jailed for fifteen years after admitting four charges of rape and one charge each of kidnapping and attempted murder. A packed courtroom heard the shocking details of how he had attacked the 28-year-old woman in a secluded car park in Carlow shortly after she left the nearby business premises she ran. He punched her in the face, fracturing her nose, and forced her to remove her bra, which he used to tie her hands behind her back. He used a headband of a GAA team to gag her mouth and then put her in the boot of his car. He drove nine miles to Beaconstown, near Athy, Co. Kildare, where he raped her. He then forced her back into the boot and drove fourteen miles to Kilranelagh, Co. Wicklow, where he repeatedly raped her again.

It was in Kilranelagh that, while being forced back into the boot of the car, the woman managed to free her hands and tried to spray Murphy in the face with an aerosol she had found in the boot. But the spray didn’t work, and then events took an even more sinister turn. Murphy produced a black plastic bag and put it over the woman’s head and pulled it tightly around her neck. It was at this point that Ken Jones and Trevor Moody arrived on the scene. Seeing the two men approaching, Murphy fled the scene, leaving his victim lying on the ground. He drove to his home a few miles away and, having drunk a large amount of whiskey, looked in on his two children, who were fast asleep, and then got into bed beside his wife. He was arrested the next day.

On the day on which he pleaded guilty to rape and attempted murder, Murphy fainted in the Central Criminal Court. As barristers stepped over the unconscious would-be murderer, it was left to two prison officers to lift him from the carpeted floor of the Central Criminal Court.

It is a sobering fact that before Larry Murphy abducted and attempted to murder his victim in February 2000 he had never come to the attention of the Gardaí. To all intents and purposes the self-employed carpenter was a dedicated family man and a loving husband. His main passion was hunting, through which he became familiar with the forested land of west Wicklow. Detectives investigating the disappearance of missing women in the Leinster area over the previous decade had never come across Larry Murphy before his sinister attack on the Carlow woman. It gave their investigation a fresh impetus, and they began looking into the background of this would-be killer. They were conscious that Murphy lived only five miles from where Jo Jo Dullard was abducted and murdered, and it was also established that he was working in Droichead Nua in July 1998, when the teenage girl disappeared. His car was searched for any trace of the missing women; but despite their initial optimism, the Gardaí could find no concrete evidence that Murphy had abducted any women before February 2000. If he had succeeded in killing his victim in February 2000, it is not known what he planned to do with her body. He has never given any explanation or motive for his attack on the woman, whom he did not know. His wife and two children have since left Co. Wicklow, and only his close family ever visit him in the high-security Arbour Hill Prison in Dublin.

The depraved nature of the crime for which Larry Murphy was jailed gives us an insight into the mind of a potential killer who chooses his victims at random. When Murphy approached his victim at the car park in Carlow he had immediately disarmed her by punching her in the face, fracturing her nose. He then used the woman’s own clothing to tie her up. He subjected her to a horrific and prolonged sexual attack, then used a plastic bag to try to suffocate her. When he set out to abduct, rape and kill, he was confident and calculating. If he had succeeded in murdering his victim and her body was never discovered, or not discovered until years later, we would never have known of the horrific ordeal she had suffered.

It is believed that three of the six missing women whose cases formed part of Operation Trace were attacked by people who lived in the general locality of each crime. These three cases, in which the victim was last seen alive at her home, are not believed to be linked to those of any of the other missing women. The first of these cases is that of Fiona Pender, last seen alive at her flat in Tullamore in August 1996; Ciara Breen was last seen alive in her home at Bachelor’s Walk, Dundalk, in February 1997; and Fiona Sinnott was last seen alive at her home at Broadway, Co. Wexford, in February 1998. The investigations into each of these disappearances have resulted in suspects being identified. A man from the midlands with a previous history of violence has been questioned about the murder of Fiona Pender and her unborn baby. A Dundalk man who gardaí believe was in a relationship with Ciara Breen has been arrested and questioned about her murder, but no charges have so far been brought. And in Co. Wexford a man with a history of violence against women has been earmarked as a suspect in the disappearance of Fiona Sinnott.

The Gardaí have been frustrated at the rate of progress in these three cases, in which prime suspects have been identified but without enough evidence to bring them to court. The difference between these cases and the solving of the Phyllis Murphy murder is stark. It was only with the discovery of Phyllis Murphy’s body that the crime was solved. On the one hand, detectives believe this applies also to the cases of these three missing women, barring the unlikely event of a confession, or any of the killers striking again. But in more recent times there is privately an increasing air of optimism among many detectives that charges may still be brought in the absence of a body. Indeed, though it is very rare, there are a number of examples of prosecutions for murder without the victim’s body being found. In November 1977 a 24-year-old Co. Armagh man, Liam Townson, was jailed for life by the Special Criminal Court after being convicted of the murder of Captain Robert Nairac of the SAS, whose body has never been found. Soon after Nairac’s disappearance, in May 1977, gardaí discovered the scene where he had been shot dead, near Ravensdale, Co. Louth, and Townson was convicted largely on his own confession. The state successfully argued in court that circumstantial evidence, and an admission from the accused, could be accepted as evidence of death and of murder. During the investigation gardaí had discovered bloodstains and trampled grass near a bridge at Ravensdale, where it is believed Nairac was shot dead. The IRA claimed responsibility for the killing, and republican sources have since suggested that the body was disposed of in a manner in which it would never be found, by putting it through a cutting machine. Liam Townson served thirteen years in Port Laoise Prison before being released under licence in 1990. His conviction is one example of a confession made while under arrest being crucial in securing a murder conviction in the absence of a body. While a confession is indeed an important plank of such a prosecution case, it is not always essential in bringing charges against suspects.

A more recent example also involved a cross-border investigation. Gerard McGinley was murdered at his home at Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh, in August 2000 by his wife, Julie McGinley, and her lover, Michael Monaghan, who then disposed of the body across the border in Co. Leitrim. Police in the North, investigating what was at first a missing person case, soon concentrated on McGinley’s home as a possible crime scene. Through the use of chemicals they established that a bedroom had been redecorated to cover up evidence of the murder. Julie McGinley and Michael Monaghan were charged with murder before Gerard McGinley’s body was found. It was not until June 2001, ten months after his violent death, that it was discovered by a girl walking in a wood at Ballinamore, Co. Leitrim. Both Julie McGinley and Michael Monaghan are now serving life sentences for murder.

In May 2002 a man from Co. Laois was charged with the murder of a fifteen-year-old Co. Tyrone schoolgirl, Arlene Arkinson, whose body has never been found. This followed almost eight years of investigative work in a number of countries. The body is believed to be buried in the Republic, most probably in Co. Donegal. Arlene was last seen alive on 14 August 1994, having travelled across the border from her home in Castlederg, Co. Tyrone, to a disco in the Co. Donegal seaside resort of Bundoran. She never returned home. Gardaí and Northern police believe her body may lie in the Pettigo area of south-east Co. Donegal, south of Lough Derg and close to the border. Despite a number of extensive searches, no trace has been found. The evidence to be brought in the prosecution case against the man does not contain details of a crime scene.

While Arlene Arkinson is one of the youngest missing people in Ireland, there are two cases of younger long-term missing children who are not the victims of parental abduction. The disappearance of seven-year-old Mary Boyle in March 1977 and the abduction of thirteen-year-old Philip Cairns in October 1986 have baffled the detectives who have investigated them for decades, as well as causing untold anguish to the parents and the brothers and sisters of the missing children.

Mary Boyle was last seen walking near her grandparents’ home near Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal, on a bright afternoon in March 1977. For more than a quarter of a century her disappearance has devastated her parents, Ann and Charlie Boyle, her twin sister, Ann, and her older brother, Patrick. There is still no firm evidence of an abduction, yet numerous searches of lakes and surrounding bogland have failed to yield any results. Whether it was through an accident or through a violent act, what happened to Mary Boyle, and where she lies, remain a terrible mystery.

A more sinister cloud hangs over the case of the second of Ireland’s long-term missing children, Philip Cairns, who was just thirteen when someone snatched him from the roadside as he walked to school in Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin, in October 1986. He was walking along a busy road at lunchtime when he vanished, after an unknown abductor swooped in a matter of seconds. A week after his disappearance, his schoolbag was left in a laneway close to his home, left there either by the abductor or by someone who found it after the crime and therefore has crucial information that could help the Gardaí solve this tragic case. Philip’s parents, Alice and Philip Cairns, and his four sisters and brother accept the disturbing fact that Philip was abducted from the roadside. But that is the only definite thing about this child abduction. Whatever happened to Philip, wherever he was taken and whatever emotional or physical pain he later suffered, are a mystery known only to his abductor.

While it seems likely that Philip Cairns was murdered by his abductor, in the absence of a crime scene or the discovery of his body he is still officially missing, and indeed his parents still hold out hope that such a terrible fate did not befall their son.

Every parent’s worst nightmare has been visited on the Boyle and Cairns families, whose lives have been turned upside down. As well as dealing with Ireland’s missing women who are believed to have been murdered, this book also examines the cases of these two missing children—a girl last seen eating a packet of sweets near her grandparents’ house in Co. Donegal, and a boy violently abducted as he walked to school along a busy Co. Dublin road.

It has long been feared by many gardaí that one or more people might be travelling to Ireland to commit violent crimes, such as abductions and murders, and then leaving the jurisdiction. Experienced gardaí are mindful of the two convicted English serial killers who brought terror to Ireland in 1976, committing two heinous murders before they were caught in Co. Galway. John Shaw and Geoffrey Evans were two long-term criminals who started their criminal life by committing small-time robberies but later made an evil pact to rape and murder one woman every week. This depraved union saw the pair abduct and murder their first victim near Brittas Bay, Co. Wicklow, in August 1976. Elizabeth Plunkett was a 23-year-old Dublin woman whom they abducted from the roadside and then raped and strangled in a wooded area nearby. They then tied a lawnmower to her body and rowed out to sea, where they threw her weighted body overboard. It would be weeks before her body was recovered from the sea. Shaw and Evans went on to commit a spate of robberies over the next few weeks, as gardaí in Co. Wicklow investigated the case of the missing Elizabeth Plunkett. In September 1976 they committed their second rape and murder when they abducted 23-year-old Mary Duffy from the roadside at Castlebar, Co. Mayo. She was tied up and driven to Ballynahinch, Co. Galway, where the horrific assault continued. She was then suffocated, and the two murderers took her body to Lough Inagh, where they stole a boat, rowed out onto the lake, and threw the body overboard, weighted down with a large block.

Shaw and Evans were captured at Barna, Co. Galway, before they could kill a third woman. They are now Ireland’s longest-serving prisoners. Any temporary release granted to John Shaw or Geoffrey Evans will evoke strong protest whenever such a prospect appears.

In more recent times Ireland was shocked by the chilling actions of Michael Bambrick, who killed his wife, Patricia McGauley, at their home in Dublin in September 1991 and then, in July 1992, killed another woman, Mary Cummins, also at his home. Both women were classified as missing from the time of their disappearance until the truth caught up with Bambrick when his young daughter bravely began to tell gardaí how her daddy had killed her two pets, and other terrible things he was doing. They soon established a link between Bambrick and Mary Cummins, whom he had met only on the day he killed her. Soon after his arrest he claimed he had killed both women during bondage sex sessions that had gone wrong. He dismembered their bodies and disposed of them in an old drain close to Balgaddy Dump in west Co. Dublin. It was not until May 1994, when he was finally caught and admitted killing the two women, that their remains were found. In 1996 Bambrick was jailed for eighteen years on two charges of manslaughter; he is now in Arbour Hill Prison, Dublin. The Gardaí have him earmarked as a suspect for unsolved crimes in the late 1980s and early 90s.

The term ‘serial killer’ can often be bandied about, causing unnecessary fear in a community. This book examines the evidence supporting the belief that at least one serial killer is responsible for one or more of the missing persons cases it describes. The most likely cases are those of Annie McCarrick, Jo Jo Dullard, and the missing Droichead Nua woman. But these are not the only cases where random killers may have struck. Coupled with these three cases where women were apparently snatched from the roadside there have been a number of chilling murders of women where bodies have eventually been found but no killer has yet been caught.

Antoinette Smith was last seen alive in Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin, on 12 July 1987. A 27-year-old mother of two, she had just returned from a David Bowie concert in Slane, Co. Meath. She got into a taxi with two men in Westmorland Street, Dublin, and they travelled to Rathfarnham. Those two men have never come forward. Antoinette Smith’s body was found nearly nine months later on 3 April 1988 at the Feather Bed, near Glencree in the Dublin Mountains. She had been strangled, and a bag had been placed over her head. Her body had then been buried in a turf bank that later subsided, leading to its discovery. From the evidence gathered so far it is the firm belief of a number of gardaí that two men were involved in the killing. A number of men were questioned as part of the investigation, but no charges were brought. The murder caused terrible anguish for Antoinette’s estranged husband and her two children, who are now adults. The abduction and murder have also weighed heavily on the minds of gardaí, who, under the law, could not compel people to give a blood sample as part of the investigation.

Four years after the murder of Antoinette Smith, another mother of two was strangled and her body was also buried in the Dublin Mountains. Patricia O’Doherty, a thirty-year-old prison officer, was last seen alive on 23 December 1991. That day she had been making preparations for Christmas, travelling to the shopping centre at the Square, Tallaght, to buy Santa hats for her two children. At some point later that night she left her home at Allenton Lawns, Tallaght, and was not seen again. When he did not see her the next day—Christmas Eve—her husband, Paddy Doherty, assumed she had gone to work at Mountjoy Prison. It was not until Christmas Day that she was reported missing. The case remained that of a missing person until the following June, when a man out cutting turf near the Lemass Cross at Killakee in the Dublin Mountains made the terrible discovery. Patricia Doherty’s body was found in a bog drain within a mile of where Antoinette Smith’s body had been hidden in July 1987; the key to her front door was found close by. No-one has ever been arrested in connection with the murder of Patricia Doherty.

There is a third recent case of a missing woman who was abducted and murdered and whose killer remains at large. In June 1994 a man was visiting his son who was cutting turf at Pim’s Lane near Portarlington, Co. Laois, when in a bog drain he discovered the body of 34-year-old Marie Kilmartin, who had been missing from her home in Port Laoise since the previous December. Whoever murdered her had placed a concrete block over her chest to submerge her body in the water. As with the previous discovery of the bodies of Antoinette Smith and Patricia Doherty, the scene of the discovery of Marie Kilmartin’s body was one that severely affected the most hardened detectives. She was still wearing the heavy coat and boots she was last seen wearing as she entered her house at the Stradbally Road in Port Laoise on 16 December 1993. Some time shortly after she was last seen she was lured out of her house by a phone call made to her home from a nearby call box. She was strangled and her body was later left at the bog near Portarlington. Two men from Co. Laois were arrested within days of the discovery of the body; both were released without charge. There is a prime suspect for the horrific murder of Marie Kilmartin, who remains at large.

Not only are there three unsolved murders where missing women are now officially classed as murdered but there are other cases of women who are still missing—outside the six Operation Trace cases—whose families now fear they also have been murdered. One such case is that of Eva Brennan, who was thirty-nine when she was last seen storming out of her parents’ house in Terenure, Dublin, in July 1993 after a trivial dispute about what they were going to have for Sunday lunch. Her family assumed she had gone home to her own apartment in nearby Rathgar. It is now believed that she may indeed have made it home to her apartment but decided to go back out, perhaps for a walk. Her handbag and keys have never been found. She had previously had bouts of depression, and one line of inquiry remains that she may have chosen to go away somewhere by herself. However, Eva Brennan’s case has privately been looked at by detectives investigating the case of other missing women. She disappeared less than four months after the abduction and murder of Annie McCarrick, who was also last seen in south Co. Dublin; she was also last seen just a few miles from where Antoinette Smith was last seen alive six years before. Eva Brennan’s family fear that she was abducted while walking along the roadside and now lies buried in the Dublin Mountains.

The discovery of the bodies of Antoinette Smith, Patricia Doherty and Marie Kilmartin reclassified their cases from that of missing women to murdered women. While the official status of the cases that formed part of Operation Trace is that of missing women, the devastated families of four of those women accept that their loved ones have been murdered. And, including the fears of Eva Brennan’s family that she was also the victim of a violent attack, there exists the distinct possibility that the murderers of at least eight women in Leinster have not been caught. There is also the continuing search for the person who abducted Philip Cairns. Some of the most evil people in Ireland remain at large.

The searches for the missing people who are believed to have been the victims of violent crime have been exhaustive. Detectives have followed thousands of lines of inquiry, dug up acres of land, employed infra-red machines to detect soil movements, used sniffer dogs, and questioned a number of suspects. Yet, despite prime suspects being identified in many of the cases, no charges have been brought, and the bodies of many of Ireland’s murder victims have not been found. The failure to find the remains of those believed murdered is a cause of constant anguish to their families and of constant frustration to detectives.

With the co-operation of the families concerned, this book examines the cases of five of the missing women that formed the basis of Operation Trace. It also examines the two oldest cases of

Ireland’s missing children who are not the victims of parental abduction. In being so selective I am conscious that the great majority of missing persons are not the victims of crime, though the anguish felt by their families is no less acute. To this end I also look at the developments in honouring the memory of all missing people, and at the sterling work of some of the families of missing people to keep their loved ones on the media and political agenda. I consider what more can be done from an investigative and humanitarian point of view by the Gardaí and the state, not only to find Ireland’s missing but to honour their memory.

More than 1,800 people are reported missing in Ireland every year—the equivalent of five people being reported missing every day. But only a small number, between five and fifteen, remain unaccounted for at the end of each year. Of this number there are some people who will never come home, and whose bodies may never be found, people who have most probably met a violent death and have disappeared without a trace.