The Cold Case Files (28 page)

In every county in Ireland there are long-term unsolved murders. Co. Donegal, for example, has a number of unsolved killings. On 25 May 1991, Sinn Féin councillor Eddie
Fullerton was shot dead by the
UFF
at his home in Buncrana. The killers had crossed the border late at night and hijacked a car near Mr Fullerton’s home, before using
a sledgehammer to break open his front door and shooting him dead. The killers then drove to Co. Derry and set fire to their hijacked vehicle. A forensic examination later linked the murder weapon
to other killings in Northern Ireland. In 2009 two men were questioned in the North about the killing. The Fullerton family and Sinn Féin have consistently called for a cross-jurisdictional
investigation to establish the truth surrounding the murder.

Co. Donegal has also witnessed other murders linked to the Troubles. In March 1996 John Fennell from Belfast was beaten to death at a caravan park in Bundoran. It’s believed he was killed
as part of an
INLA
feud. A man was arrested and questioned about the killing within hours of the crime, but he was released without charge and to this day the murder remains
unsolved.

Just over a decade later, the north of the county was the scene of another Troubles-related murder when former Sinn Féin official Denis Donaldson was shot dead at a remote cottage at
Doochary near Glenties. Mr Donaldson had been Sinn Féin’s head of administration in the power-sharing executive at Stormont, but in December 2005 he appeared at a press conference in
Dublin to state that he had been a Special Branch agent for more than two decades. His killer or killers fired a shotgun to gain entry to his cottage, injuring their victim in the process. Denis
Donaldson was then killed by shotgun blasts fired inside the cottage. The
IRA
immediately denied it was involved and Sinn Féin condemned the killing. One line of
enquiry is that the 56-year-old was killed by another paramilitary group or a number of individuals with a personal animosity based on Denis Donaldson’s admission that he had been secretly
working for police.

The county has also witnessed non-Troubles-related unsolved murders. In January 2005 Shaun Duffy was murdered at his home just outside Dungloe in the west of the county. Mr Duffy, who worked as
an undertaker and horse dealer and part-time doorman, was found lying face-down on a sofa in his living room. He had been shot in the arm with a crossbow, stabbed four times and had suffered nine
blows with a blunt object. Deputy State Pathologist Dr Michael Curtis came to the view that the most likely cause of Mr Duffy’s death were the stab wounds he had suffered to his chest, neck
and abdomen. The shocking brutality of the crime stunned this normally peaceful part of the country. It seemed that robbery might have been a motive, and it was quite possible that more than one
person was involved. Gardaí mounted a major criminal investigation with up to 50 detectives working on the case. Around 800 statements were taken in this rural area. There was a hope that
the killer might be caught quickly, but that did not happen and the crime remains unsolved.

County Donegal is also home to one of the oldest missing persons cases, which is still being actively investigated. Mary Boyle was six years old when she vanished at Cashelard, near Ballyshannon
in the south of the county in March 1977. Mary was last seen at 3.30 p.m. on Friday 18 March. She was wearing a lilac-coloured hand-knitted cardigan, and her brown jeans were tucked into her
wellington boots. There are only two possible explanations for Mary’s disappearance. Did a desolate patch of marshy ground swallow up the little girl? Or is there a sinister explanation? Was
she abducted from the quiet Donegal countryside that afternoon? Is there someone in this part of the country or beyond who still holds the secret to Mary’s disappearance?

Mary Boyle is one of two children who are long-term missing in the Republic of Ireland. Philip Cairns was 13 years old when he vanished while walking back to school in south
Dublin on 23 October 1986. It was just after lunchtime and Philip was making his way back to Coláiste Éanna in Rathfarnham. Philip left his home at Ballyroan Road to make the
fifteen-minute journey back to school, but somewhere along the journey he was abducted. One week later Philip’s schoolbag was found by two teenage girls at a dark curving laneway a few
hundred yards from Philip’s home. The canvas bag was found at a shortcut between Anne Devlin Road and Anne Devlin Drive.

The discovery of Philip’s schoolbag is unique in a missing person enquiry, in that a trace of a missing person was found one week after his disappearance. There are only two real
possibilities—either the schoolbag was left in the laneway by Philip’s abductor, or it was left by an innocent person, perhaps someone who found the bag elsewhere and panicked when they
realised it was the schoolbag of missing Philip Cairns. The bag has been safely maintained by Gardaí in the hope that advances in forensic science may unlock the identity of people who
handled the bag.

The disappearance of Philip Cairns is still actively investigated by detectives at Rathfarnham Garda station. In recent years a number of excavations were undertaken on foot of new information
received by Gardaí, but no trace of Philip has been found in the more than a quarter century since he vanished.

North of the border, the Police Service of Northern Ireland is still investigating the disappearance in 1974 of two schoolboys in Belfast. Thomas Spence was just 11 years old, his friend John
Rodgers was 13. They were both due to get a bus from the Falls Road to their special needs school on the morning of Tuesday 26 November 1974. Both boys left their houses to walk the short journey
to the bus-stop as normal. One woman saw Thomas Spence at the bus-stop waiting as normal. But when the bus pulled up shortly after 9 a.m. neither boy was at the stop. It was broad daylight on one
of the busiest roads in west Belfast and two young boys had vanished without trace.

The disappearance of Thomas and John has been the subject of cold-case reviews in recent decades but no trace of either boy has been found. There is a hope that people from the nationalist
community who might not have given information to the
RUC
at the time of the disappearances might now feel confident to speak to the
PSNI
, given the
cross-party support for the new police service.

The
PSNI
is also tasked with searching for missing Tyrone teenager Arlene Arkinson, who it is feared was murdered in August 1994 and her body hidden. Arlene was just
fifteen years old when she vanished after a night out. Down the years a number of extensive searches have been undertaken both in Co. Tyrone and Co. Donegal but no trace of Arlene was found. In
late August 2011 the
PSNI
began a series of fresh searches in the Co. Tyrone area using the most up-to-date specialist equipment and sniffer dogs. Up to forty areas were to
be searched.

Northern Ireland has more than 3,200 unsolved murders which are directly attributable to the Troubles. The Historical Inquiries Team is currently reviewing all of those cases. The disappearance
of Thomas Spence and John Rodgers in 1974 and the disappearance of Arlene in 1994 have absolutely nothing to do with the Troubles. Another very troubling case which is non-Troubles-related is the
murder of 18-year-old German backpacker Inga-Maria Hauser, who had hardly set foot on the island of Ireland when she was murdered and her body hidden at Ballypatrick Forest in Co. Antrim in April
1988 (see Chapter 3). The ongoing pursuit of her killer by the
PSNI
is heartening for her family.

Official figures for unsolved murders can never be the absolute precise number. There are dozens of missing persons cases, for example, which are officially classified as
‘missing persons’, but which may well be cases of murder where a victim’s body has been hidden by the killer or killers. In my research on missing persons I have come across up to
thirty such cases in Ireland. These cases extend from those people abducted, shot dead and secretly buried by the
IRA
in the 1970s and early 80s, to women who have been
killed and secretly buried by either serial killers, or by someone they knew. Organised criminal gangs have also increased their practice of hiding the bodies of some of the people they kill.
It’s not a totally new phenomenon for such gangs to go to these lengths. One Dublin man is missing since the late 1980s and it is now feared he was shot dead and buried somewhere in north Co.
Dublin. Gardaí only became aware of the case in 2009 when a prominent criminal walked into Store Street Garda station and said he wished to confess to his role in the murder and secret
burial. He brought detectives to a location at Oldtown in the north of the county and pointed out a location where he said the body had been hidden. The man who contacted Gardaí took his own
life a short time later. An extensive excavation was conducted at the field near an old graveyard where the man said the body had been buried, but no trace of the missing man was found.

The abduction and suspected murder of Brooke Pickard (see Chapter 4) is one of a number of unsolved crimes to occur in the 1990s where the victim is still missing. In March 2010 a jury at the
Dublin County Coroners Court reached a verdict that a man who vanished on 28 February 1996 had been unlawfully killed. William ‘Jock’ Corbally was driven from Chapelizod to a field in
Baldonnel in west Dublin where he was ambushed by a gang and beaten with a pickaxe handle, a lead pipe and a baseball bat. Jock had most likely been taken from Baldonnel to a location near Straffan
in Co. Kildare where his body was then hidden. Despite extensive searches in a number of locations in Kildare and Dublin no trace of Jock has ever been found. The car which is believed to have been
used to transport Jock’s body was later found burned out at Knocksedan in north Co. Dublin.

In January 1999, 17-year-old father-of-one Patrick Lawlor vanished from Dublin’s Ballyfermot. His loved ones knew immediately that his disappearance was out of character, and Garda
investigations established that he had last been seen on 6 January. Detectives believed that the answer to Patrick’s disappearance was local and over the following years they conducted many
searches and made many appeals for information. It was three years after Patrick vanished that a young man who was in custody about another matter suddenly broke down and said he had witnessed the
killing of Patrick Lawlor. The relentless pressure of poster campaigns, public appeals, and Garda enquiries had finally yielded a result.

The young man described seeing Patrick being hit with a stone and falling down. He said Patrick had then been secretly buried at a narrow strip of land along the Grand Canal. It had taken a
number of hours for two people to dig the hole using a plank of wood and after putting Patrick’s body into the hole and filling it in again, the two had washed their hands and feet in the
nearby canal water.

A short time after telling Gardaí this story, the young man was brought by Detective Inspector Pádraig Kennedy, Sergeant Ray Murphy and Garda Declan Walsh to the scene. It was late
at night and the Gardaí shone their torches at a point which the man nominated between the seventh and eighth locks of the canal. Detective Inspector Kennedy gave the witness a ruler and
asked him to put it into the ground where Patrick’s body lay, and sure enough that was exactly where the teenager’s body was recovered the next day.

No-one was ever brought to justice for the actual killing of Patrick Lawlor. The man who helped recover Patrick’s body was later given a five-year sentence for acting to impede the arrest
of a person responsible for the manslaughter of Patrick Lawlor. Patrick is now laid to rest in Palmerstown Cemetery.

In November 1999 34-year-old Martin Nolan from Tramore vanished from Co. Waterford. Serious concern was raised for his safety when blood was discovered at Ballygarron Wood near Waterford
Regional Airport soon after his disappearance. Eight months later his body was found in the Comeragh Mountains at Clondonnell close to the Waterford-Tipperary border. Local Gardaí have
continued to vigorously investigate this murder.

The practice by some violent criminals of hiding the bodies of their victims was to continue in the following decade. Just like the cases in the 1990s, no-one was ever brought to justice for the
killing of father-of-one Neil Hanlon, who vanished from Crumlin on 29 September 2001 and whose body was found buried in a local field on 9 February of the following year. For four months Neil was
classified as a missing person and for all that time his body lay hidden just a few minutes’ walk from his home. Following extensive investigations detectives focused their attention on a
section of land at the back of St Kevin’s
VEC
. Detective Inspector Tom Mulligan organised search parties to carry out a minute examination of the area close to a
boundary wall which consisted of grass and weeds. Gardaí Michael Houlihan and William Ryan moved a discarded fridge and found recently dug soil. Under the direction of Sergeant John Walsh
they slowly began to unearth the site and they soon found Neil’s body.

Gardaí carried out a full murder enquiry and built up a wealth of information about the movement of individuals suspected of having knowledge of what had happened to Neil. The 22-year-old
was subjected to a ferocious attack and died after being stabbed. When his body was found buried in the field he was still wearing three distinctive rings, including a gold ring with the word
‘Dad’. Neil had previously battled drug addiction and had spent time in the Cuan Mhuire centre in Athy, which was set up by Sr Concilio to assist people battling alcohol and drug
dependencies. While at the centre Neil gave an interview to
RTÉ
’s
Would You Believe
programme and in light of what later happened to this kind-hearted,
softly spoken young man, the footage is particularly poignant. “When I get up in the morning I get down on my hands and knees and ask for help from God,” he told the interviewer.
“That’s my higher power today.” The recovery of Neil’s body allowed his family to lay him to rest at Mount Jerome Cemetery in Harold’s Cross, but the failure to catch
his killers has left both his family and Gardaí very frustrated.