April 13 2020
Lengthy article. rbbm
'Range of suspects are being watched' as new cold case review raises families' hopes
''Gardai investigating the disappearance of six women in the 1990s are monitoring the movements and habits of a range of suspects in some cold-case reviews.
The names of Annie McCarrick, JoJo Dollard, Fiona Pender, Ciara Breen, Fiona Sinnott and Deirdre Jacob are familiar to us, but for all the wrong reasons.
Although they never knew each other, they are connected to each other in our minds because they all vanished from the Leinster area between 1993 and 1998, never to be seen again.
Gardai have identified suspects in some of the cases, and even more than 20 years later they are still being monitored, often with the help of police forces in other jurisdictions if the suspect is abroad.
This is the job of the Serious Crime Review Team of An Garda Siochana, now headed by Detective Superintendent Desmond McTiernan.
His team has taken over the cold-case investigations from what was initially an investigation called Operation Trace, which was set up by then garda commissioner Pat Byrne in 1998.''
"There can be a very genuine reason why people don't talk at the time."
People shouldn't fear they would be accused of withholding information if they provided a lead now, he added.
"There is a confidence that people can have that they won't be judged. They won't be prosecuted and they won't be charged and they've nothing to fear."
It seems incredible that between 1993 and 1998 Annie, JoJo, Fiona Pender, Ciara, Fiona Sinnott and Deirdre all disappeared. That so many women could be murdered is incredible, but for no trace of them to be found is unimaginable.''
"I've often thought about it myself, how these young women could vanish in quick succession," said Det Supt McTiernan.
"In each investigation there was an awful lot of work done by the gardai at the time.
"One thing that does strike me is that the level of investigation was very intense and very deep back in the early 90s''
Lengthy article. rbbm
'Range of suspects are being watched' as new cold case review raises families' hopes
''Gardai investigating the disappearance of six women in the 1990s are monitoring the movements and habits of a range of suspects in some cold-case reviews.
The names of Annie McCarrick, JoJo Dollard, Fiona Pender, Ciara Breen, Fiona Sinnott and Deirdre Jacob are familiar to us, but for all the wrong reasons.
Although they never knew each other, they are connected to each other in our minds because they all vanished from the Leinster area between 1993 and 1998, never to be seen again.
Gardai have identified suspects in some of the cases, and even more than 20 years later they are still being monitored, often with the help of police forces in other jurisdictions if the suspect is abroad.
This is the job of the Serious Crime Review Team of An Garda Siochana, now headed by Detective Superintendent Desmond McTiernan.
His team has taken over the cold-case investigations from what was initially an investigation called Operation Trace, which was set up by then garda commissioner Pat Byrne in 1998.''
"There can be a very genuine reason why people don't talk at the time."
People shouldn't fear they would be accused of withholding information if they provided a lead now, he added.
"There is a confidence that people can have that they won't be judged. They won't be prosecuted and they won't be charged and they've nothing to fear."
It seems incredible that between 1993 and 1998 Annie, JoJo, Fiona Pender, Ciara, Fiona Sinnott and Deirdre all disappeared. That so many women could be murdered is incredible, but for no trace of them to be found is unimaginable.''
"I've often thought about it myself, how these young women could vanish in quick succession," said Det Supt McTiernan.
"In each investigation there was an awful lot of work done by the gardai at the time.
"One thing that does strike me is that the level of investigation was very intense and very deep back in the early 90s''
