‘Alarm bells should have rung straight away’
MARY says she knows the identity of her sister’s killer.
The man was quite young when Jo Jo Dullard went missing 10 years ago today. She believes he was person who offered her sister the fateful lift at Moone, Co Kildare, at around 11.40pm on November 9, 1995. She hasn’t been seen since.
“He made three contradictory statements to gardaí,” said Mary.
Detectives established the man had driven from Offaly to Moone and was in Moone around the time Jo Jo was there. Mary said the man’s farmland was never searched, nor was his car ever examined.
Mary claims a garda told her that the man was the main suspect. Garda sources told author Barry Cummins, in his book Missing, that while the man was a suspect and did make conflicting statements, they didn’t have enough evidence for a search warrant and were not able to progress the matter.
One detective told the Irish Examiner yesterday that the man was not a chief suspect, despite the family’s claims. But Mary remains convinced and has repeatedly called over the last 10 years for all land within a 21-mile radius of Moone to be searched.
Jo Jo was hitching rides down to her home in Callan, Co Kilkenny, when she disappeared. She had received two lifts already, from Naas to Kilcullen and then from Kilcullen to Moone. She still had 40 miles to go to Callan.
Jo Jo was in a public phone booth talking to a friend to see if she could stay in Carlow, 10 miles away, when a car pulled up. She ran over to the car, spoke to the driver, and ran back to her friend and told her she had ‘got a lift’.
Another sister of Jo Jo, Kathleen Bergin, alerted gardaí 24 hours later. Jo Jo hadn’t turned up for work. Nor had her friend in Carlow seen her. Two more full days passed before gardaí took the alert seriously.
Vital time was lost. The body would have been well buried by this stage and clues removed. It also gave the killer time to get his story straight.
“Alarm bells should have rung straight away,” said Mary. “When I heard she was hitching, that’s danger straight away. She was supposed to be at work the following day. But the police didn’t want to listen.”
In the following weeks, the search began. The garda sub-aqua team searched 36 miles of the River Barrow. The road between Moone and Carlow was scoured. For 12 months, woodlands and bogs in the area were searched every weekend. No signs were found.
There were subsequent reports that a woman fitting Jo Jo’s description was seen thumbing in Castledermot, five miles south of Moone, later that night.
But gardaí wonder that if a different driver picked her up in Castledermot, why hasn’t the driver in Moone ever come forward. Mary doesn’t believe the woman in Castledermot was her sister. Neither does she believe that a man serving time for the rape and attempted murder of a woman in the area in 2000 was responsible.
THE GARDA investigation came to a halt, to be resurrected again in September 1998, with the establishment of Operation Trace.
The initiative was briefed to check for any links between the sinister disappearances of six women between 1993 and 1998. None of the bodies of the women - Annie McCarrick, Fiona Pender, Ciara Breen, Deirdre Jacob, Fiona Sinnott and Jo Jo - have ever been found.
Mary said the officers in Operation Trace never came back to brief her of their investigations. Operation Trace failed to find any link between the cases and was wound down in December 2001.
Mary, her husband Martin and Carlow-Kilkenny TD John McGuinness, travelled to the US in 2003 to see for themselves how specialist missing persons units there operate.
“They are in constant contact with the family. They have the equipment and the expertise,” said Mary.
“The police here are 20-30 years behind. It’s also their attitude, they are not nice to you.”
She criticised the gardaí for refusing to ask for and accept the expertise available from the US in missing persons cases.
Mr McGuinness agreed: “The attitude of gardaí is ‘we can solve the problem ourselves’. They don’t seem to reach out to foreign expertise. We don’t have, in my opinion, the skilled force necessary either in relation to the search for a missing person or support for the family for missing persons. That’s a poor reflection on the State.”
Today, gardaí and Crimestoppers will launch an appeal for information in relation to the six missing women.
Meanwhile, Mary is preparing for the 10th anniversary Mass for Jo Jo this Sunday at Moone Church.
Mary has a fresh appeal to those who know the killer, including his parents, to come forward.
“We’re all parents. It’s not easy to give up a child. Please find it within your heart. You have held on to the burden for 10 years. Please tell me where Jo is. Jo deserves a Christian burial.”
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