Hopes and fears for families left in the dark as loved ones vanish

ELLEN COSS BROWN’S face stares out of the now slightly tattered posters placed by her family in shop windows across south Dublin.

Ms Brown, who would now be 54, went missing four years ago as she returned from a trip to Manchester to see her sister.

Last March, near the south coast of England town of Eastbourne, a body washed ashore. Police in England started trawling a missing person’s list and by June believed it may be Ellen, from Dundrum in the south of the city.