DNA tests on body could take weeks

DNA TESTS on the partial remains of a man believed murdered and secretly buried by the IRA could take several weeks.

The family of Danny McIlhone, who vanished from west Belfast in 1981, face an agonising wait for confirmation that it was his body discovered in remote bogland in the Wicklow mountains outside Dublin.

Investigators found a human foot, a boot and a sock on the side of Wicklow’s second highest peak, Mullaghcleevaun, near the village of Lacken on Saturday.

The remains have been sent to the state pathologist in Dublin for identification, but this is expected to take a number of weeks.

Excavation of the site at Ballynultagh, which was the scene of two unsuccessful searches in 1999 and 2000, is continuing under the authority of the Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains.

“It is difficult to put a timeframe on how long these tests will take or how long the dig will continue,” said a spokesman for the commission, which tries to find the bodies of the so-called Disappeared.

Mr McIlhone, 19, was named by the IRA as one of nine victims it murdered and secretly buried during the Troubles.

Investigators have been on and off the Wicklow site on a number of occasions since the middle of last year.

Geoff Knupfer, the investigative scientist who helped find the bodies of the victims of Moors murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, spearheaded a new scientific approach to the search since April last year.

This included an archaeological “time-team,” made up of geophysicists who used ground radar, scanners, probes and cadaver dogs that detect human remains.

The area, in forest-surrounded bogland close to Blessington Lakes, was mapped out using this information from the forensic examination and several “hot spots” were identified.

Once that was established the team decided on which of the hot-spots to begin excavating.

Electricity generators are powering lights to illuminate the remote site, connected by a small track off a mountain road, as forensic investigators painstakingly sift through the ground which has been marked out by a grid.

A source close to the investigation would not disclose if fresh information was passed from the IRA, but pointed out that Mr Knupfer was on record as saying the Provos were fully supportive of its work to find the Disappeared.