Renewed appeal for woman missing since 1996

A RENEWED appeal for information was launched over the weekend in relation to missing Offaly woman Fiona Pender.

Ms Pender was aged 25 and seven months pregnant when she disappeared from the flat she shared with her boyfriend in Tullamore on August 22, 1996.

Leaflets featuring the last picture ever taken of Ms Pender were distributed throughout the country on Saturday by volunteers wearing T-shirts and sporting the missing woman’s picture.

Ms Pender had spent the day before she went missing shopping for baby clothes in Tullamore with her mother, Josephine.

Mrs Pender said her daughter was in good form and looking forward to the birth of her baby. She said she last saw her at around 7pm on August 21 after she walked her back to her flat on Church Street.

A friend of Ms Pender called around the following day but there was no answer. Her boyfriend, John Thompson, told gardaí she was still in bed when he left for work at the family farm at 6am that day.

Mrs Pender reported her daughter missing on August 24, sparking a massive search across Offaly, including woodland, rivers and bog lands. A section of the Grand Canal was also drained.

Five people were later arrested, but released without charge.

Mrs Pender said both she and her son, John, were again appealing to people with information to contact the Garda.

“We want people to come forward now and help us to find out what happened to Fiona and her baby. We are asking anyone who knew anything at the time to help us,” she told the Offaly Express.

She said the uncertainty of what happened her daughter haunts them more and more with the passing of the years.

“It gets much harder every year. You get more worn down,” she said.

Their suffering is all the greater as Mrs Pender’s son Mark died in a motorbike accident in 1995, followed by the death of her husband, Sean, some years later.

In May 2008, gardaí excavated a small area of the Monicknew Wood along the Laois-Offaly border after walkers came across a small makeshift wooden cross bearing the name of Fiona Pender.

Gardaí carried out two searches at the site and brought in British forensic search expert Mark Harrison, a specialist in searches for concealed bodies, but no remains were found.

* Contact Tullamore gardaí on 057 9327601 or the Garda Confidential Free Phone line on 1800 666111 or any Garda Station.