The life and death of Marioara Rostas

For almost 1,500 days, the body of teenager Marioara Rostas lay hidden in a shallow grave in Co Wicklow, writes Barry Cummins

WHEN she was enticed into a car by a Dublin criminal on the afternoon of Sunday, Jan 6, 2008, Marioara Rostas was six weeks short of her 19th birthday. Weighing just eight stone and standing at 5ft 3in, Marioara looked much younger than her 18 years. Life was tough for her and her family in Ireland. Marioara’s parents and other members of her family were in Ireland three months, but Marioara was only here three weeks before she was abducted and murdered.

She arrived on Dec 17 and joined her family at a derelict property in Donabate in north Co Dublin. Hope of a better life in Ireland than in their original homeland of western Romania was not the reality for the extended Rostas family. Marioara joined more than a dozen adults and a small number of children living in a property which had no sanitation, no electricity, no running water, and half the roof missing.