DNA tests may solve 23-year vanishing

The results of DNA tests are expected imminently on what could be the remains of Cork businessman who disappeared nearly 23 years ago.

Divers carrying out a routine exercise discovered the remains of a man in a car submerged in the River Blackwater at Fermoy last October.

The remains were found inside a Daihatsu Charade, which was the same type of car which William “Bill” Fennessy owned.

The 54-year-old, who ran a successful pub, auctioneers, and undertaking business in Fermoy for many years, was last seen on Mar 30, 1990, and his car was also missing.

Divers from the Blackwater Sub Aqua Search and Rescue Unit discovered the car 3.5 metres down and embedded in silt, just 300 metres west of the town’s bridge.

That led many people to speculate that it might have been washed down the river during a flood a few days earlier because they couldn’t believe it could have lain unnoticed there for so long.

However, gardaí said they didn’t believe that was the case because the car seemed to have silted up over a long period.

The diving unit made repeated dives into the car and recovered bone fragments. Gardaí then sent the samples to their forensic headquarters in Dublin and took DNA tests from Mr Fennessy’s relatives to see if they could definitively establish if the remains belonged to him.

Garda sources have indicated that they’d be surprised if the remains didn’t belong to Mr Fennessy, especially as the car they had recovered them from was the same type he drove. However, they were unable to retrieve the number plate.

If the registration number 32 ZIF had been located it would have thrown even more weight to the theory that the remains belonged to Mr Fennessy, who served as a Labour councillor on Cork County Council in the early 1980s.

A Garda spokesman said they expected the results of the DNA tests to be known in the next few days. They have ruled out foul play being the cause of Mr Fennessy’s death.