Parents issue fresh appeal for missing daughter

Everywhere he goes, Michael Jacob is looking, searching for his daughter.

Tomorrow is the 15th anniversary of the day Deirdre Jacob, aged 18, vanished from outside her home.

Still Michael continues to scan faces and shapes that might resemble her. Often, he thinks he catches her, only to see someone else’s daughter. “Even when driving through the town or wherever, you are watching out, wondering would you just see Deirdre in the crowd. It’s like that. That doesn’t change,” he said.

His wife Bernadette agreed, but welled up with emotion: “I find that, particularly driving home, from Newbridge to our own home. I see people and I always look. I find that.”

Despite a massive Garda investigation — involving interviews with more than 2,000 people and searches of land and water — there have been no signs of what happened Deirdre.

Yesterday, her parents joined gardaí and Crime-stoppers to launch an appeal for information in relation to Deirdre’s disappearance on Jul 28, 1998. She was last seen outside the gates of the family home, on Barrettstown Rd, Roseberry, a mile outside Newbridge, a few minutes after 3pm.

Deirdre was carrying a black canvas bag with CAT (the yellow Caterpillar logo) on it, which has never been found. She had been seen walking home on that road after spending time in town, where she had got a bank draft from the AIB branch. She posted it in the local post office, where she spoke to a friend.

Superintendent Joseph Prendergast of Naas Garda Station said there were no signs of struggle outside the house, nor any sighting of her getting into a car.

The bank draft was to pay for accommodation for the year ahead in London where she was studying to be a primary teacher.

Supt Prendergast said gardaí thought someone had information about Deirdre. “Somebody doesn’t disappear into thin air and it’s very hard to do something without somebody seeing you,” he said. “Our hope is somebody has that piece of information that might just connect with other pieces of information we have.”

Bernadette asked for information in relation to a sighting of a woman — similar to Deirdre and with a similar bag — at the (now gone) Deli Cafe on Tara St, Dublin, over two days on Jul 30 and 31, a couple of days after she disappeared. Despite previous appeals, that woman has not contacted gardaí.

Michael said they’ve had 15 years of not knowing what happened: “There’s never a moment in all of those 15 years that we haven’t thought about Deirdre and what might happen, morning noon or night it would cross your mind. It’s the first thing on your mind in the morning, and the last thing on your mind at night. That’s why we’re here to appeal for information.”

* Contact Crimestoppers: Freephone 1800 25 00 25