Son’s fresh appeal for information on abduction

The son of a man abducted by masked men 22 years ago has made a fresh television appeal for any information which would help find his father’s body.

Gardaí believe Englishman Brooke Pickard was murdered after he was abducted from a car park not far from his home near Castlecove on the Ring of Kerry, shortly after leaving his house to cut turf on Apr 26, 1991.

The RTÉ series Cracking Crime — Cold Cases, reveals how his devastated family were hit by a series of tragedies in the years immediately following the abduction.

Mr Pickard’s teenage daughter died in a car crash and the family home burned down shortly afterwards.

A young girl on horseback witnessed masked men moving towards Mr Pickard’s van in the car park of the White Strand beach on the morning of the disappearance. But she rode off in fright before she could fully witness the abduction.

Despite an intensive Garda investigation — which located the gang’s abandoned orange Toyota Corolla and Mr Pickard’s van 46km away in a remote forest clearing, Gardaí have yet to charge anyone in connection with the disappearance of the father of four.

His son, Crohan Pickard, said he and his mother Penny desperately want to get closure.

“Obviously my mum would like to know what happened and why it happened, the same as me, but the top priority is a solid conclusion to it all.

“If it is a body or some information that leaves us in no doubt that he is dead and buried somewhere, that is what we need.

“There is ways of doing it now where it can be anonymous. You can come forward with what you know without risk.

“It would just help us to get conclusion and final closure to this piece of our life.”

The family endured a nightmare series of events following the abduction.

“A few years after we lost my dad, my uncle and aunt, my dad’s brother and sister, offered for us to come and stay with them for a Christmas to take a bit of a load off my mum.

“We came back and we made it nearly all the way home to Killarney, we were about 12 miles away and we had a car crash and my sister was killed. That was quite hard to deal with.

“After my sister died we were still dealing with that and coming to terms with that and maybe two years later the house burned down. These are all repercussions.

“If my father had been there we wouldn’t have had to go to England for that Christmas and I wouldn’t have lost my sister, and if he had been there to finish work on the house, the chances are the faults wouldn’t have been there and the house wouldn’t have burned down.

“There are three separate traumas but they are all like one big sore, one big trauma in our life. They just bleed into each other and they are just one big trauma.”

Cracking Crime — Cold Cases is set to reconstruct the events leading up to the disappearance of the 43-year-old.

In the documentary, Crohan describes the family’s idyllic lifestyle on the Ring of Kerry where their father had spent eight years transforming their ramshackle house into a dream home.

Det Sgt Declan Liddane, from Tralee Garda Station, urged anyone with any information to bring some peace to the family.

“I would ask for anyone in relation to the crimes or Brooke’s location at the moment to come forward in great confidence to the PSNI or to the Garda Síochána or even a priest, anyone.”

Those with information can contact the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666111, Crimestoppers on 1800 250025, or the Serious Crime Review Team on 01-6663444

* Cracking Crime — Cold Cases airs on RTÉ One tonight at 9.35pm.