New techniques spark hope for families of 'disappeared'

Investigators who uncovered the partial remains of a suspected IRA victim on a remote Wicklow hillside are using their ground-breaking methods at five other potential burial sites, it was revealed tonight.

A special DNA database has also been set up of all the families of the so-called Disappeared as part of a new scientific approach that is hoped will finally lead to the bodies of nine people still missing.

Scientists at the State Pathologist's department are carrying out tests on a human foot, a boot and a sock discovered in the Wicklow Mountains on Saturday believed to be that of Danny McIlhone, who vanished from west Belfast in 1981.

They are trying to identify the complex genetic code of the partial remains which will be sent to a forensic science laboratory in Britain where the special Disappeared database is housed.

If it matches with samples already taken from McIlhone’s family it will positively identify the remains as that of the missing teenager and end decades of misery and uncertainty for his relatives.

It will also spark fresh hopes for other families who have suffered the same agony.

Investigators have already rolled out their new techniques at five more suspected burial locations in Counties Monaghan, Meath and Louth.

They are also to begin similar strategies at two other sites in the Republic as well as at a forest near Rouen in northern France, where it is believed INLA victim Seamus Ruddy is buried.

A source close to the ongoing investigations, carried out under the authority of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains (ICLVR), said there was no deadline for the archaeological “time-team” to find the remaining bodies.

“There are a number of known burial sites and at different phases over the last year and a half we have moved on to each one of those sites and carried out the scientific work,” he said.

“That work is now at different stages ... so this is a model that will be rolled out at every potential burial site.”

The ICLVR, which was set up in 1999 by the British and Irish governments to locate the bodies of those abducted, murdered and secretly buried during the Troubles, are still searching for the remains of nine victims.

These include McIlhone, Seamus Wright, Kevin McKee, Columba McVeigh and Brendan Megraw – all of whom the IRA has admitted killing and dumping in unmarked graves.

Other cases, such as the 1977 murder of undercover British agent Robert Nairac, Charles Armstrong and Gerard Evans who vanished from Co Armagh, and Mr Ruddy are also being examined.

DNA samples of all the families were collected after Geoff Knupfer, the investigative scientist who helped find the bodies of the victims of Moors murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, was brought in last year to spearhead a fresh approach to the searches.

The former Greater Manchester detective has also assembled a team of geophysicists who are using ground radar, scanners, probes and cadaver dogs that can detect human remains at the suspected burial sites.

It is expected to take some weeks for the DNA matching process of the suspected remains of McIlhone to be completed at the laboratory in England.

Excavation of the site at Ballynultagh, on the side of Wicklow’s second highest peak, Mullaghcleevaun, near the village of Lacken, is continuing.

“There is no deadline to our work in Wicklow,” said an ICLVR spokesman.

“It will take as long as it takes. This is painstaking work, it is difficult terrain and it will take time.”

In 2001 the IRA claimed that McIlhone was being questioned about stealing IRA weapons from an arms dump when he was killed in a struggle with a gunman who was guarding him.