'I know I will be with Fiona someday and I will get the answers': A mother's years of heartbreak
A Garda search for Fiona Pender in a forest area off Cut Road north of the village of Clonaslee, Co Laois, last week. Picture: Padraig O'Reilly
For the first time in more than a decade, gardaí have carried out a series of searches for the remains of Fiona Pender.
The murder of the heavily pregnant 25-year-old in August 1996 caused immeasurable anguish to her family, with her heartbroken father Seán taking his own life a number of years later, and her mother Josephine dying in 2017 without being able to bury her "blonde-haired girl".
It has also proved a difficult and frustrating case for gardaí to crack. Despite a series of extensive searches in the years since, more than 300 statements and the arrest — in April 1997 — of five people, no trace of remains has yet been found.
Now, nearly 30 years after she vanished without a trace, fresh digs were conducted in bogland in the Midlands last week, in the hope of finding Fiona’s remains.
It is believed the search operation came about after a local man provided new information to investigating gardaí, which is being treated as credible.
Having completed a search of land near Killeigh in Co Offaly on Tuesday, the operation then moved to the Slieve Bloom mountains close to Clonaslee in Co Laois on Wednesday.
Killeigh and Clonaslee are about a 10-minute drive apart across the county boundary.
Gardaí have now concluded both searches and said they were not releasing their findings for “operational reason.” Ms Pender's family are being updated on any developments in the case, according to gardaí.
The only surviving immediate family member is Fiona’s youngest brother, John Pender.
"Investigating gardaí continue to appeal to any person with any information in relation to the disappearance of Fiona in the early morning of Friday, 23 August, 1996, who has not spoken to gardaí, to please come forward” a spokesperson said.
Fiona Pender, from Connolly Park in Tullamore Co Offaly ,was last seen at 6am in her bedsit on Church Street in her hometown when her then boyfriend John Thompson said he was leaving for work.
Her mother Josephine always insisted her daughter vanished the evening before, on August 22, 1996. Fiona had spent that day shopping for baby clothes with her mother in Tullamore town. Josephine believed her daughter was murdered that night.
Her boyfriend and father of her child, John Thompson, said she was asleep when he was leaving for work the following morning.
Five people were arrested following Fiona’s disappearance, but they were all released without charge. No one has ever been convicted of being involved in Fiona's disappearance — which was treated as a suspected murder investigation since the seventh anniversary of her disappearance.
Gardaí believe there is only one main suspect, who moved abroad several years ago with his own family.
In 2016, Josephine Pender, who spearheaded a campaign to find her daughter for two decades before she died, said she had no ill feeling towards anyone — she just wanted her daughter and grandchild found.
“I wasn’t angry I just wanted to know where Fiona and her baby were.”
Josephine Pender held memorial events near the canal in Tullamore, now called Fiona’s Way after her daughter, and had a monument designed in the area in her memory.
The heartbroken mother, who was described as a “hero” for her tireless campaigning, died in 2017, just two weeks after marking the 21st anniversary of her only daughter’s disappearance.
Josephine, who was 68 when she died, had suffered with ill health for years prior to her death and was in hospital for a long period of time.
She chose not to talk about her illness with the many reporters who contacted her from time to time. Instead, she just wanted to remain her bubbly self and put the campaign before her illnesses.
For several years before her death, she spoke of how she was afraid of dying before finding out what happened to her daughter.
She said she had confronted the chief suspect several times since her daughter’s disappearance to ask about Fiona's whereabouts.
“I would say, ‘are you going to tell me where my Fiona is?’ and ‘do you not think it’s time now to give us some peace?’ But he always brushed it off or laughed it off.
“I would keep saying: ‘Do you not want to get that off your chest and tell me’. But he would shrug and walk away.
“I tried everything — I told him I did not want revenge, but I got nowhere. I always said I hope no other woman would suffer like Fiona.
“I know she suffered, and I don’t want that for anyone else,” she said at the time.
Josephine Pender was a devout Catholic who volunteered in her local church and prayed every day.
“I never gave up on God or anything like that” she said. “Prayer is what got me through a lot of the agony, but I am anxious from the minute I wake up until I go to sleep.
“I pray all the time, I never gave up on my faith. I know I will be with Fiona someday and I will get the answers, maybe in the next life, maybe not in this life but there is no need to hate.
“But I do understand how people can hate and be angry over this, people can feel what they want to feel, I just want to find Fiona and her baby, that’s my grandchild.”
More than 10 years ago, the last major excavation searching for Fiona took place outside her hometown of Tullamore.
That operation began following information from the main suspect’s wife, who claimed her former husband told her he had buried Fiona in the woods.
The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was charged with threatening to kill his wife in another jurisdiction, but was later cleared of all charges.
During that search, special metal detectors and high-tech equipment from Britain was flown in to be used by search teams in a 2,500sq m area of state forest in an area known as Capard, near Rosenallis, Co Laois.
At the time, Josephine Pender believed this could finally be the breakthrough she had prayed for — but sadly, nothing was returned in the dig.
Josephine Pender had been driven to the site by gardaí and when she received the news the dig was over and it was fruitless, she said she cried the whole way home in the back of the squad car with her son John.
Speaking afterwards she said: “She’s not there, she’s not there, I really thought they would find her, they didn’t find her. I am absolutely devastated”.
“We were going to have her at home for a few days in the house, bring her back home and light a few candles in the house. I am exhausted from crying.”
Afterwards, Josephine said it was the first time the reality of Fiona's tragic death had “hit me hard.”
“I thought about her so much, being out there on her own, what she was left like and her long, beautiful hair.
“I just wanted to bring her home, keep her there and tell her we love her and give her a proper funeral, but it wasn’t to be.”
Josephine had three children with her late husband Seán and the family lived in Tullamore.
Tragically just 14 months before Fiona’s disappearance in 1996, her son Mark was killed in a motorcycle accident.
Then in 2000, four years after Fiona’s disappearance, Josephine’s husband Seán took his own life in their home.
Her youngest son, John Pender, and Josephine were left with the agony of those three losses — as well as Fiona’s baby, who was also never forgotten by the family.
“My whole family was destroyed,” Josephine said. She described Mark as “a lovely young man who left us all heartbroken when he was killed. But at least there was some comfort knowing that we had a funeral service for him and I could go to his grave.
“Seán was my husband and father to my children, we were good friends, and he was a lovely man. He took his own life because he couldn’t cope with the pain of Fiona’s disappearance,” she said before her death.
Josephine Pender was very well-liked around Tullamore, and had huge support from the people in the town, who helped keep Fiona’s memory alive.
Every year, Josephine made her way to a stretch of the Grand Canal bank in the town, on the anniversary of when Fiona went missing, to help cheer on locals who took part in a memory run for her.
She would wait at the finishing line with cups and medals and was always delighted to present them to the winners of the race around the area there, renamed after Fiona.
“It is important for me to do this” she said in 2016. “I always get great support from the locals. They have never forgotten her, and the walk is something that takes my mind off things.
“But I suppose you never really forget what you’re going through either.”
Fiona’s brother John designed the large memorial on Fiona’s Way which represents a mother and child. Josephine was very proud of the design saying: “We worked hard to get this off the ground and have this place done for her and I want her remembered always.
“I still hope I’ll find her and bring her home one last time, I will never give up and I’ll give this search my last breath.”
She had accepted her daughter must have been murdered but lived in hope of burying her.
“I want her with her brother Mark and father Seán” she said. “I want to light candles and incense and have her home for the night where I can wake her and tell her how much we love her. I don’t know if that’s ever going to happen though.”
Josephine Pender sadly died on September 13, 2017, having never found her daughter's remains, but she always believed she would be reunited with Fiona and her son Mark and husband in the afterlife.
“They’ll be there for me, and I will have all the answers in heaven, if I can’t find them here.”
In a statement, gardaí investigating Fiona Pender’s murder said they had concluded their search operation on open ground in a location in Co Laois, the results “are not being released for operational reasons.”
The gardaí have updated the family on any developments the statement said.
Gardaí are also continuing to appeal for any information on Fiona’s disappearance.
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