‘Cold case’ leads to court after 12 years

SANDRA Collins, 29, had just gone to the shop for sausages on the night she vanished in the town of Killala, Co Mayo.

It was around 7.30pm on Monday, Dec 4, 2000, when Sandra left the home she shared with her aunt at Courthouse St, close to the town centre.

It’s known that she made it to Birrane’s shop where she bought sausages and firelighters. It was around 7.45pm when Maura Birrane served Sandra in the small shop on Church St.

It was a wet and stormy night, and Sandra was wearing dark trousers, a purple or maroon-coloured poloneck jumper, black ankle boots with zips, and a pink sleeveless fleece with a hood. The fleece was one of Sandra’s favourite items of clothing, and she wore it often.

She chatted with Maura Birrane and left the premises shortly after 7.45pm The walk home would have taken less than five minutes, but Sandra never made it.

Three-and-a-half hours after leaving Birrane’s shop, Sandra was seen in a chip shop in the town.

It was around 11.05pm when Sandra walked into the Country Kitchen Chip Shop on Georges St. She was alone, approached the counter, and said hello to Colleen Gallagher who was working in the chipper.

Colleen knew Sandra to see, and she would later tell gardaí that Sandra’s demeanour in the chipper had been normal. Sandra got a large portion of chips, left the chipper, crossed the road, and walked left. This would have brought her up Market St towards home.

At 11.15pm, Sandra Collins disappeared.

It was on the following day, after Sandra’s aunt realised that her niece had never come home, that the alarm was raised. Extensive searches of the town centre, and the waters around the pier were conducted, as were searches over Killala Bay and around nearby Bartragh Island, but no trace of Sandra was found. Experts felt that if Sandra had entered the water, her body should have been found.

On Saturday, Dec 9, four days after searching had begun, Sandra’s fleece was found in a hollow on the Old Pier in Killala, around 12ft from the water’s edge.

The fleece was soaking wet and appeared to have been flattened into position in the hollow, perhaps by a vehicle driving over it. The sausages which Sandra had bought from Birrane’s Shop were still in the pocket.

In time, gardaí would consider if the fleece had been planted at the pier to make it look like Sandra had entered the water, and if she had in fact been murdered and her body perhaps hidden on land.

The cold case reinvestigation began in summer 2010 and reclassified Sandra’s disappearance as a murder investigation.

* Barry Cummins is a reporter with RTÉ’s Prime Time and is the author of Without Trace, which profiled Sandra’s case.