A killer in our midst?

Friends and relatives of several individuals who have ‘disappeared’ in Leinster over the last two decades are increasingly concluding that their loved ones may have been victims of a serial killer.

The individuals listed below are still officially ‘missing’, and their disappearances are, as yet, unsolved. Even a cursory examination reveals some striking similarities between the various cases. The vast majority were young women, described as ‘attractive’, whose bodies have never been recovered. Several of them were last sighted around a triangle on the Dublin/Wicklow/Kildare borders, near the Dublin Mountains, where four women are already known to have been raped and strangled in almost identical circumstances.
The evidence would seem to support the theory that a serial killer (or, as it has been speculated, more than once) was, or is, at large in the area. Over a period of time spanning the years 1982 to 1998, it seemed that whoever was responsible could strike at will, randomly, and escape without detection.
Yet, despite the common denominators, Gardai dismissed the serial-killer theory out of hand until 1998.
Curiously, the ‘disappearances’ now appear to have stopped.
Two individuals currently in prison, both with extensive records of sexual offences against women, have been identified by US media outlets as suspects in the cases concerned.
One is Robert ‘The Werewolf’ Howard, 61, who is currently serving a life sentence in England for the 2001 rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl. He has a string of sexual convictions, including an attack on a 6-year-old girl, and the rape of a 58-year-old woman. He has a long history of abductions, and is known to have been present in the area during the period in question. Reporter Jilly Beattie has described him as ‘a known sexual deviant, a prolific rapist and murderer – the personification of evil’.
Another suspect is 41-year-old carpenter Laurence ‘Larry’ Murphy, who is married with two children. Murphy is presently serving a 15-year sentence for the abduction and multiple rape of a 26-year-old businesswoman he had been stalking. After abducting her on February 11, 2000, he beat, tied and gagged the woman, placed her in the boot of his car, drove 23 miles to a remote woodland location in County Wicklow, and raped her four times. He fled after the fourth rape when two local men chanced upon the scene, and their evidence helped to put him behind bars.
Gardai believe that he intended to murder the woman. Murphy had no previous criminal record. He lived, worked and was captured in the same area in which Annie McCarrick, Deirdre Jacob and JoJo Dullard went missing.
Another name that has been mentioned in dispatches is that of former Army sergeant John Crerar, a 58-year-old father of five, who in 2002 was sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1979 murder of Phyllis Murphy. After a 28-day search, Phyllis’ naked body was found concealed in ferns in a pine wood in the Wicklow Gap, thirty miles from her home in Newbridge.
She had been raped and strangled, a fate similar to that which later befell Patricia Furlong and Antoinette Smith.
At present, the following eight cases remain officially unsolved and under investigation:

FIONA PENDER (26)
Fiona, a model and hairdresser, was seven months pregnant when she disappeared on August 23, 1996. She had spent the previous day shopping for baby clothes, and was said to be in excellent spirits. Friends described her as “vivacious”.
Fiona’s mother, Josephine, has been subject to a string of merciless, pitiless tragedies beyond the limits of ordinary human endurance.
Her husband Sean, traumatised by his daughter’s disappearance, took his own life in 2000. Their son, Mark, had died in a motorcycle accident before Fiona disappeared.
Fiona’s boyfriend, John Thompson, is heavily critical of the Gardai’s handling of the case. He maintains that the Gardai treated him and his family as the prime suspects, and confirms that himself, his father and his three sisters were held for questioning for 12 hours.

ANNIE McCARRICK (26)
McCarrick, an American national, left her Sandymount home on March 26, 1993. A woman matching Annie’s description was sighted at 3.30 that afternoon on the No. 44 bus to Enniskerry, and again later that night in Johnny Foxe’s pub in Glencullen, near the Dublin Mountains.
She has never been seen since.
Annie’s family have stressed that she adored Ireland, and was passionately interested in the country’s history and her family’s Irish heritage. Despite the tragedy which has befallen the McCarricks, they have expressed gratitude to the Irish public for their help, encouragement and support.
Their gratitude does not extend towards the Gardai. Annie’s father, retired cop John McCarrick, is extremely critical of the Garda response to his daughter’s disappearance. He testifies that the guard who dealt with him didn’t have a notepad, and scribbled down the details on the back of his hand. McCarrick eventually lost faith in the Gardai, and hired private eye Brian McCarthy to conduct his own investigations. McCarthy’s prime suspect is a married man with children, currently in prison, who can be placed in or around the scenes where McCarrick, JoJo Dullard and Deirdre Jacob went missing.

CIARA BREEN (17)
Ciara went missing from the seaside town of Dundalk on February 13, 1997. Her mother recalls talking to her late that night, at bedtime: “She gave me a kiss and a hug, and said, ‘Goodnight, mom. See you in the morning. I love you.’ And that was it. That’s really all I have to hang on to now, that the last thing she said was ‘I love you’.”
Gardai believe that Ciara left the house on her own later that night.
According to her mother: “It was between approximately one o’clock and 1.50. The only thing that was different about that night was that I was going for results for cancer that day, and that might have enticed her to go out to talk to somebody. That’s the only reason I can come up with. She loves animals, and hates cruelty of any kind.”

JOJO DULLARD (21)
JoJo lived with her sister in Callan, Co. Kilkenny. On November 9, 1995, she met up with some friends in Dublin, but had planned to return home by bus that same night. In the event, JoJo got slightly detained and missed the last bus. She then decided to hitch-hike home, and managed to hitch a ride to the town of Moone.
According to journalist Geraldine Niland, “She phoned her friend from a phone box there. She told her friend that she was waiting for another ride to come along. Then suddenly, while she was talking to her friend, she said ‘Oh, a car is coming, I have to go now.’ And that is the last anyone has heard of JoJo Dullard.”

DEIRDRE JACOB (18)
A trainee schoolteacher, Deirdre has not been seen since walking to her home in Newbridge, Co. Kildare on July 28, 1998. She then effectively disappeared in broad daylight. Gardai have established that after visiting her grandmother in the town centre, Deirdre was returning home along a country road she’d walked all her life. According to Geraldine Niland: “Neighbours saw her about 200 yards from her home. And then, suddenly, she was gone. She was literally standing at the side of the road, about to cross over on her way home, and then she was gone.”

EVA BRENNAN (40)
Eva disappeared on July 25 1993, after leaving a gathering at her parents’ home in Terenure, following a minor argument, to return to her flat in Rathgar. At the time, she was described as “40 years of age but looking younger, wearing a pink tracksuit and leggings, carrying a red leatherette handbag.” She suffered from depression, but was not on medication at the time of her disappearance.

IMELDA KEENAN (22)
Imelda, originally from Mountmellick, was living in William Street, Waterford, and pursuing a college course at the CTI, Parnell Street. The last reported sighting of Eva was at Lombard Street at 1.30 on the afternoon of January 3, 1994. She had nothing with her, no change of clothes, and very little money. To this day, her credit union account remains untouched.
FIONA SINNOTT (19)
Fiona was last seen on the night of February 9, 1998, leaving a pub in Broadway, Co. Wexford, with her boyfriend. All her friends say she was “in great form”, and had been planning a shopping trip to Waterford to buy a present for her sister’s upcoming 21st birthday party. She had been looking forward to the party, and to the first birthday of her daughter, Emma.

While the aforementioned are still officially ‘missing’, the following four murder victims have been located and identified. Three of them were buried in the Dublin Mountains, which suggests that the killer, or killers, were very familiar with the local topography. As we have seen, several of the ‘missing’ also appear to have been last witnessed in the general vicinity of the mountains:

ANTOINETTE SMITH (27)
A mother of two from Clondalkin, Antoinette was raped and strangled in the Dublin Mountains, July 1987. Nine months later, ramblers discovered Antoinette’s body in a shallow grave. Her head had been covered by a plastic bag.

PATRICIA FURLONG (23)
Patricia was raped and strangled at Glencullen in the Dublin Mountains, July 1982. A DJ, Vincent Connell (now deceased) was convicted of the murder in 1992, but the verdict was overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeal. The killer’s identity remains a mystery.

PATRICIA DOHERTY (30)
A mother of two from Tallaght, Patricia was murdered and buried in a peat bog in the Dublin Mountains. She had left home on December 23, 1991, to do her Christmas shopping. Six months later, on the same stretch of mountain bog where Antoinette Smith’s body had been concealed, a man out cutting turf found a woman’s hand in the turf bank he was clearing. It belonged to Patricia Doherty.

PHYLLIS MURPHY (23)
After a 28-day search, Phyllis’ naked body was found in a pine wood in the Wicklow Gap, thirty miles from Newbridge, from where she had disappeared on December 22, 1979. She had been raped and strangled. Twenty years later, ex-army sergeant John Crerar was convicted of the murder. He had offered Phyllis a lift home after her Christmas shopping expedition.