Authors: Barry Cummins
Missing (7 page)
I last saw Annie over two years before she disappeared. We broke up towards the end of 1990, and I didn’t see her after that. I remember I visited her over in Long
Island that summer, after she returned there for a while to study there. I stayed with her for about four months, and we had a really nice time. But eventually I had to come home, and Annie was
staying there for the moment. She drove me to JFK Airport from her home, and she wanted me to make a commitment to our relationship, but I didn’t: I wanted to come home and think clearly.
I remember she had $5 on her, and she bought me one of those toys, a little ‘snow-shaker’, as a memory of New York—you know, you shake it and snow falls over Manhattan. I
remember I left her and I went into the toilet at the airport and I cried. I never saw Annie again. I later phoned her and we spoke for an hour, but I never saw her again. I was living in Italy
with my fiancée when I got the news over two years later that Annie was missing. I’m married now and have my own family. I still dream about Annie.
Dermot Ryan remembers Annie as a gentle, sweet young woman who was often more romantic than practical.
When I was going out with Annie and we were both studying at Maynooth, she was actually renting a cottage in Ballyboden in south Dublin. She was sharing this cottage with
another woman, and it was out in the wilds. It took about two hours to get from there to Maynooth, but Annie wouldn’t live anywhere else: she just loved that cottage. Annie had a romantic
view of Ireland that most Irish people would find corny, but she just loved this country. She had the most beautiful warm voice, and she would never snub anyone. It’s just so sad.
Detective-Garda Val Smith retired from Irishtown Garda Station in November 2002. Just before this he looked once more over the file that consumed so much of his time over the
previous nine-and-a-half years: file C31/24/93, missing woman: Annie McCarrick. Val tells me this is the only case that he ever got personal about.
What is frustrating is that we never got a run for our money on it. The last sighting of Annie on the bus in Ranelagh heading towards Enniskerry opens up so many
possibilities, so many avenues of inquiry. We never made an arrest in this case. We questioned a number of men at length about their movements around the time of Annie’s disappearance,
but we just never got that break. This case affected all the gardaí who worked on it. It was exhaustive. If it affects gardaí, God only knows how it affects Annie’s parents
and family and friends. If Annie’s body was found, that would at least be one thing: that would be something. I served here in Irishtown for thirty years, and this is the biggest unsolved
case we’ve had. I would dearly love to be called out of retirement one day to give evidence in this case.
Nancy McCarrick told me of a clear memory she has of her only child. In the present circumstances it paints a particularly poignant picture.
Annie was such a romantic, she was such an emotional person. I remember she was in Manhattan one time and she phoned me. ‘Mom,’ she said, ‘I’m at the
opera. I’m at
La Bohème
; there’s standing room only. Mom, I’m having the most wonderful time, it is so beautiful, and I am crying my eyes out.’
For Nancy and John McCarrick there is no closure, no ending. Nancy told me that she does not know how she has coped.
I really don’t know; it’s really difficult to say. Time helps a lot, but I’m always wondering. I’d give anything to know where my daughter is. But I
don’t have a choice: I just have to go on. My brother Tim lives just next door to me, and I mind his little boy three days a week. I’m kept occupied and happy in that regard, but
you never know when it’s going to hit you. Sometimes the terrible realisation just hits you. I miss her so much. I would just love to have my daughter back. I want Annie’s body
found.
Jo Jo Dullard
L
ate on the night of Thursday 9 November 1995, 21-year-old Josephine (Jo Jo) Dullard was abducted in Co. Kildare and murdered. She was half way
home when her killer or killers struck. It was a cold winter’s night in the village of Moone when, just after half past eleven, Jo Jo accepted her third lift that night. After spending the
day in Dublin she had missed the bus that would bring her directly home to Callan, Co. Kilkenny. Instead she had got a bus from Dublin to Naas, Co. Kildare, and started hitching. She got lifts from
Naas to Kilcullen, and from there to Moone. By the time she got to Moone she still had more than forty miles to go.
At 11:37 p.m. she entered the public phone box in Moone, just yards from the busy road. She phoned her friend Mary Cullinane, telling her where she was. She was now thinking of trying to hitch a
lift ten miles to Carlow, where she could stay with a friend. During the short, stilted conversation she was looking out of the phone box, trying to flag down passing motorists. Suddenly she
dropped the phone and ran out to the side of the road: a car had stopped. Jo Jo ran back to the box, told Mary she’d got a lift, and hung up.
At some point during the next few hours, Jo Jo Dullard was murdered. There are a number of different suspects whom the Gardaí believe may be responsible for the killing. These include a
man who gave the Gardaí false information about his movements that night and a man from Co. Wicklow now in prison for a horrific attack on a woman. Two members of a criminal gang of
travellers are also earmarked as suspects.
Jo Jo’s disappearance has caused immense pain for her sisters Mary, Nora, and Kathleen, her brother, Tom, and her nieces and nephews. The failure to find her remains has led her sister
Mary to launch a national campaign for the establishment of a specialist Missing Persons Unit and also the establishment of a National Missing Persons Remembrance Day. Whoever killed Jo Jo Dullard
will never be allowed forget their evil deed.
On Thursday 9 November 1995 Jo Jo Dullard had collected her last dole payment in Harold’s Cross, Dublin, and had spent the afternoon looking around the shops and having a
few drinks with friends at the Bruxelles pub off Grafton Street. It was the end of an era in her life. Having spent more than two years living and working in Dublin, she had recently moved home to
Callan, where she had got a flat in the centre of town and now had full-time work at a pub and restaurant there. The collection of her last dole payment was the last of the loose ends to tie up in
Dublin.
Jo Jo woke just as the bus was coming into Naas. She was still almost sixty miles from home. She began to hitch, hoping she might be lucky enough to find someone driving as far as Kilkenny or
even Callan; a more realistic prospect might be finding a motorist heading towards Carlow. Jo Jo had a friend there who would put her up if she could only make it that far. It was already dark as
she began thumbing, standing on the busy road. It was a cold night, and she was wearing a black cotton jacket, a shirt, blue jeans, and boots. One motorist stopped; he was heading for Kilcullen,
five miles down the road. Again it was a step in the right direction, so Jo Jo got in. She had hitched lifts many times before in Co. Kilkenny andwas aware of the dangers of taking lifts from
strangers. However, it is clear that, later that night, she accepted a lift from some person who she did not suspect was a violent man.
It was now after eleven o’clock, and Jo Jo was standing in Kilcullen, twenty miles from Carlow and forty-five miles from Callan. She had only put out her hand to start hitching a lift
again when another car stopped. This driver was also heading in the direction of Jo Jo’s ultimate destination but not going the whole way. He said he could bring her as far as Moone. Jo Jo
got in, knowing that this lift would get her to within ten miles of Carlow and closer to a bed for the night.
It was 11:35 p.m. when this motorist dropped Jo Jo off at Moone, Co. Kildare. The village was quiet but for the distant sound of people having their last drinks in a nearby pub. Jo Jo decided to
phone her friend Mary Cullinane to let her know where she was. The man who left her in Moone had dropped her close to a public phone box. At 11:37 p.m. she stepped into the phone box and made the
call. ‘Hi, Mary. I’m in Moone. I missed the bus,’ she said. They had a general chat for three minutes, while Jo Jo kept an eye out for any cars heading south. Suddenly she said,
‘Hold on.’ She dropped the phone, left the phone box, and returned a few seconds later. ‘I have a lift. See you, Mary.’ She left the phone box and walked towards a nearby
car. She would not be seen again.
Jo Jo Dullard was the youngest of five children. She never knew her father, John Dullard: he died when his wife, Nora, was pregnant with Jo Jo in 1973. Nora died in 1983, when
Jo Jo was nine, leaving just Jo Jo and her sister Kathleen, still living at home at Newtown, near Callan. The responsibility for raising Jo Jo fell on Kathleen, who was only ten years older. Soon
afterwards Kathleen married her sweetheart, Séamus Bergin, and they brought Jo Jo to live with them at Ahenure, on a quiet road just outside Callan. It is here that Jo Jo lived with Kathleen
and Séamus until her mid-teens. As I spoke to Kathleen about her memories of Jo Jo, the constant pain caused by her disappearance was all too evident. Even with happy memories, tears welled
up in her eyes.
I was only nineteen when Mam died, and it was just Jo Jo and me in the cottage in Newtown. I was quite nervous with just the two of us in the cottage, but we always felt
safe in Mammy’s room. I was going out with Séamus, and we got married in 1985 and had our first child, Aisling, in 1986. We decided to move up here to Ahenure, and Jo Jo came with
us. She was about fourteen at the time. Myself and Séamus were just starting out, and we later had three more children. Our children were very close to Jo Jo: she was more like a sister
to them than an auntie. She lived with us until she was about sixteen. I would do it all again in a second if I could. None of us can believe that Jo Jo is gone now; there’s an emptiness
in our hearts that we just can’t fill.
It was Kathleen Bergin who first reported to the Gardaí the fact that her sister was missing, less than twenty-four hours after Jo Jo had vanished. Yet despite the fact
that she had disappeared from the side of a road on a dark night, Kathleen remembers an initial lack of urgency from the Gardaí that she found distressing.
Jo Jo was meant to be at work at Dawson’s pub in Callan on the Friday evening. I remember I got a call from the manager, Tom. He said Mary Cullinane—Jo
Jo’s friend—was with him, and Jo Jo hadn’t arrived for work. Mary then told me about the phone call from Moone. Immediately I knew this was serious. I called a friend of Jo
Jo’s in Carlow, but she hadn’t seen her. I contacted the Gardaí in Callan, and the officer told me Jo Jo was twenty-one and might have decided to go back to Dublin. I called
the Gardaí three times, but I got the same type of response. Eventually I called in to the Garda station. I went up to a garda and said, ‘If there was a bank robbed you’d be
out there with checkpoints.’ In the years since, many gardaí have worked very hard on Jo Jo’s case, but that initial response was so wrong.
It was the following Monday, more than three days after Jo Jo Dullard’s abduction and murder, that the search and appeal for information began in earnest. One senior garda
in the Kilkenny division later revealed that he wasn’t even aware of Jo Jo’s disappearance until the Monday. Vital days were lost during which suspicious activity, such as unusual
digging, went undetected. The search, when it did begin, was extensive; but the feeling of many, including certain gardaí, is that it was all too late. One detective who later worked on the
case believes the delay may have given the killer time to cover his tracks.
There is a feeling among some detectives that the person or persons responsible for killing Jo Jo may have actually been questioned at some stage during the investigation. I
mean the investigation was massive, and it stands to reason that we may well have spoken to the killer during our search. Over eight hundred statements were later taken, and two thousand
questionnaires were completed. A number of men who drove through Moone that night were detected. Some of them gave misleading or evasive answers. We even tracked people down in France and the
USA who had driven through Moone that night, but we ruled them out. But the fact that the case lay dormant for the first few days gave the person responsible time to compose themselves, to
concoct a story, to practise it, maybe even to start believing their own lies. Also, the killer had a clear seventy-two hours to conceal Jo Jo’s body. There are a number of theories about
where Jo Jo’s body may lie. But, given the time the killer had, even a particular theory put forward that she is buried at a certain location in Co. Kerry is a distinct possibility.
Jo Jo’s sister Mary Phelan and her husband, Martin Phelan, believe the answer to what happened to Jo Jo lies close to where she disappeared in Moone. When I met them at
their farmhouse at Grange, between Callan and Kilkenny, they told me they are aware of the identity of a particular person who detectives confirmed made contradictory statements when first
questioned and who was identified as a suspect.