After almost three decades without criminal charges or other breakthrough, the case of missing woman Fiona Pender has been reclassified as a murder investigation. Fresh searches began on Monday in her native Co Offaly, the latest in a series of such operations in a case with no justice in sight.
Pender (25), a part-time model and hairdresser, was last seen at Church Street, Tullamore, on the morning of August 23rd, 1996. She was seven months pregnant at the time and had bought clothes for her baby. She had shown no signs of planning to leave the area.
Gardaí believe she was murdered and her body quickly concealed to hide the crime. They have always had a prime suspect in mind. They believe the killer is a man from the Midlands who lived in the region at the time.
More than a decade ago, a woman told police in another country that an Irish man she knew, and who knew Pender, had implied in the heat of arguments that he had harmed the Offaly woman. She nominated a precise location in the Midlands that she believed had a special significance for the man she suspected.
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A Garda team travelled abroad to interview the woman. Hopes were raised that the new information might bring a breakthrough in the case. A remote area of a forest in the Slieve Bloom mountains in Co Laois was nominated as Pender’s possible burial site. But a search in December 2014 yielded nothing.
There were also searches in May 2008 following the discovery of a makeshift memorial cross with Pender’s name written on it, in the woods near Mountrath, Co Laois. That operation also yielded nothing, and the placing of the cross at the site, suggesting it as her burial site, has never been explained.
In 1997, less than a year after Pender disappeared, five people – three women and two men – were arrested in the Midlands but were released without charge.
The Garda’s decision to upgrade the Pender missing persons inquiry to one of murder is part of a continuing trend in Irish policing. Previously when a person vanished, even if they were assumed murdered, the cases were never upgraded to an official murder inquiry if their remains were not found. That principle of “no body, no murder inquiry” has in many instances been put aside by An Garda Síochána over the last decade.
The first upgrade of a missing persons inquiry to a murder investigation was in 2016 and involved the case of Patrick Heeran (48). He had vanished from his home in Mohill, Co Leitrim, in 2011, and his remains were never found. In total, at least 13 missing persons cases, now including that of Fiona Pender, have been upgraded to murder inquiries since 2016.
These have included, among others: Willie Maughan (35) and Ana Varslavane (22), who were last seen alive in Stamullen, Co Meath, in 2015; Elizabeth Clarke (24), who vanished from Louth-Meath in January, 2016; Annie McCarrick (26), who vanished from south Dublin in 1993; Deirdre Jacob (18), who vanished near her family home in Celbridge, Co Kildare, in 1998; Jo Jo Dullard (21), who disappeared in 1995 in Moone, Co Kildare; Fiona Sinnott (19), who disappeared in Broadway, Co Wexford, in 1998; Ciara Breen (18), who disappeared in Dundalk, Co Louth, in 1997; and Giedre Raguckaite (29), who vanished in Dundalk, Co Louth, in 2018.
However, despite the initial investigations having been reviewed and then upgraded to murder inquiries, no victims’ remains have been found in these historical cases. And nobody has been charged in relation to any of the killings.
This is despite the Garda investigation teams securing additional resources – and having greater powers relating to searches and arrests – when a case is upgraded to murder. Indeed, such an upgrade can only take place if a case meets certain criteria suggesting there is the potential for a breakthrough in the event a reclassification is approved.
For now, it remains unclear whether the new searches for Fiona Pender’s body, and the renewed efforts to bring her killer to justice, might yield results 29 years later. But based on past experience, it seems unlikely.
