Gardaí have concluded a search of bogland in Offaly as part of the Fiona Pender murder investigation.
Gardaí confirmed that the search and excavation for the missing woman’s remains on lands at Graigue, Killeigh, finished on Tuesday evening.
The operation took place over two days, near Ms Pender’s native Tullamore, Co Offaly, which is a relatively short period for such operations in historical homicide cases.
However, Garda sources said the search and dig was never expected to take any longer than 48 hours.
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Early on Monday, Garda Headquarters confirmed the search had begun, adding the Pender case had been upgraded from a missing persons inquiry to a murder investigation.
Ms Pender, a 25-year-old hairdresser, she was last seen at her flat on Church Street, Tullamore, early in the morning of Friday, August 23rd, 1996.
The man who was in a relationship with Ms Pender when she vanished had criticised the initial Garda investigation, including the fact he was arrested for questioning, and that a farm slurry tank and well had not been searched.
John Thompson, who has lived in Canada for many years, told gardaí Ms Pender had been in the flat when he left for work that morning. Despite a very significant search operation, including large sections of the Grand Canal being drained, no trace of Ms Pender has ever been found. She was seven months pregnant at the time and when she vanished a major Garda investigation got under way within days.
Mr Thompson, who was the father of Ms Pender’s unborn child, was angered by the fact gardaí appeared to base some of their investigation into her disappearance on a theory that he was somehow involved.
“It is just not good enough for them to suggest that we disposed of her and then leave it at that,” Mr Thompson, then aged 24 years, said in an interview with The Irish Times in August 1997, a year after the disappearance, adding he took a “dim view” of the fact he had been arrested.
Mr Thompson spoke to The Irish Times four months after he had been arrested for questioning about the case, on suspicion of withholding information. He was one of five people – two men and three women – arrested at the same time in the Laois-Offaly region.
They were all released without charge and none of them has been rearrested in the intervening 28 years. Despite the investigation into Ms Pender’s disappearance having continued since 1996, and now being upgraded to a murder inquiry, no further arrests have ever been made.
In his interview, Mr Thompson insisted gardaí had moved too slowly to begin their search when Ms Pender, who he was living with at the time, went missing. He said he did not want to be seen “to be giving the guards the fingers... but the fact remains that she is still missing”.
[ Fiona Pender murder: Can fresh searches unlock a case 29 years later?Opens in new window ]
He pointed out that the slurry tank on his family farm had not been searched and that other locations had also not been checked. “They [gardaí] will tell you that they searched high and low, but they did two searches on this farm and there is a well outside the door, and it was never searched. At the end of the day, Fiona is out there somewhere and it is their job to find her. I just want to highlight the fact that she is still missing.”
He added that when he was arrested in April 1997, gardaí had no evidence to suggest he was involved in Ms Pender’s disappearance, and he took a “dim view” of the arrests made.
Mr Thompson said at the time he was “hopeful” that Ms Pender and their child, who would have been 10 months old in August 1997, were still alive. He found it hard to believe Ms Pender could disappear from a busy town like Tullamore and for the matter to remain unexplained. “I feel that someone might have seen something, but is afraid,” he said.
The Thompson family are farmers from a Church of Ireland background and Ms Pender’s family are Catholics who lived on the Connolly Park local authority estate in Tullamore. Much was made of the different backgrounds they were from and that the Thompson family did not approve of the relationship.
But Mr Thompson told The Irish Times that theory was “not even worthy of comment... But I deny it.” He added: “We are not bigots and nor are the Pender family.”
