The PSNI officer leading the investigation into the disappearance of Strabane woman Ms Attracta Harron (65), before Christmas said yesterday he now believed she was murdered.
Ms Harron, a retired librarian, was last seen alive on December 11th walking from morning Mass in Lifford, Co Donegal, towards her home on Curley Hill Road.
Following last week's three-day search of rivers and fields in the Border area where the mother of five disappeared, Det Insp John Gilmore said yesterday he had come to the conclusion that Ms Harron has been murdered.
He said he and his officers were following a number of lines of inquiry, and have "one main suspect". Insp Gilmore said the results of last week's search operation, in which specialist equipment and victim-recovery dogs were used, had gone to the National Crimes Faculty in Bramhill, England.
"As a result of that operation, and as a result of a series of earlier search operations, we are now treating Ms Harron's disappearance as murder. No money has been taken from her bank account since she went missing and clinical psychologists have told us that she was not an at-risk person in terms of her behavioural pattern. . ."