The Provisional IRA has admitted it murdered Mrs Jean McConville, a mother of 10 who "disappeared" from her west Belfast home in December 1972, one of her daughters has said.
Mrs Helen McKendry said yesterday she recently met members of the Provisional IRA, appointed to "internally investigate" the incident.
Mrs McKendry was reluctant to give details of the meeting, which took place a few weeks ago at an undisclosed location, but said the men confirmed the IRA had killed her mother 26 years ago. Some of the men she met were present when Mrs McConville was detained in a house off the Falls Road, she told BBC Radio.
It is believed the woman may have been held and interrogated for several days before her death. Mrs McConville (37) was a Protestant married to a Catholic former soldier.
Mrs McKendry has been told by the RUC that she cannot seek to get the body unless she can pinpoint its precise location.
The IRA grouping gave no reason for the abduction and refused to say where she was killed. But she has been told her mother's body was located in a park in west Belfast, beside a building due to be demolished.
She was told that former members who had information were afraid to talk about the murder for fear of being killed. Mrs McKendry, who was 15 years old when her mother was abducted, said: "I would welcome an IRA statement to these people to tell them that they have nothing to fear," she said.
Mrs McKendry, whose husband Seamus is spokesman for Families of the Disappeared, believed her mother's remains would never be given up as the badly beaten body of a woman, perhaps with multiple broken bones, might make "people turn".
But she said the IRA members told her the locations of five other bodies of the "disappeared" might be disclosed soon. There are believed to be more than 14 bodies in all that are termed the "disappeared".