As we reach the end of 2024 with Radio Espial EP62, Brian and I thought we would take a look at some recent case updates and developments. We also consider what lies ahead for the channel in 2025. We are deeply humbled by our subscription growth and support. Thank you all for that and we wish you a peaceful Christmas with family. We will see you all in 2025. Happy New Year and on to our next features and timelines.

Missing Persons Day, hosted by the Irish Department of Justice, is an annual commemorative day for families and friends to remember their missing loved ones. Missing Persons Day also provides a nationwide platform to appeal to the public for information on missing persons. Radio Espial's Brian Goggin reports on his experience of this year's event at Croke Park, Dublin.    

Conor and Sheila Dwyer, from Fermoy, Cork, Ireland, aged 62 and 60 respectively, were last seen and heard from between April 30th and May 1st, 1991. On May 22nd of 1991, they were reported missing when two family members along with gardai entered their Chapel Hill house only to find it empty and undisturbed. No trace of the couple has ever been found over the past 33 years. This is the story and timeline of their disappearance.  

Six-year-old Irish boy Kyran Durnin rose to national and international attention in August 2024 when he and his mother Dayla were both reported formally missing by a concerned family member. In reality, Kyran had been missing for almost two years when his mother left a note with family that she was leaving to take time out and get herself sorted. By September 2024 a slow and complex unravelling of a double missing persons case became public knowledge with widespread national appeals in Ireland. Irish police finally tracked Kyran’s mother down in the UK. During interviews, she could provide no information whatsoever to the whereabouts of her (then) eight-year-old son (if still alive). The investigation team quickly became suspicious and upgraded the missing case of Kyran Durnin to murder.  

Mark Duffy, aged 43, went missing from his home in Navan, County Meath, Ireland on October 3rd, 2022. That morning, he left his home to collect a social welfare payment at a local post office in the Johnstown Shopping Centre. He was picked up on CCTV footage shortly before 11 am at the post office and later that day at a Centra supermarket on the Commons Road just before 3 pm and appeared to be crossing a road and heading back in the direction of Parnell Park where he lived. Mark never arrived back home that day. He was due to start a new job as a construction site foreman. He was formally reported missing without contact with his family on the 13th of October, 2022. What really happened Mark Duffy that October day?  

In June 1973, seven-year-old schoolboy John Joseph Horgan from Palmerstown, Dublin was bludgeoned with a wooden club in a field close to his home while his mother was out visiting her next-door neighbour in hospital. She had entrusted the neighbour’s grandmother to watch over her son until she returned home. This is one of the most complex and disturbing murder cases we have ever covered. A case Irish authorities chose at the time to shove into what we refer to as Ireland's Pandora's Box.