In October 2008, 24-year-old James Patrick Grealis vanished without a trace from Breda, Netherlands, leaving behind only questions and heartbreak. The Irish carpenter had moved across Europe chasing work opportunities, but on October 23rd, he simply disappeared. With no confirmed sightings, no known enemies, and no explanation, his case remains a haunting mystery—closed by authorities but never forgotten. Did he meet with foul play, vanish voluntarily, or is there a missing clue waiting to be uncovered? Seventeen years later, James’ family still seeks answers. Join us as we explore the strange and unsolved disappearance of James Patrick Grealis.  

Elizabeth Clarke was officially reported missing in January 2015, though there have been no confirmed sightings of her since November 2013 (witness statements). Gardaí suspect she was murdered around the time of the last confirmed sighting. She reportedly left the home of her ex-boyfriend at Claremont Estate, Navan, Co. Meath on a November evening in 2013 around 7 pm in the company of two other women. The circumstances of this departure have never been fully made public. What is known is that Elizabeth (Lizzy) had been estranged from her family for quite some time before, had two young children with her boyfriend Kevin Stanley, and her natural family only became aware of her true disappearance in 2013 following the death of her grandfather and repeated efforts to contact and alert her of his death failed. She only became a formal missing person case in January 2015. This timeline is about filling in some of those disturbing gaps. In February 2025, her case was upgraded to murder follo...

Jimmy O'Neill, aged 16, disappeared from Waterford City on December 15th 1947, just over 77 years ago.  His case remains the oldest active missing person case in Ireland. He worked for a shipping company in the local Waterford City area. If Jimmy O’Neill is still alive, he would recently have celebrated his 93rd birthday. However, his family have strong reasons (beyond just the passing of time) to believe that he is no longer alive and in March 2023 decided to add his name to the family's headstone in Ballygunner, Co. Waterford. His case is also the oldest Radio Espial has ever investigated and we are grateful for the information provided by Jimmy’s remaining family members.  

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.  

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.  

Imelda Keenan, 22, of Mountmellick, County Laois, was living in Waterford City, Ireland when she was reported missing on January 3rd, 1994. She was living in a rented flat in Waterford town on William Street. Imelda Keenan’s fiancé, who would regularly stay at the flat, would later state to gardai that she told him she was going to the post office to pick up her unemployment benefit and some cat litter at a shop around 1:30 pm. Her brother Ned would formally report her missing that evening. However, in reality, no substantive and confirmed evidence ever emerged of Imelda for the two weeks prior to January 3rd and the previous Christmas period of 1993. This is a case with a multitude of different questions and anomalies that soon arose for Imelda’s family and gardai investigating her missing person case. 30 years on, we still don’t have many of those answers.  

In this final episode in our Missing & Murdered series, we examine The Forgotten Cases (Part 3). The episode follows on from the first two parts - six much lower profile unsolved cases of missing women, some presumed and some confirmed murdered. These cases are often considered on the periphery of the mythical Irish Vanishing Triangle and have sadly been neglected by the media, authorities and others in recent years and we should be honouring their memories and showing them the proper respect and support that they deserve.  

For the past three decades, through news media articles in print, TV and radio shows, podcasts, documentaries and dramas, we have been sold an unproven illusion, that one or more serial killers were rampant in Ireland during the late 80s and 90s. And one devious suspect was responsible for multiple such cases of missing person cases and the deposition of bodies found in the vicinity of the Dublin and Wicklow mountains and the man who may have been responsible for many of those cases is Larry Murphy. It’s time we addressed the core media myth of Ireland’s Vanishing Triangle and its real origins. Here is your first clue. No Irish police investigation ever mentioned the phrase ‘Vanishing Triangle’. Operation Trace was not set up with the specific intention of finding Ireland’s Serial Killer. In episode 51 of Radio Espial - Missing & Murdered: Ireland’s Vanishing Triangle - Misinformation, Brian Goggin explored the origins of media misinformation across a number of cases. In this epis...

This episode is the first in a series about Ireland's so-called Vanishing Triangle of missing women. This part specifically deals with the media and reported misinformation on the cases and provides an introduction into the following parts of the Radio Espial mini-series. Misinformation, be it mainstream media, social media or simple casual talk among friends, can be very damaging to missing persons cases, particularly to the victims’ families who graft interminably on the behalf of their loved ones. It can stall investigations, inhibit those who may have information coming forward, reduce interest both in the cases and the victims, and worse, create confusion and needless speculation when a lack of information creates a vacuum. Someone out there will always be only willing to fill that vacuum, even when they have limited facts and have their own editorial agenda for grabbing headlines and delivering opinions based on nothing.  

Since we recorded our original Timeline on the Marie Kilmartin case, we have been in contact with her daughter Áine once again and would like to bring you the following update that sheds a great deal more background on the case. However, we felt the information provided stretched far beyond just a short few minutes of update. So much, that we have decided on an unplanned Radio Espial Episode 50. I want to state that what follows is not one of our normal case Timelines and Analysis. It is testimony and an account of the tireless work and research Áine has carried out into her mother’s initial disappearance in 1993, the later discover of her body at Pim’s Lane, a bogland, six months later. Marie Kilmartin’s case is classified as a murder case by An Garda Siochana and included a series of arrests between 1994 and 2008. No one has yet been charged with her murder as of 2024. Following our broadcast of the Marie Kilmartin Case Timeline, Áine, her daughter posted a very lengthy comment on th...

Marie Kilmartin, 35, of Beladd, County Laois, Ireland attended work at a local day-care nursing home (Portlaoise Area Social Services – P.A.S.S.) at 11 am on 16th December 1993. At 3.45 pm, two of Marie's female co-workers dropped her home and watched her walk to her front door. When Marie's housemate arrived home from her job at 6 pm, she found that Marie was not there and none of the lights in their house had been switched on. The housemate also found the house alarm was set and Marie's groceries were still unpacked hanging on a kitchen chair. A later forensic examination of Marie's home uncovered no evidence of a break-in, nor what may have led to her sudden disappearance. Gardaí did discover that around 4:20 pm on the same day, 16th December, a phone call was made to Marie's landline phone which lasted for two and a half minutes. The call was traced to a payphone in Portlaoise near St. Fintan's Hospital. A witness would later come forward stating that she sa...

On Sunday, March 22nd, 2015, 31-year-old Dean Roche set out from his home at Hebron Park, County Kilkenny, Ireland by taxi to travel to Ballyfoyle, a journey north through the county of about 20 mins plus. Dean Roche had travelled there to purchase a cheap car he had spotted for sale on social media. He reached the car seller’s private property and after about an hour completed the sale and received the car logbook. After leaving the seller, he crashed the car a short distance away and headed back on foot in the direction he had come. The events of the rest of that evening remain clouded in mystery as to what did and what specifically occurred. What is certain is that several incidents of trespassing and attempted house burglary were reported to local gardai that night, and an incident of a car stolen from the premises of a resident. Dean Roche was reported by witnesses to have been in the general Ballyfoyle area that night after 9 pm. Later, a woollen Manchester United hat and a pair ...

On Tuesday 3rd May, 1988, two people were sighted on horses around the area of Powerscourt, County Wicklow, Ireland. One was recognised as Lynda Kavanagh, the other person was not immediately identified, but believed to be Priscilla Clarke, the Kavanaghs live-in nanny. Two days later, Lynda Kavanagh’s body was recovered from the local River Dargle. Priscilla’s body was never recovered and her family were never able to bring closure and finality to her disappearance. She was aged 25 at that time and the mystery of her disappearance has lasted for 36 years.  

Patricia Furlong (21) from Dundrum, Dublin spent the night of Friday, July 23rd, 1982 with friends at her local pub, the Nine Arches. Just before midnight, some of the group of friends decided to head to the late night Fraughan Festival held at Johnnie Fox’s pub, Glencullen, in the Dublin Mountains. In the early hours of the morning she was witnessed leaving the venue to go on a walk with a man described as dressed in an ‘all-white-suit’. Patricia never returned to her friends at the venue. Around 8 am on Saturday July 24th, two teenage girls out for a morning walk discovered Patricia’s dishevelled body lying in a field. She was dead following a brutal strangulation with her own upper clothing. Within weeks, a man emerged as a prime suspect, but it would be many years later before he was finally charged with the murder of Patricia Furlong. Nothing proved straightforward in this case… a case 42 years later that still remains unresolved. It will be a lesson to police, families and the g...

In this episode of Radio Espial, we have news and updates on three murder cases and one missing person case in Ireland. This episode was recorded on March 28th, 2024. The cases Ciaran and I cover are: Annie McCarrick Tina Satchwell Emer O'Loughlin Brian Kinsella  

Brian Kinsella went missing from his family home in Gracedieu Heights in Waterford, Ireland on the 17th November 2021 He told his parents that he was heading to a phone shop to have his new device looked at after having problems with it. This was just after 9 am. He was due in work at 12 pm at Musgrave’s Cash & Carry where he worked for his daily shift. He never turned up for work and soon it was established that he also never visited the phone shop in Waterford. He was last seen on CCTV near Grattan Quay in the town at 10.10am that morning. No trace of him or the reasons behind his disappearance were ever discovered. He was reported missing on the day of his disappearance at 7 pm. An extensive local, land and sea search began soon afterwards lasting many weeks and months right into February 2022. His case soon captured local and national media attention in Ireland due to the efforts of his family and friends. To this day, in 2024, substantive leads have never emerged. Subsequen...

Sophie Toscan du Plantier, a 39-year-old French woman, was killed outside her holiday home at Toormore, Goleen, County Cork, Ireland, on the night of 23rd December 1996. Her badly beaten body, still dressed in white nightwear and outdoor boots, was discovered by a neighbour the following morning close to an entrance gate at the bottom of her holiday home driveway. British journalist Ian Bailey, who lived several kilometres from Toscan du Plantier's home in Ireland, was a suspect arrested twice by the Garda Síochána, yet no charges were laid as the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) found there was insufficient evidence to proceed to trial. Bailey lost a libel case against six newspapers in 2003. He also lost a wrongful arrest case against the Gardaí, Minister for Justice, and Attorney General in 2015. In 2019, Bailey was convicted of murder by the Cour d'Assises in Paris, and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was tried in absentia in France after winning a legal battle aga...