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

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  

Eva Brennan, 39, of Rathgar, County Dublin, went missing on Sunday, 25th July 1993 after leaving her parents’ home in Terenure, South Dublin and walking the 15-18 minute distance back to her apartment at Madison House on Rathgar Road. Her missing person cold case is often included in Ireland's so-called Vanishing Triangle of women who went missing on the East coast of Ireland from the early to late 1990s. Eva was formally reported missing to An Garda Siochana on Tuesday, July 27th by her father Davy Brennan when relatives had not heard from her since the recent Sunday afternoon. While it is believed Eva did return to her apartment on the Sunday afternoon, because the jacket she was wearing to her parents’ house was later found in her apartment, no witness sighting or CCTV footage recorded her on the journey home. A delayed missing person inquiry was opened in the first week of her disappearance, thorough and forensic searches (of land and water) for Eva in the locales of Rathgar

At the time of her disappearance Fiona Sinnott was living in the rural village of Ballyhitt, Broadway, County Wexford, Ireland, some 120 kilometres south of Dublin City. Fiona was a young single mother, and her daughter Emma was eleven months old at the time of her mother’s disappearance. 19 year old Fiona Sinnott spent the night of Sunday February the 8th 1998 socialising with a group a friends in Butler’s Pub in Broadway Co. Wexford not far from her rented home. Fiona’s friends described Fiona as being happy that night, and in good spirits. However, her friends would later tell Gardai that Fiona was also complaining of pain in one of her arms. Fiona had been the victim of domestic violence in the past and the report of pain in her arm raised the suspicions of Gardai when examining the case. Also in Butler’s Pub that Sunday night was Fiona’s ex-boyfriend and the father of her child, he did not join Fiona and her friends and spent the night drinking at the bar alone. At roughly midnigh

Ciara Breen, 17, from Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland went missing on 13th February 1997, on Bachelor’s Walk where she lived with her mother in a small terrace house. She was last seen by her mother Bernadette, who said at the time that they had both gone to bed just after midnight. That day they had gone to a local café for evening dinner then returned home. According to Bernadette, she was due to get the results of a biopsy the following morning from Blackrock Clinic and Ciara was worried about this. The two had a short conversation on Bernadette’s bed before both going to sleep just after midnight. After 2 am, Bernadette got up to go to the bathroom and discovered Ciara was not in her room, nor her own bedroom. It was not the first time Ciara had snuck out during the night. She had left a window on the latch on the bottom storey of the house and it is believed she did so, so that she could climb back in. It is considered the most likely scenario in Ciara's case that she decided

The Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home (also known as St Mary's Mother and Baby Home) operated between 1925 and 1961 in the town of Tuam, County Galway, Ireland. It was a maternity home for unmarried mothers and their children and run by the Bon Secours Sisters, a religious order of Catholic nuns, that also operated the Grove Hospital in Tuam. Unmarried pregnant women were sent to there to give birth and interned for a year doing unpaid work. In 2012, the Health Service Executive (HSE) raised concerns that up to 1,000 children from the Home might have been sent to the United States for the purpose of illegal adoptions, without their mothers' consent. Subsequent research discovered files relating to a lower number of 36 illegal foreign adoptions from the home and concluded that allegations of foreign adoptions for money were "impossible to prove and impossible to disprove". Local historian Catherine Corless published an article documenting the history of the home in 2012