Free Missing by Barry Cummins

years of campaigning is evident on both their faces. Before Jo Jo vanished, Mary and Martin Phelan were farmers, tending to cows and sheep on their ninety-acre farm. They were also
parents, rearing their two children. Imelda was eight and Melvin was five when their aunt Jo Jo was taken from them. Since November 1995 Mary and Martin Phelan have spent most of every day
planning, pressuring, fund-raising, phoning, faxing and pleading with the power-holders in society for help in finding Jo Jo. Mary told me of the shock she felt when a garda told her they knew more
than they were saying.
    This senior garda told me that they thought they knew where Jo Jo might be buried. It’s a section of private land. The garda also told me that a man had made
     contradictory statements. We later hired a private detective, who approached this man on the pretext of seeking directions to a golf course. All the detective could tell us was that he got a
     very uneasy feeling about the man. He also said the man had a deep scratch on his face. It could be something, or it could be nothing, but all we want is for this private land to be searched.
     Surely if someone makes two different statements there is at least grounds for serious suspicion.
    The Phelans have long campaigned for all land within a twenty-mile radius of Moone to be combed thoroughly for clues to Jo Jo’s whereabouts. This search would extend over
both public and private land in Cos. Kildare and Wicklow. Mary and Martin Phelan have met successive Ministers for Justice and the Garda Commissioner to argue their point. The lands remain
unsearched. One senior officer who reviewed the case strenuously denies that the Gardaí were in any way reluctant to follow this line of inquiry.
    Yes, this man did make two different statements about what he did and where he was on the night Jo Jo disappeared. We now know he was in Moone at around the time Jo Jo was.
     He had earlier been over in Co. Offaly and was heading home. There were certain discrepancies in his statements. He told us he had been genuinely mistaken in his first statement and was sorry,
     that it wasn’t malicious. You need more than that to get a search warrant. That’s the law we work under.
    It was at the Phelans’ home in Grange that Jo Jo lived from the age of sixteen, having moved from Kathleen and Séamus Bergin’s house in Callan. For months
after Jo Jo’s disappearance Mary couldn’t face going into Jo Jo’s old bedroom, or looking at her old schoolbooks, or clothes, or posters. Eventually the precious keepsakes were
gathered up and put away for safe keeping.
    When the Gardaí began their investigation into the disappearance of Jo Jo Dullard, a number of people came forward with information that suggests she may have accepted not three but four
lifts that November night. Detectives had quickly traced the two motorists who had given her lifts from Naas to Kilcullen and from Kilcullen to Moone. But a number of people were now reporting
seeing a woman hitching a lift in Castledermot, Co. Kildare, five miles south of Moone, at about 11:55 p.m. This time would correspond with Jo Jo getting a lift in Moone at about 11:40 p.m. Four
people reported seeing a woman matching Jo Jo’s description in Castledermot that night; two of those witnesses saw the unidentified young woman thumbing a lift on the Carlow side of the town,
near the Schoolhouse restaurant.
    This new information threw a different light on the investigation, one that remains to this day. If the woman in Castledermot was Jo Jo Dullard, whoever gave her a lift from Moone to
Castledermot has never come forward. Why is this? Did the same person circle back to Castledermot and offer her a further lift and then attack her? If the person is entirely innocent, why do they
remain silent? Do they know the identity of the person who gave Jo Jo the fourth lift, or did they spot anything that might be of use to the Gardaí? One detective agreed that the person