Free Missing by Barry Cummins Page A

may
have crucial information.
    We must assume first that the woman hitching in Castledermot is Jo Jo. Certainly, the timing is right: it’s just before midnight. And whoever that woman was, she has
     never been located. And not one but four people saw this unidentified woman in the town. Neither the woman nor whoever picked her up have ever been located. That mystery driver could be the
     breaking of this case.
    In February 1997, fifteen months after the disappearance of Jo Jo Dullard, the Gardaí released new information that raised the distinct possibility that Jo Jo might have
been taken against her will a further fifty miles south, as far as Co. Waterford. The news came after a taxi driver contacted the Gardaí with a deeply disturbing story that raised the
possibility that Jo Jo might have been attacked by not one but two men. He gave a story that he had kept to himself for over a year. At about 1:20 a.m. on the morning of 10 November 1995 he was
driving along the main road at Kilmacow, three miles north of Waterford, when he saw a red car with English number-plates parked at the side of the road. One man was urinating beside the car.
Suddenly he saw a woman running from the left-hand rear door of the car towards the front. She had bare feet, and seemed distressed. Within seconds a second man appeared, also from the back of the
car. He followed the woman, grabbed her by the hair, and got her in a bear hug; he then dragged her back to the car. It then took off in the direction of Waterford. The taxi driver had seen all
this happen in a matter of seconds as he drove past the car; yet it would be more than a year before he reported it. A senior officer who has worked on Jo Jo Dullard’s case from the beginning
believes this reported sighting may yet yield results.
    The report by the taxi driver opens up a number of lines of inquiry. It is more than disappointing that the man waited over a year to come forward. I think he was advised by
     someone close to him that it was none of his concern and that he should keep out of it, but he eventually came forward, and better late than never. We have our suspicions as to who the two men
     were. The car was described as a red-coloured Ford Sierra Sapphire or Ford Grenada, with English registration plates. Despite the foreign registration, we believe the two men in the car were
     Irish. But it just makes you think. If it was Jo Jo who was spotted by the taxi driver, she was taken over fifty miles from where she made the phone call in Moone.
    In February 2000, more than four years after Jo Jo Dullard disappeared, 35-year-old Larry Murphy, a self-employed carpenter and father of two, abducted a woman in Carlow. He
disarmed her by punching her in the face, fracturing her nose. He bound and gagged the terrified woman, who he placed in the boot of his car, then drove her first to an isolated spot at
Beaconstown, Athy, and then to a forest at Kilranelagh, near Baltinglass, Co. Wicklow. At both places he subjected the woman to prolonged sexual assaults. He then attempted to murder her by putting
a bag over her head. Two men stumbled upon Murphy and his victim, and Murphy fled. He was arrested the following day, and once the full picture of his terrible crime was established, detectives
from Operation Trace were immediately alerted. They were conscious that the route Murphy had travelled that night, with his victim in the boot of his car, was very close to both Moone and
Castledermot. In driving her from Athy to Kilranelagh he had crossed over the N9 road close to where Jo Jo Dullard had been hitching a lift in November 1995. Murphy had never come to the attention
of the Gardaí before he repeatedly raped and attempted to murder the woman in February 2000. After he had been sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment, two senior gardaí went
to meet him in prison. He politely told them he had no information about any missing women.
    A total of nine people, including a number of