In Search of the Missing Read online

  When I met up with Áine later, she said, ‘I’m so ashamed of Lucy. She jumped up on top of the guide I was with last night.’ I thought nothing of it either. We should have been more alert, but we were so focused on finding the missing child that we simply never stopped to look at the bigger picture. The fact that Lucy was a young bloodhound also entered into it, as at that point we hadn’t been working with her long enough to trust her fully. But something kept niggling at Áine, and when she signed out at the search base later that day, she mentioned to one of the older gardaí that she thought there was something strange about the student. The garda nodded but said nothing. Áine added that Lucy had jumped up on him, but felt she was being ignored and so she walked away.

  That particular day, Bob and I were accompanied by a garda. The controller had asked us to concentrate on certain fields, a massive area of over a hundred acres. It was a nightmare. The worst thing you can have in any search is a load of unsupervised civilians. Everywhere we went, there were at least five other groups of independent searchers, each group consisting of four or five people. Most of them were unsupervised, volunteer searchers, and many of them walked around aimlessly. Some had not even bothered to sign in, yet signing in and out is essential, not only to get instructions on where to search but also to let the controller keep track of all searchers, note areas covered, and ensure that everyone returns safely to base. While these volunteers were well-meaning people, they were ruining the trained dog searchers’ chances of finding the missing child, and were creating the possibility of unknowingly interfering with evidence.

  The following day, Bob and I searched Curragh Woods, which lies in a long, narrow glen, with a river flowing alongside. Other trained searchers there were frustrated by the number of unsupervised volunteers in the area, who were proving more of a hindrance than a help. It was obvious that the concentration levels of these independent searchers were low. They were chatting non-stop. Concentration in a search is never easy. A searcher is probably effective for only about an hour or two at a time. Having constantly looked at the ground for clues that may lead to a body, tiredness sets in and the eyes give up.

  As the days and nights went by, the fear among local parents for their own children kept growing – more so when it came to light that there were some registered paedophiles in the area. According to the newspapers, locals only became aware of their presence when the paedophiles were brought in for questioning by the gardaí.

  Having spent several days searching, I had to go back to work. By then, a young German woman called Jenny, who had trained with us for twelve months, had joined the search with her two dogs, a Briard-collie-cross and a collie-shepherd named Noah and Peramus. Both had been certified by the German police as search dogs, and she searched with the dogs for five or six days but was unsuccessful.

  On Wednesday 12 January everyone’s worst fears were realised. The boy’s mobile phone had been traced to an isolated area near Inch Strand, about eleven miles from Midleton. Even when a mobile phone is switched off, it gives off a faint signal. Two men – searching as part of a group of volunteers led by army and garda personnel – were combing through the area, when they came upon a small body hidden in gorse and scrub at the side of a bóthairín leading to the beach. The body was partly covered in plastic and appeared to have been dumped. Later, the fingerprints taken from the plastic sheeting proved vital. Back at base, news that a body had been found came out over an open microphone in a room full of journalists. Shortly afterwards, the remains were identified as the body of the missing child. A post-mortem showed he had died of asphyxiation.

  On the day of the boy’s funeral, the town of Midleton came to a standstill. The funeral Mass at the Church of the Most Holy Rosary can only be described as extremely sad and distressing. For the first time, Áine and I saw the child’s heartbroken parents. Often, when searchers meet the families of the missing while a search is ongoing, the searchers’ commitment intensifies and they find it hard to give up the search without finding the missing person. They become hooked. In the churchyard afterwards, people huddled together in groups, talking and consoling each other, overcome with grief, genuinely heartbroken. Many of them were searchers who had come to pay their respects.

  Already, the rumour mill was spinning out of control. People whispered that the gardaí had over thirty suspects on their list. But nobody was prepared for what was around the corner, as another local family was about to become part of the terrible tragedy. Within days of the boy’s funeral, news broke that an arrest had been made. The man taken into custody and charged with the manslaughter of the young boy was shown on TV3 news. Although his face was not visible, Áine immediately recognised him as the student who had acted as her guide and whom Lucy had body-banged. ‘I knew it!’ she said. ‘I knew the dog was right!’ She was fuming to think that he had gone out searching with her through the night instead of going down to the garda barracks to make a confession. She felt even worse about having failed to pick up on what Lucy had been trying to tell her. I was dumbfounded. I just couldn’t get my head around it. Never in a million years would I have thought he could possibly be responsible. The words Neil Powell had tried to drill into us over and over again at training sessions in the Wicklow and Mourne Mountains came ringing in my ears: ‘Always trust your dog.’

  People on the street were traumatised by the arrest, with the sympathies and loyalties of many now becoming torn between the two neighbouring families at the centre of the tragedy.

  Áine and I were called to the garda barracks to make a statement about how we became involved in the search, how we carried out our search, what the student said on the night, and if there was anything that stood out about the case. Later, we were summoned to the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork. The atmosphere there was very official. We were asked if the student had shown an interest in a tracking dog’s ability to detect scent in a car or in a river, and in the use of bloodhounds. We got little chance to say much else, and felt we had failed to give Lucy the credit she deserved. After the hearing, we stood at the back of the court, and when the state solicitor came along, we told him how disillusioned we were with the whole procedure, which had denied us the chance to give our full story. ‘Sometimes, all you can do is give yes or no answers,’ he said. ‘That’s just the way the system is.’

  The student was sentenced to four years in prison for the manslaughter of the young boy. He was released on 16 January 2008, having served three years.

  Drownings at Owenahincha

  It was the first Sunday in September 2006. Owenahincha beach in west Cork was a little quieter than usual as the summer season was drawing to a close, the schools had reopened, and most of the families who had summer houses or mobile homes in the area had returned home. But there was still plenty of activity, with children playing in the sand and strollers on the beach striding along at their ease. Among them was a twenty-three-year-old undergraduate, who was leisurely walking along with his parents, enjoying their company and having a chat. The young man had much to look forward to in life. He was a gifted soccer player who had played in the Collingwood Cup, and was due to graduate from UCC in only a matter of weeks. When a young couple in the water started screaming for help, the young man threw off his shoes and ran into the sea to save the drowning pair, as his mother, fearing for his safety, pleaded with him not to go.

  At the same time, another young man – a thirty-seven-year-old businessman – was walking the strand with his fiancée. They happened to be in the area having attended a wedding in nearby Rosscarbery the day before. Their own wedding was planned for the following February. Once the young man saw the couple struggling in the sea, he grabbed the nearest lifebuoy and raced as fast as he could into the water.

  On that Sunday morning, conditions on the strand were bright and breezy. But the ocean was wild and treacherous. During the week, tides had been extremely high, and, as a result, the currents and undertow were much more powerful than usual. There were no l
ifeguards on duty; lifeguards had been employed at the beach all through the summer months by Cork County Council, and their contracts had expired only two days before.

  As the drowning pair grabbed the lifebuoy from their rescuers and clutched it with all their might, a huge wave enveloped them, swept them crossways in the direction of the strand, and brought them safely back to shore. The two young men who had jumped in to save them were left behind to struggle in the angry sea. Both men were good swimmers, but they were no match for the swelling waters at Owenahincha, which quickly overpowered them and carried them further out to sea. By the time help arrived minutes later, both men had disappeared from sight. On shore, an ambulance crew treated the surviving couple for shock and hypothermia. Both had come to Owenahincha for a local market; she was from Kilkenny, and he was originally from Wales and had been living near Bantry for the past year.

  The following Tuesday, the body of the thirty-seven-year-old rescuer was found in deep waters directly off Owena-hincha by Gaia, a trawler based in Union Hall, west Cork. There was no trace of the remains of the younger man.

  Days later, the missing man’s mother contacted my sister Celine, and asked if I would be willing to join in the search for her son. Celine knew him well as he had worked with her part-time while at college. Without delay, Celine, Áine, Glen and I drove to Owenahincha. Áine took along Zak, and I brought Bob. Glen volunteered to act as liaison. We met the controller of the search, Brian Lotty, a teacher from Riverstown and a friend of the missing man’s family. In the field of search and rescue, Brian was an amateur and had never before taken on such a task but did so at the personal request of the family. But he was some operator: of all the controllers I’ve ever seen in action – and the vast majority of them would have been professional – he was by far the best. He was efficient, straight-talking and had an air of authority about him. Everything was organised down to the last detail: fuel tankers for the boats, food for the searchers, nothing was overlooked – he was the ideal controller.

  Having listened to his excellent briefing, Áine, Celine and Zak stayed on shore to carry out a land search. Bob and I went out on the sea with a diving team in an RIB (rigid inflatable boat). From the shoreline, the sea was deceiving. It looked calm and smooth. But the swell of the ocean was actually huge.

  In water searches, intense concentration is necessary. You can’t afford to be distracted or to take your eyes off the water as the missing person may pop up for only a second before becoming totally submerged again. Staring continuously down into the water and the moving current becomes tiring. If the watch lasts for more than a few hours, you are likely to become ineffective due to exhaustion. At best, my concentration levels would probably be effective for two to three hours, no more.

  Only twenty minutes into the search, when we were only a mile or two from shore, Bob gave his first indication. He began to whine like a child, which is his natural way of signalling the scent of a dead body, just like Eiger. Both of them were always very sensitive dogs. One of the other three men on board noted Bob’s indication on a map, as well as the distance from the shoreline and a rock within our view.

  We moved on along the shore, then swung around and came back. We wanted to check if Bob would repeat the indication at the same point. Sure enough, he indicated again on almost the identical spot. Knowing how Bob behaved, I told the crew that if we stayed any longer at the point of indication, Bob would become so frustrated that he was likely to jump off the boat. On making a find, a dog expects his favourite toy to pop out of the water, as that is how we train them, and Bob was now growing impatient. We moved on once again.

  All day long, the garda and navy divers had been out searching in the waters. As they were fairly near us – maybe only a quarter of a mile away – we made contact with them on the radio to fill them in on Bob’s indication. They moved up alongside us in their RIBs. To show them what was happening, we circled around again and then returned to the scent cone. As I wanted everyone to see that I was not influencing Bob’s behaviour, I turned my back to him. Seconds later, one of the divers shouted at me that Bob was trying to jump into the sea. I was in no doubt that Bob was getting scent from the water, but I was also aware that the current and winds can influence the point from where the scent rises. The divers noted the area of indication. They then decided to call a halt for the day as it was becoming too late to continue diving. They suggested they would begin from the same spot the following morning, and work towards the shoreline. We all headed back to base, where Brian Lotty gave an excellent debriefing.

  Meanwhile, on shore, Zak had also given an indication. He had been standing with Áine and Celine on a rock – known locally as Submarine Rock – when he signalled. The area he barked at was located somewhere between the shoreline and our RIB. His indication matched Bob’s.

  On the Saturday, I returned to the scene at around 10 a.m. as the controller had phoned to ask us to continue the search. I was taken out on the sea with Bob on another RIB. The other searchers, who had started earlier that morning, had intensified their search of the area surrounding the point of indication given by Zak and Bob. We hadn’t been out very long in the water when we got a phone call to say that they had found the body of the young man. It had been washed up near Submarine Rock, the place where Zak had indicated. Later, the navy gave credit to Bob and Zak by saying that the body had been located because everyone had concentrated on the area indicated by the dogs. They were so impressed with how the dogs had worked that they very generously invited us along with the dogs to train at their water facility at the naval base.

  Áine and I couldn’t bring ourselves to attend the young man’s removal. At the time, it seemed the right thing to do – maybe we were just too close to the tragedy and knew too much about him and his family because of the links with Celine. As searchers, we often try to ignore the impact search-and-rescue operations can have on us. There are times when we feel we’ve escaped, come out without a scratch, immune to all the pain around the situation. But the memory always lingers; often, it lies hidden beneath the surface, watching and waiting to catch us off guard. Months after the young man’s death, Áine was attending another removal following a tragedy when she was unexpectedly introduced to his parents. Her mouth dried, her face flushed, and she dashed off, unable to speak to them. She took some time to compose herself, and returned later to apologise. The empathy she felt was deeper than she ever imagined, but it had lain almost dormant until then, and might never have surfaced had she not come face to face with his parents. She tries to stay detached, to avoid becoming familiar with the personal details surrounding missing persons and their families. It’s her way of coping, of keeping her eye on the ball and getting on with the job.

  To this very day, the young man’s heartbroken mother still phones me just to say thanks again for our help. She believes that there was no way her son could have stood idly by and watched the young couple drown. He had to help. On a working holiday in America only two years earlier, he had also saved the life of a young boy. He was a true, selfless hero, as was the other young man who answered the cries for help on that first, tragic Sunday in September.

  Coole Mountain Tragedy

  In April 2007 we got the shout. A young Tipperary man had disappeared after a rave party in west Cork. The twenty-five-year-old went missing after he attended a party on Coole Mountain near Dunmanway. There was grave concern for his safety, especially as he was an insulin-dependent diabetic.

  A massive search got underway, and focused mainly on the mountainside and forest outside the town. Volunteers came out in their hundreds, and joined forces with the gardaí, Coast Guard, naval divers and a helicopter. The search had been ongoing for several days before Glen Barton and I were called in with the dogs – Lucy the bloodhound and air-scenting Bob. Glen was only starting out in search and rescue, and he came to observe, to get a feel for a real-life search. Training sessions fail to adequately reflect real-life scenarios, and search-dog tests bear
very little resemblance to realistic search operations. As training confines searches to specific areas and within certain boundaries, Glen needed to experience the reality of a search for himself, to sense the urgency, feel the drive, get that adrenaline rush, and he had come to Dunmanway as part of the learning process. We began by listening to a briefing.

  At 9.30 a.m. on the Sunday after the party, the young man had contacted his family and told them he was lost. He sounded very distressed. Many people in the Dunmanway area said they had sightings of him. One person reported spotting him walking along the road in Moneyreague, about eight miles from the town. A farmer told how he had seen a strange young fellow in his farmyard in the dark of night, and described him as being drenched to the bone. When the farmer approached him, the young man said he was very frightened because he was being chased. The farmer hunted him away, and he thought the stranger had headed off down through the fields. That was actually the last sighting of the missing man.

  After the briefing, we set off with a local guide. We had been asked to search with Lucy through the town of Dunmanway, and then to move out from the town on foot to a few locations in which there had been possible sightings. As it was 7 p.m., the town was relatively quiet, but the garda cars and dogs signalled activity. Once the locals became aware of our presence and saw the dogs working, throngs of people appeared from nowhere. Some came out of the pubs with their drinks, stood with their backs to the wall and watched us as we searched. Others gathered in groups, whispering in doorways, following our every move.

  Lucy showed her exceptional powers of concentration. She sniffed around the feet of people on the main street and down alleyways, ignoring any distraction around her. She smelled all along the bottom of doorways and up the sides. When we came to a raised bed of flowers, she walked along all the sides of the perimeter; scent can lodge in these holes and hollows. Any time I work with her, I feel like a passenger. Áine, being Lucy’s owner and trainer, understands her much better. Whenever I handle Lucy, she teaches me something new on every search, and moves at such a fast pace that I barely manage to keep up with her. In some ways, working with air-scenting dogs is easier on the handler as they usually work without a lead, can range ahead, and the handlers do not have to follow every step of the way. Normally, bloodhounds are not let loose while searching, but work on a thirty-foot line attached to a harness, which means that everywhere the bloodhounds go the handlers must follow. Any dog can trail, but bloodhounds are better than others because that’s the way they’re bred. They possess a natural ability to follow scents regardless of what’s happening around them. Give them an article to scent, take them to where the missing person was last seen, and they’re away.