Offaly murder probe: search for Fiona is search for justice

UNTIL her dying day, Josephine Pender's wish was that the remains of her only daughter Fiona would be located and given a Christian burial.

Sadly, it never happened and Josephine, 68, went to her own grave in September 2017 without seeing justice done.

There is no doubt that Josephine would have found it interesting that this week the case of her missing daughter has been upgraded to a murder investigation.

Because like many of the gardai who investigated the case once 25-year-old Fiona disappeared in August 1996, she quickly came to the conclusion that a murder had been committed.

And in common with detectives involved, she was certain she knew the killer. In an interview with the Tullamore Tribune four years before her death, Josephine said it remained up to those with any information to come forward and she believed the person responsible for the disappearance had told others of what he had done.

The late Josephine Pender pictured greeting well wishers at a walk in memory of her daughter Fiona (Picture: Tom O'Hanlon)

“He has to have said something to somebody or got somebody's help. But they know and if they can live with it in their conscience I can't make them come forward and help us,” she said.

She said the years without Fiona were “a lifetime”: “It's tough but I still miss her terribly. We were such great old buddies and I miss her going shopping. Even when I hear things now and I would say 'God, I must tell Fiona that' and that's still there with me.”

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She lost her son Mark in June 1994 to a motorcycle accident and then her daughter, the hairdresser and part-time model Fiona, went missing.

Fiona's father, Sean Pender, died tragically at the family home in Connolly Park, Tullamore in 2000.

The only remaining child, Fiona's other brother John, erected the stone memorial (pictured below) at Fiona's Way on the bank of the Grand Canal, just a few hundred metres from the Pender family home.

Josephine believed her daughter was murdered and her body buried.

She said of the killer: “He destroyed all of us. He didn't just destroy Fiona, he destroyed every member of the family.”

“Fiona's baby would have been nearly full-term. Fiona was nearly eight months pregnant so that's a fully formed baby. When whoever harmed Fiona, the baby would have stayed alive for a while I believe, inside her body.

“And it's tough thinking of that. If we got to Fiona in time, when it happened, if we couldn't have saved Fiona we could have saved the baby.”

A woman of faith who had worked in the local parish centre, she said the investigation into Fiona's disappearance should continue as long as it took to find her remains so she could be given a Christian burial.

“I won't let her be forgotten. I still have visions of just finding her and laying her to rest properly with a bit of dignity. That was taken away from her.”

Fiona was sharing a flat in Church Street with her boyfriend. She met her mother in the Bridge House for coffee, accompanied by Fiona's younger brother John, who was 12 at the time, and went to the Bridge Centre and bought some baby clothes.

They were to meet again the next day but Josephine knew something was amiss when she went to the flat. “I looked and it was all closed up as if there was no one there, the curtains were drawn. Fiona didn't like the dark, she always had some of the two curtains open so that light would come and shine in.”

Gardai began an investigation and a suspect known to Fiona was identified. “They brought them in for questioning but it's very hard to pin something on anybody without a body or without a crime scene,” said Josephine.

“I have my faith. I'm not a 10 o'clock Mass-goer every day but I say my prayers and I have a good faith and I know she's up there in heaven with the daddy and her brother and I would love to go and be with them.”

Now, with the 29th anniversary of Fiona's disappearance approaching this August, there is still no body and, despite what the garda tape at the bog site pictured below says, no knowledge of a definite scene where the crime of murdering the woman took place.

This week's search is not the first. Searches took place at the canal, a farm and in the Slieve Bloom mountains.

In 2008 a wooden cross was found at Monicknew woods in the Slieve Blooms with the words 'Fiona Pender. Buried here, August 22nd, 1996' written on it.

Though some believed it may have been a hoax, gardai took it seriously enough to conduct a major search and dig across a two-acre site. Nothing of interest to the investigation was found.

A source close to this week's operation described it as a “follow-up”, indicating it was being done because of information previously given regarding possible sites.

The search concluded this evening (Tuesday, May 27) and gardai said the results are not being released for operational reasons.

But there is little sense that a breakthrough is coming. The search for justice continues.