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July-August 2018
O
N 9 November, 1995, 21-year-old Jo
Jo Dullard was travelling home to
her flat in Callan, County Kilkenny.
She caught the 9pm bus from
Dublin to Naas, and hitched a lift
with first one and then another man as far as
Moone, in County Kildare. From a phone box
in the village, she made a call to her friend
Mary. Their conversation was interrupted
when a car stopped beside the phone box in
response to Jo Jo’s waving hand. Jo Jo returned
to bid a hurried goodbye to her friend, assur-
ing her she would be home that evening, and
hung up the phone. No-one has heard from Jo
Jo since that night.
Official response to Jo Jo’s disappearance
was initially muted, as her frantic family
reported a four-day delay in those early, cru-
cial days. The investigation rapidly gained
momentum, however, and the missing Kilk-
enny woman became headline news, as gardaí
and Dullard’s family made repeated requests
to the public for information, in local and
national newspapers, and a variety of tips and
rumours fuelled the nationwide search.
Dullard’s disappearance has now been the
subject of two separate dedicated investiga-
tions in addition to the initial inquiry:
Operation TRACE, which was established in
1998 to explore possible connec tions bet ween
the disappearance of a number of other
women in a geographical area dubbed the
‘Vanishing Triangle’; and, most recently, one
established in 2017, based in Naas Garda sta-
tion, in direct response to pressure from her
family.
Jo Jo’s sister, Mary Phelan, who passed
away in April, spoke to
The Irish Mirror
last
year of her disappointment with the progress
of the case to date, alleging a number of
Re-enact the events
of the missing
21-year-old Kilkenny
woman, consult the
FBI, be proactive –
or nobody new will
come forward!
Jo Jo case in limbo, 23 years on
by Caitriona Kirby
Members of Dullard’s family
and John McGuinness TD insist
that an individual local to the
area where Jo Jo was last seen
warrants further investigation
NEWS
failures on the part of the Garda over the
years. According to Saoirse McGarrigle, Phelan
claimed to have been informed by a “senior
garda” that officers “knew the identity of the
man who abduc ted, raped and killed Jo Jo”, but
that the investigation “won’t go anywhere”.
Phelan insisted also that an unsigned letter she
received from a woman claiming knowledge of
the case was never “acted on” by the Garda.
The relationship between Jo Jo’s family and
the Garda, strained from the earliest days of
the investigation, disintegrated entirely in Janu-
ary 1999 during Operation TRACE, when an
anonymous Garda source leaked information
on an abortion obtained by Jo Jo a few months
prior to her disappearance, and suggested that
this “may have caused Jo Jo to feel suicidal”.
The
Evening Herald
quoted, at the time,
Phelan’s response to the revelation:
“Whoever that garda was, he has betrayed
a confidence. My brother told the Garda about
the abortion in strictest confidence.
She had an abortion in England three weeks
before she disappeared.
But she was not feeling down. She was in
good spirits on the night she disappeared”.
Alan Bailey, the national coordinator for
Operation TRACE, reflects that the Garda’s ina-
bility to “mend the damage” in the relationship
with the family was one of his biggest regrets.
He agrees that a member of the Garda was
responsible for the leak, but reiterated what he
wrote in his 2014 book on Operation TRACE,
Missing, Presumed –
that he has no idea who
was responsible, and could offer no insight as
to the motivation for that leak, insisting, “this
malicious act was, at the very least, not done
by or on behalf of anyone at Operation TRACE”.
Bailey does acknowledge that reports of Jo
Jo’s abortion were, in part, responsible for the
split between TRACE’s investigative focus, and
the ‘popular’ assumptions attached to the
case; though he also positions these various
theories of her disappearance within the f rame-
work of the “heightened speculation” that
attaches itself to high-profile cases, writing,
“We were met, during the course of our
enquiries in the Moone area, with the sugges-
tion that ‘the dogs in the street’ knew who had
abducted and killed Jo Jo, and were later
accused of all being par ty to a government con-
spiracy to cover up the suspect’s identity.
Equally, it was claimed, ever ybody know where
her body was buried, yet the Gardaí had done
nothing about it”.
Two suspects have emerged in these con-
flicting narratives of the case. Members of
Dullard’s family insist that an individual local
to the area where Jo Jo was last seen warrants
further investigation. John McGuinness (TD), a
long-time advocate for Jo Jo’s family, empha-
sised this point in conversation, noting that
one of their chief criticisms of the investiga-
tions to date is that gardaí “never
investigated the lands” in Kildare which
they believe are connected with Jo Jo's
disappearance.
Bailey, however, insists that this individ-
ual has been questioned, and that enquiries
were made connected with the land in ques-
tion, and he suggests that another man,
whom he pseudonymously refers to as
Michael Henry in
Missing, Presumed
, was a
focus in the TRACE investigation. At the time
of Jo Jo’s disappearance, Henr y had recently
completed “a lengthy prison sentence for a
very serious sexual assault” and a number of
witnesses claim he was travelling the same
route from Dublin that night. There were,
unfortunately, according to Bailey, evidentiar y
issues with the case – elements of the witness
statements, for instance, which later proved
unreliable, undermining any potential case for
prosecution.
Mary Phelan, however, had dismissed the
latter suspect, couching this angle as further
evidence of an attempt to derail and deflect
the investigation; further machinations of a
“government conspiracy”, which had already
attempted to “smear” Dullard through revela-
tions of an abortion, and suicidal ideation.
John McGuinness is also critical of the latest
investigation into Dullard’s disappearance,
which he views, at best, as a continuation of
a Garda refusal to more actively investigate
the case. Referring to it as a “desktop inves-
tigation”, he has called instead for a complete
re-enactment of the case in line with American
techniques and approaches to missing per-
sons cases. He argues that this failure to
either adapt a more proactive approach, or to
request help directly from law-enforcement
agencies such as the FBI, “troubles” him a lot,
and he suggests that the systemic refusal to
do so on the part of the Gardaí prevents any
potential new witness from coming forward.
“Someone”, McGuinness is convinced, “knows
something”.
July-August 2018
1 5
Even the Garda’s unsolved-
cases coordinator sympathises
with the family's perception
of a “government conspiracy”,
which had already attempted
to “smear” Dullard through
revelations of an abortion, and
suicidal ideation
Jo Jo Dullard Alan Bailey, national coordinator for Operation TRACE

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