'Jo Jo Dullard deserves to be laid to rest after all this time'
Superintendent Paul Burke (left) speaks to the media on Monday afternoon at Naas Garda Station about the arrest of a man on suspicion of the murder of Jo Jo Dullard. Picture: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin
The arrest and searches relating to the murder of Jo Jo Dullard came just two days after the 29th anniversary of her disappearance, which was marked on Saturday with a remembrance ceremony in Kilkenny Castle.
Just last week, her hopeful sister Kathleen Bergin told the Irish Examiner that she would give a hug to anyone who came forward with information about her beloved Jo Jo, saying it would have been the greatest gift the family could receive.
On Monday, the family was being kept informed of developments in the case, including the arrest of a man in his 50s on Monday morning, searches of two private houses and a planned search operation on open ground at a location in Co Wicklow near the Wicklow/Kildare border.
The 21-year-old was last heard from when she made a phone call to her friend Mary Cullinan from a phone box in Moone, Co Kildare at 11.37pm on November 9, 1995. A plaque has been placed at the site by the family in memory of their sister, who was a native of Callan, Co Kilkenny.
At the time of the phone call, Jo Jo was on her way home from Dublin, where she had enjoyed socialising in Bruxelles Bar, Harry Street, Dublin 2. She had left home in Callan at 8.30am that morning and had hoped to get a bus back home to Kilkenny that night but missed it.
She instead took a bus to Naas, Co Kildare. Her intention was to then hitch a lift back home to Callan and managed to get a spin from Naas as far as the N9 at Kilcullen, Co Kildare, according to gardaí.
She managed to get another lift to Moone, Co Kildare, at around 11.15pm, from where she made the last phone call to Mary Cullinan.
She cut the phone call short and told Mary that a car had stopped and she was going to take the lift. No further sighting was made of Jo Jo after that and she failed to make contact with home. Concerned about her, Kathleen made a report to gardaí that she was missing and a missing persons case was launched.
However, the investigation into her disappearance was upgraded to murder in 2020, after the case was examined by An Garda Síochána’s Serious Crime Review Team. The upgrading coincided with the 25th anniversary of her disappearance.
Her disappearance is one of a number of cases of missing women in the east of the country which remain unsolved and which were the basis for the establishment of the special garda Operation Trace.
The operation was set up to specifically examine the disappearances of six women in Leinster between 1993 and 1998. They included Deirdre Jacob who disappeared in Newbridge, Co Kildare in 1998, and Annie McCarrick in Wicklow in 1993. The investigations into both of those women’s disappearances have also been upgraded to murder probes.
On Saturday, gardaí said that the Dullard investigation had “progressed and nearly 800 recommendations have been identified”.
They highlighted that the young woman would have been carrying her Sanyo Stereo cassette Player (model MGP21) with her on the day she disappeared and appealed to anyone who had seen it after November 9, 1995 to come forward.
Gardaí asked if anyone had received such a cassette player “from a friend or person that could not tell you from where they received it”.
Last week, Kathleen Bergin begged anyone with information about her whereabouts to come forward and told the : “This is not about revenge — at this stage, 29 years later, all we want is to bring her back and lay her to rest alongside her mam and dad.
"She deserves that now after all this time. It would be the best gift that somebody could give us.
"I know people are probably afraid to come forward but we are hoping and praying that they realise that we would just give them a hug if they came forward and helped us. Honestly, it would be the best present ever.
“During covid, people couldn’t hug their loved ones and were only able to do it when restrictions lifted. We can’t hug Jo Jo ever again but at least if we had her resting place, if we knew where she was, we could go and lay flowers and take care of her resting place. At least we could do that for her.”
On Saturday, Kathleen and other family members, supporters and friends gathered at the monument for the missing in the grounds of Kilkenny Castle, where prayers were said for Jo Jo by Fr Willie Purcell.
Jo Jo would have turned 50 in January of this year. At the time of her disappearance, both her parents were dead — her mother died in 1983 while her father had passed away before she was born.
She was the youngest of five siblings and her sister Mary Phelan became a familiar face in media appeals for information about her.
Today, just two of her siblings remain alive — her sisters Kathleen and Nora, and they await the outcome of the first significant developments in the 29-year search for answers.
