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Why did Gardai destroy possible burial site of Irelands longest missing child?

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Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 597 ✭✭✭clfy39tzve8njq


    dense wrote:
    Are you definitely saying that a coroner has previously refused to hold an inquest based on pleas from a family? Not wanting specifics but how do you know?


    Would doubt that ever happened maybe the other way round where the family push for one and it's granted.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,175 ✭✭✭dense


    Would doubt that ever happened maybe the other way round where the family push for one and it's granted.

    Yes, apologies to Jack, that would make more sense alright.

    Interesting newspaper report on some aspects of the service from 12 years ago:

    https://www.irishtimes.com/news/inquest-required-1.1023961?mode=amp


    Edit: From the Coroners.ie website

    "In some deaths, inquests are legally required. In other cases, the holding of an inquest is at the discretion of the Coroner and the next-of-kin can make their views known to the Coroner, if they so wish."


    http://www.coroner.ie/en/cor/pages/inquests

    The rest of that page doesn't give much hope for an inquest in this case.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,804 ✭✭✭oranbhoy67


    Does she have any proof though?
    I'm sure from reading the thread we all have a suspect but none of us can have proof because we were not there at the time.

    I would like to know if there was anyone at the house gerry Gallagher was going to when Mary allegedly followed him?
    Apart from Gerry who is to say that Mary turned back on that day?
    Did the Garda investigate if Mary turned back at all?

    yes the owner of the house said that the Uncle Gerry did arrive with the ladders and that they spoke for a short while


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,175 ✭✭✭dense


    oranbhoy67 wrote: »
    yes the owner of the house said that the Uncle Gerry did arrive with the ladders and that they spoke for a short while

    If you have heard nothing from the Guards about the review that started a few years ago, and considering that the next anniversary is coming up soon, have you thought about how it's going to be marked this year?

    Go on to the Journal and send a "tip" to each of the juvenile "journalists" there asking them if they've heard anything about this famous case review ever concluding, if any progress has been made, because you certainly haven't and your calls and emails are going unanswered.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,124 ✭✭✭by8auj6csd3ioq


    dense wrote: »
    Would doubt that ever happened maybe the other way round where the family push for one and it's granted.

    Yes, apologies to Jack, that would make more sense alright.

    Interesting newspaper report on some aspects of the service from 12 years ago:

    https://www.irishtimes.com/news/inquest-required-1.1023961?mode=amp


    Edit: From the Coroners.ie website

    "In some deaths, inquests are legally required. In other cases, the holding of an inquest is at the discretion of the Coroner and the next-of-kin can make their views known to the Coroner, if they so wish."


    http://www.coroner.ie/en/cor/pages/inquests

    The rest of that page doesn't give much hope for an inquest in this case.
    no problem


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,124 ✭✭✭by8auj6csd3ioq


    dense wrote: »
    Would doubt that ever happened maybe the other way round where the family push for one and it's granted.

    Yes, apologies to Jack, that would make more sense alright.

    Interesting newspaper report on some aspects of the service from 12 years ago:

    https://www.irishtimes.com/news/inquest-required-1.1023961?mode=amp


    Edit: From the Coroners.ie website

    "In some deaths, inquests are legally required. In other cases, the holding of an inquest is at the discretion of the Coroner and the next-of-kin can make their views known to the Coroner, if they so wish."


    http://www.coroner.ie/en/cor/pages/inquests

    The rest of that page doesn't give much hope for an inquest in this case.
    no problem


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,124 ✭✭✭by8auj6csd3ioq


    sorry re double post. keeps happening to me here don't know why


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,804 ✭✭✭oranbhoy67


    dense wrote: »
    If you have heard nothing from the Guards about the review that started a few years ago, and considering that the next anniversary is coming up soon, have you thought about how it's going to be marked this year?

    Go on to the Journal and send a "tip" to each of the juvenile "journalists" there asking them if they've heard anything about this famous case review ever concluding, if any progress has been made, because you certainly haven't and your calls and emails are going unanswered.

    We are marking it the weekend beforehand by having a Vigil outside the County coroners office asking for an inquest
    more details here :
    https://www.facebook.com/events/525742234463745/

    At this time as well as a personal letter from some of us extended family members and Marys twin to the coroner we will be handing him a petition which has over 9 thousand signatures and we hope to get it to 10 in time for the vigil
    you can sign and share that here : https://www.change.org/p/justice-for-mary-boyle-call-on-donegal-coroner-dr-denis-mccauley-to-convene-an-inquest-into-mary-boyle-s-death


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,175 ✭✭✭dense



    That is the kind of coverage that is required.

    It would be no harm if Joe could cultivate a relationship with that journalist to do an indepth piece from his perspective now after the anniversary has passed again, perhaps focusing on how if it had happened today the disappearance would have been investigated much differently in a 21st century childhood protection policing framework and what the 2 ex Gardai "appear" to have alluded to in that documentary.

    This journalist could approach them for some clarity on their previous flip flopping.

    If they refuse a request from him, so be it.
    It wouldn't look great though.


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  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 6 BlackWitch


    I can't post links, I'll just copy and paste this article from village magazine alluding to the goings on in Donegal, Mary Boyle and this whole cover up, it's a disgrace.

    villagemagazine.ie/index.php/2017/11/boiling-over/

    Boiling Over
    Mary Boyle murder and its cover-up may be linked to Anglo-Irish paedophile ring, of which Lord Louis Mountbatten was an alleged member
    by Gemma O'Doherty 21 November, 2017, 3:21 pm

    This March marked the 40th anniversary of Mary Boyle’s disappearance. Ever since she vanished on St. Patrick’s weekend in 1977, a veil of secrecy has shrouded the case of the Donegal schoolgirl who is Ireland’s longest and youngest missing person.

    There are few scandals that embarrass the establishment more, not least because of the sinister role played by senior political, Garda and media figures in suppressing the truth about what happened to the six-year-old. Yet despite a virtual blackout by the mainstream media on all of the astonishing new revelations in the case, the lid is slowly being lifted on this sad and sordid story, and the public is hungry for justice.

    My 2016 documentary ‘Mary Boyle: The Untold Story’ has been viewed almost 600,000 times on YouTube. A recent petition to the Donegal coroner’s office requesting an inquest was signed by thousands in a matter of hours.

    There is growing frustration and fury that justice has not been done and little doubt that the case involves a cover-up of enormous magnitude.

    Few believe the story as it was spun in 1977 when Mary went missing during a visit to her grandparents’ home in Cashelard, Ballyshannon. It is implausible that a little girl, who was born in Birmingham, could simply vanish without trace on an isolated farm while in the company of at least 10 members of her family.

    A ‘Cold Case’ review, set up in the days immediately after the documentary’s release, has resulted in nothing almost a year and a half on, and there is no conclusion in sight.

    It appears now that this review – one of several that have led to nothing – was established to placate public outrage over allegations contained in the film, especially those made by retired gardaí who claim that Fianna Fáil politician Sean McEniff tried to stop their investigation in its tracks.

    Expert legal opinion suggests the Gardaí have ample evidence to make charges, yet nobody has been arrested.

    The last person known to have seen Mary, her uncle and local Fianna Fáil stalwart Gerry Gallagher, has given several unconvincing and inconsistent accounts of what happened the day she went missing.

    His claim that his niece simply vanished into thin air after accompanying him along a laneway on his farm holds no credibility. Gallagher’s failure to admit when initially asked that Mary had been with him is suspicious at the very least. Statements given to gardaí at the time by him and certain other family members are laden with contradictions.

    Some officers who were first on the scene that day say they are in no doubt Gerry Gallagher was responsible for Mary’s disappearance.

    Retired sergeant Martin Collins describes one encounter with Gallagher, where Collins put it to him that he was responsible for his niece’s disappearance. Gallagher, he says, sat in silence and made no attempt to rebuke it.

    Collins, who was initially refused entry to the cottage by the family, also claims he was told numerous times by Ann Boyle – Mary’s mother and Gerry Gallagher’s sister – that she believed Gallagher was responsible.

    Mary’s twin sister Ann Doherty and country singer Margo O’Donnell, a distant cousin, say Mrs Boyle told them the same story. Mrs Boyle appears to have now retracted this belief, and says the matter should be addressed privately not publicly. She has been scathing about the justice campaign for her daughter, and has told Donegal coroner Dr Denis McCauley she does not want an inquest into her death, an astonishing position but one that the coroner supports, depriving Mary, her twin sister and the public of a key mechanism for justice and closure in the case.

    Sergeant Collins also alleges that another close relation of Mary came to him in tears at Ballyshannon station in the days after her disappearance, repeating the claim that he believed Gallagher was responsible.

    Retired detective Aidan Murray, one of the lead Gardaí in the original ‘investigation’ supports Collins’ theories. He claims that during an interview with Gallagher, he was on the brink of getting a confession when he got a ‘nudge’ under the table from his superior officer who ordered Murray to leave the room and get water for the suspect.

    More disturbingly, both officers say they are in no doubt Mary was sexually assaulted before her death. Ann Doherty makes the same claim and says Mary was going to blow the whistle on the alleged abuse and had to be silenced.

    The retired Gardaí also allege that Fianna Fáil’s longest-serving councillor, the late Sean McEniff, made a phone call to Ballyshannon Garda station ordering that none of the Gallagher family were to be made suspects in the case.

    Shortly before his death earlier this year, McEniff denied their claim yet Aidan Murray, the former head of Special Branch in the area, has stated on camera: “I know that as a result of that phone call, certain people were not allowed to be interviewed. It was all hands off them and we were to look somewhere else”.

    Given the power McEniff wielded in almost every aspect of Donegal life, there is little doubt his intervention could have derailed the investigation.

    His legacy of corruption is notorious and was well documented in a recent obituary of him in Village magazine, not least because of his close relationships with Gardaí whom he seems to have been able to order around with impunity, especially where his illegal gaming operation in Bundoran was concerned.

    A 1985 RTÉ documentary ‘Law and Order in Donegal’, reveals the control McEniff had over local superintendent Dom Murray, who was in charge of the Mary Boyle investigation and who told a number of lies about the case in media interviews through the years.

    It offers a damning insight into the incestuous relationship between Fianna Fáil and the Gardaí, which has been used to protect the party from scandal on numerous occasions, not least in the aftermath of the Fr Niall Molloy murder in Offaly in 1985.

    Gerry Gallagher was a crony of Sean McEniff who canvassed for the politician with his brother Michael in the rural townlands of Ballyshannon.

    Like the archetypal mafia don, McEniff’s modus operandi was to acquire dirt on people who might be a threat to him, walk them into compromising positions and dangle the threat of exposure in their faces.

    Superintendent Dom Murray’s wife had a gambling habit which McEniff is claimed to have nurtured while she ran up debts in his Bundoran casinos. This ensured the politician had the officer in his pocket and could use him to bend the law when required.

    In recent months, more disturbing allegations have emerged about McEniff. a young woman has come forward making claims that he groomed and sexually abused her as a child. She says he also forced her to have sex with other men in some of his hotels, while he looked on.

    The woman, who has never spoken publicly about the abuse but is a contributor to RTÉ and other media about another aspect of her life, also says a complaint she made to Gardaí about the abuse went nowhere.

    For decades, there have been rumours that a powerful paedophile network operated in south Donegal involving politicians, businessmen, and other VIPs.

    Its most southerly town Bundoran was home to two notorious industrial schools which housed many vulnerable children who could have been preyed upon by local and visiting abusers.

    St Martha’s, which was run by the St Louis nuns, was dreaded for its brutality. The institution became infamous for the ‘Bundoran shave’, following an incident in 1963 in which eight girls caught trying to escape had their heads completely shorn as punishment.

    Meanwhile, in the neighbouring Sligo village of Mullaghmore, the once-cherished legacy of Lord Louis Mountbatten, mentor and godfather to Prince Charles, is gradually being revised as allegations persist about his possible links to the Kincora Boys Home scandal and paedophilia.

    His bizarre friendship with predatory sex offender Jimmy Saville, whom Mountbatten introduced to the inner circle of the British royal family, has added fuel to the claims.

    Belfast writer Robin Bryans was considered at length in an article by Joseph De Búrca last month in Village. His family connections to the Orange Order gave him access to the secret lives of some members of the British aristocracy. In 1990, he claimed that Mountbatten was involved in an old-boys’ network that held gay orgies in country houses.

    There is growing disquiet about what really went on behind the austere walls of Mountbatten’s Sligo castle, ‘Classiebawn’, where he employed young boys to work for him.

    One of them, Paul Maxwell from Enniskillen, Fermanagh, was his waiter and ‘boat-boy’.

    He was just 15 when he died alongside Mountbatten (79) in an IRA bomb attack during a fishing trip in august 1979.

    Maxwell attended Portora Royal College in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland’s most hallowed school, about which allegations have been made that vice rings were able to procure some of its well-bred students.

    On summer trips to his imposing Victorian castle, Mountbatten got to know locals with influence and similar interests.

    Sean McEniff was one of the first on the scene in Mullaghmore harbour on the day of the explosion. Eyebrows were raised when the Donegal councillor later called for the erection of a memorial to Mountbatten in sligo, generating consternation in some quarters as to why a Fianna Fáil politician from outside the area would take such a stance, and questions were asked as to who exactly he was trying to impress.

    Fianna Fail’s connections with Mountbatten’s close friend Jimmy Saville are well documented. The ‘Top of the Pops’ host who sexually abused hundreds of children at the height of his fame in the 1970s was a regular visitor to Charles Haughey’s Dublin home ‘Abbéville’ in Kinsealy.

    Another close associate of Mceniff, Bundoran beef baron Hugh Tunney, became an unlikely friend of Mountbatten during his stays in Sligo.

    The former butcher’s apprentice, who went on to own the Gresham Hotel in Dublin, came to his aid when he could no longer fund the running of Classiebawn.

    In 1976, a leasing agreement was put in place between the pair which allowed the British royal to visit the 3000-acre estate every August.

    Reported to be a devout Catholic, Tunney was said to be present in the castle saying his rosary on the day the explosion struck.

    Local affection for Tunney, who died in 2011, is thin on the ground.

    Within the castle grounds, a graveyard containing the remains of dozens of unbaptised infants has become the subject of controversy in recent years. In 2006, a group of locals asked Tunney if they could erect a memorial to the children in the burial ground known as Cill na mBochtan, but he turned them down.

    They were forced to place it on the roadside outside the estate instead, leaving a sour taste in the community for the millionaire cattle-dealer. Questions linger as to why he would not grant permission for it.

    Earlier this month, Mountbatten’s murder again came under scrutiny when it emerged that a former British military police officer who worked as his security guard in Sligo had warned superiors several times that his old fishing boat was vulnerable to a bomb attack. The officer, Graham Yuill, said his concerns met deaf ears.

    He was removed from his post shortly before the bombing and was told that Gardaí would be looking after Mountbatten from then on, an unusual decision given his status in the royal family.

    These revelations add credence to theories that his IRA killers may not have acted alone and that he may have been killed for reasons that went deeper than the conflict in Northern Ireland.

    Was a darker side to Mountbatten’s life in Sligo about to be revealed? Did others, apart from the Provisionals, want him dead? Why was security around him so lax given the fact that he was such an obvious target?

    There’s little doubt that powerful forces were involved in Mary Boyle’s disappearance and the cover-up that followed. Is it possible that the sordid world of Anglo-Irish child abuse trafficking networks in London and Belfast, and of associated secret-service blackmailings, outlined in recent months by Joseph De Búrca in Village, had tentacles that reached into Cashelard in Donegal? This might explain the baffling failure by so many Garda commissioners, justice ministers and Irish governments to deal with a case that many believe could easily be solved. it could also provide an insight into why the British authorities have turned their backs on Mary Boyle, even though she was one of their own who went missing, abroad.



    Gemma O’Doherty


  • Posts: 18,749 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    ok, now i understand why this is in the conspiracy theory thread!


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 6 BlackWitch


    bubblypop wrote: »
    ok, now i understand why this is in the conspiracy theory thread!

    Maybe because there isn't a Conspiracy thread.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,175 ✭✭✭dense


    bubblypop wrote: »
    ok, now i understand why this is in the conspiracy theory thread!

    I think you'd like it to be so. Brush it under the carpet like.

    It might be a stretch, but on first glance some of the details mentioned do stack up.

    https://amp.independent.ie/regionals/sligochampion/news/hugh-tunney-was-one-of-countrys-top-businessmen-27582641.html

    http://www.thejournal.ie/savile-haughey-thatcher-1212851-Dec2013/

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/541793/SNP-activist-killed-over-child-sex-files

    Sometimes truth IS stranger than fiction.

    Can you give an explanation for the seemingly endless and open ended "reviews" of the case of Mary Boyle??

    The autonomous "local coroner"?

    The ministerial washing of hands of this case?

    Its all a bit too Fr. Molloy.
    Dark Ireland.

    The cops don't want to touch it because it'll bring their colleagues who investigated it originally (poorly and haphazardly) into disrepute.

    That wouldn't do, there's enough cràp on their plate from Donegal without bringing more unwanted attention onto themselves.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 86 ✭✭Clair4


    I wish this and other stories like this were all made up jesus christ and to think people worship these people in power and the royals and to think that corruption is only for the feckers on the dole . My dad's friend was in letterfrack his mother left him there as she wanted to marry a new man , she later had more kids. He was sold to work in a factory at 14 he never told my dad anything else he just said you don't want to know that ,&please don't ever ask me that again. Just horrendous what went on


  • Posts: 18,749 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    BlackWitch wrote: »
    Maybe because there isn't a Conspiracy thread.

    You do realise that this thread is in conspiracy theories yea?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 568 ✭✭✭mikeymouse


    bubblypop wrote: »
    You do realise that this thread is in conspiracy theories yea?
    Theories as opposed to actual ?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 54,257 ✭✭✭✭tayto lover


    Unfortunately this thread is full of theories, innuendos, accusations, wishful thinkings and half truths. Very little fact.
    Certain posters just use this thread to fling mud and not to get at the truth.
    I have always said that the full truth lies within the family.
    We will never get to it unless those family members who know what happened finally come out and tell the truth. I have a feeling that they will take it to their graves and a poor innocent girl will never get justice or a decent burial and that's the pity of it all.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,804 ✭✭✭oranbhoy67


    Unfortunately this thread is full of theories, innuendos, accusations, wishful thinkings and half truths. Very little fact.
    Certain posters just use this thread to fling mud and not to get at the truth.
    I have always said that the full truth lies within the family.
    We will never get to it unless those family members who know what happened finally come out and tell the truth. I have a feeling that they will take it to their graves and a poor innocent girl will never get justice or a decent burial and that's the pity of it all.

    this is the one thing we are sure off, & it is where we are trying to put pressure, I know why you are sceptical about us getting answers and you are probably right to be but a few of us are doing everything in our power to make sure that these people cant keep hiding the truth, nor take it to their grave .

    There may be FF involvement, I certainly believe McEniff attempted it, but I don't know how serious he thought things were at the time, the Garda are definitely guilty of poor police work at the time, not wilfully they were just undertrained I believe.. something we could forgive them for if their modern counterparts would put more pressure on the guilty party,

    but truthfully and realistically the one thing I am 100% certain of is it is a family cover up and we will keep at that family until something gives.. if nothing does give and these people are allowed to die with their secrets then we will turn our attention to the government and Gardai and demand answers on why they didn't listen to us whilst they were alive.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,175 ✭✭✭dense


    Very little fact.

    I have always said that the full truth lies within the family.

    Well how does the case progress from the standstill its been at for 40 years?

    It's stuck in a time warp, for reasons that do not need to be even discussed.

    Being realistic, unless the state urges the cops to get real and produce a non whitewash report of the garda handling of the original investigation nothing changes.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,995 ✭✭✭Ipso


    oranbhoy67 wrote: »
    this is the one thing we are sure off, & it is where we are trying to put pressure, I know why you are sceptical about us getting answers and you are probably right to be but a few of us are doing everything in our power to make sure that these people cant keep hiding the truth, nor take it to their grave .

    There may be FF involvement, I certainly believe McEniff attempted it, but I don't know how serious he thought things were at the time, the Garda are definitely guilty of poor police work at the time, not wilfully they were just undertrained I believe.. something we could forgive them for if their modern counterparts would put more pressure on the guilty party,

    but truthfully and realistically the one thing I am 100% certain of is it is a family cover up and we will keep at that family until something gives.. if nothing does give and these people are allowed to die with their secrets then we will turn our attention to the government and Gardai and demand answers on why they didn't listen to us whilst they were alive.

    Let's not forget there have been cases in recent years of politicians contacting judges to reduce sentences. Just because he may have done this doesn't prove the deepest darkest conspiracy theories, just pure and simple gombeenism.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 568 ✭✭✭mikeymouse


    I just watched that series on BBC3 "The man with no alibi"presented by Bronagh Munro
    and wondered would she look at this case in the hope of finding some answers
    or at least keeping the story in the public eye?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,804 ✭✭✭oranbhoy67


    mikeymouse wrote: »
    I just watched that series on BBC3 "The man with no alibi"presented by Bronagh Munro
    and wondered would she look at this case in the hope of finding some answers
    or at least keeping the story in the public eye?

    I contacted her but with no reply sadly

    But we do have something coming up with her organisation which I will post about as soon as I know it is being aired.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,124 ✭✭✭by8auj6csd3ioq


    10.15 RTE one "Missing a Prime Time Rewind" is about mary Boyle.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,439 ✭✭✭tupenny


    Really hope this programme at 22.15 pushes people who know anything foward.
    This thread should not be under conspiracy. It wasn't UFOs


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,769 ✭✭✭✭Muahahaha


    Jesus it really is incredible how big the search was for Mary. 1000 people, over 100 army personal, a helicopter and a water search unit. And still nothing, it is nothing short of astonishing.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 54,257 ✭✭✭✭tayto lover


    Muahahaha wrote: »
    Jesus it really is incredible how big the search was for Mary. 1000 people, over 100 army personal, a helicopter and a water search unit. And still nothing, it is nothing short of astonishing.

    How far could a 6 year old travel in that terrain? It looks very difficult.
    I wonder if they dug up that ditch the uncle was filling in?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 14,086 ✭✭✭✭Johnboy1951


    10.15 RTE one "Missing a Prime Time Rewind" is about mary Boyle.

    ..... and Maghera transmitter off air ..... :(

    Might get it on Catch Up ....


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,059 ✭✭✭Gorgeousgeorge


    Anyone watch the documentry on youtube? Gemma o doherty?


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,175 ✭✭✭dense


    Anyone watch the documentry on youtube? Gemma o doherty?

    Thought it was very good. Solely responsible for enlightening the twitter and facebook generation who'd never heard of the case IMO.

    The one last night wouldn't have been made with the cops focusing on their LOCAL appeal and local suspicions without it.

    That never happened before that documentary.
    It's less of a mystery now what happened to her ie it's not as innocent as just falling into a hole, but again, that's just my opinion.

    What I got from both is that now it is believed she met with violence.


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