Gardaí investigating the disappearance of Tullamore woman Fiona Pender are winding down a search of a wooded area in the Midlands this evening and are satisfied there are no remains at the site.
The search was set to conclude at 5pm after gardaí searched two areas but discovered no evidence connected with the unsolved case.
Fiona Pender was seven months pregnant when she went missing 12 years ago
The searches began earlier this week following the discovery of a makeshift memorial cross with the name of Ms Pender written on it in the woods near Mountrath, Co Laois at the weekend.
The cross was found by walkers in the Monicknew woods, in the parish of Camross by the Slieve Bloom mountains, on Sunday. Garda sources said the date of Ms Pender’s disappearance was also scrawled on the back of the cross, but other details were not released publicly to alleviate any distress experienced by Ms Pender’s mother, Josephine, and her brother, John.
Ms Pender (25) vanished on August 22nd, 1996. The part-time model and hairdresser was pregnant when she went missing from the flat she shared with her partner.
Two excavations were carried out yesterday and searches began again at 9am today. Detectives and crime scene personnel hand-dug sites using trowels, at a patch of ground measuring about three metres by three metres.
But Supt Kevin Donohoe of the Garda Press Office said this afternoon that digging had been completed at 3.30pm and a final sweep of the site would finish at 5pm.
“We are satisfied that there are negative results”, Supt Donohoe said. He said it was unclear if the cross was left in the area as a hoax and to suggest this would merely be speculation.
The cross is still being examined by Garda technical experts and results will not be available for a number of days, he added.
“People in Tullamore know what happened to her and we will take information in any shape or form that could give closure to Mrs Pender,” Supt Donohoe said.
Mrs Pender earlier expressed hope that her daughter would be found, although she admitted a sense of hope had "diminished" somewhat yesterday as the search failed to yield anything.
She said it had been a "surprise" to see the cross that had been found because it was the first thing ever found in the case of her daughter's disappearance. Mrs Pender urged anyone who had information, or the person who had placed the cross at the location, to contact the family, even if they did so anonymously.
"[If they could] just let us know why they put it there," she said. Appealing to anyone who had information, she said: “Please, please tell me where Fiona is because I want her back. I want to get her back. She doesn’t deserve to be thrown somewhere. She deserves proper burial and all that goes with it.”
Mrs Pender said that not knowing where her daughter was had left her "desolate".
“It’s very desolate. At least with my husband and my son I can go to the grave and pray…with Fiona there’s nothing.”