THE DAUGHTER of Charles Armstrong has appealed for anyone with information about other “disappeared” victims to come forward and help other families who “still haven’t got that peace of mind.”
After the conclusion yesterday of an inquest into her father’s death, Anna McShane said she was glad the inquest was over and that it had brought closure.
“Hopefully, maybe when people see the relief we’ve got, they will come forward and help other families who still haven’t got that peace of mind or that ease. They need the information and unless the information comes out, they’ll never find their loved ones.
“I still would maintain it was something that wasn’t meant to happen,” she said in relation to what had happened to her father.
“And I only hope now that they realise what our families have gone through . . . if they can come forward, anyone else that has this information.”
“I think people are holding back thinking they are putting families through agony and bringing up old sores and that, but there’s nothing as bad as not knowing.” It “eats away at you.”
“You put on a front for people and you carry on with your daily routine and you try and keep your family, that they’re not involved in anything and keep yourselves right, but it’s just eating away at you inside.”
Ms McShane said she believed her father “was just in the wrong place at the wrong time . . . an innocent man . . . no connections with any groups or anything else. He just loved his car and his family.”
She said they had information to suggest it was a mistake.
“It’s our belief that it wasn’t planned. It wasn’t something that was a direct order.”
With regard to the people who killed her father, she said she “would give them the benefit of the doubt”.
“I know it’s hard to believe and hard to say, but I know he was an innocent man.”
She described her father as “a real family man”.
“He was the sort of a man who helped others. He would always be helping out no matter where, let it be jumble sales, anything to do with the church, he would help in any way he could.”
She said he had great time for the elderly and the handicapped.
After the hearing, the head of the investigation team with the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims Remains, Geoffrey Knupfer, also issued an appeal for anyone with information to come forward.