GARDAÍ SEARCHING for missing Co Offaly woman Fiona Pender yesterday ended an excavation of a remote site on the Laois-Offaly border without finding any trace of her remains.
The dig began after a cross bearing Ms Pender’s name was found in a picnic area near Mountrath, Co Laois, on Sunday.
Supt Kevin Donohoe of the Garda Press Office said while the presence of the cross indicated there may be human remains at the site, nothing had been found.
“We’re satisfied that it has been a negative result,” he said.
The search concluded at about 3.30pm yesterday. Supt Donohoe said the cross was undergoing forensic examination and that results could yield clues as to its origin.
He also said a number of people who had seen the cross at the popular hill-walking spot in the past fortnight had contacted gardaí.
He stressed that, while the excavation phase of Ms Pender’s missing person’s inquiry was now complete, gardaí were still appealing for anybody with information on the case to come forward. He added it would be speculative to say the cross had been a hoax. Its origins or the reason it was placed at the spot were still unknown.
Ms Pender’s mother last night expressed “bitter disappointment” that no trace of her daughter had been found. Josephine Pender said: “I have been through hell in the past 12 years.” Mrs Pender appealed for anyone with information about her daughter’s disappearance to come forward “and put me out of my misery”.
“Someone in Tullamore knows what happened to Fiona,” she added. “Whoever put up that cross has some information. I would appeal to them to please come forward to explain why they put up the cross,” Mrs Pender urged.
The crude wooden cross, measuring about 0.76m (2.5ft) high and bearing the words “Fiona Pender RIP”, was found by walkers in the Monicknew woods, in the parish of Camross, by the Slieve Bloom mountains.
Members of the Garda Technical Bureau, including soil experts and cadaver dogs from the Garda Dog Unit, have searched the site since the weekend.
Two areas were excavated but gardaí do not believe the soil in either plot, which were adjacent and measured 3.05m by 3.05m (10ft by 10ft), has been disturbed in recent decades.
Ms Pender (25), a part-time model and hairdresser, was last seen at the apartment where she lived with her partner at Church Street, Tullamore, Co Offaly, on the morning of August 23rd, 1996.
Officially the case has remained a missing person’s inquiry but since her disappearance no evidence has emerged to suggest she is still alive. Ms Pender was seven months pregnant at the time and had bought clothes for her baby. She had shown no signs of planning to leave the area.
In 1999 her case was included in a major new Garda inquiry, Operation Trace, which was set up to investigate any links between Ms Pender’s disappearance and the cases of other women who went missing in the Leinster area in the 1990s. That operation has never been formally closed but no link between any of the cases was ever found.
They included: Annie McCarrick, the American student last seen at Johnny Fox’s pub in Glencullen, Co Wicklow, in March 1993; Josephine Dullard, who went missing after phoning a friend from Moone, Co Kildare, in November 1995; Ciara Breen, who disappeared from her Dundalk home in February 1997; Fiona Sinnott, who went missing from Bridgetown, Co Wexford, in February, 1998; and Deirdre Jacob was last seen on July 28th, 1998, outside Newbridge, Co Kildare.