The murders of a prostitute, Ms Belinda Pereira, and a Galway taxi-driver, Mrs Eileen Costello-O'Shaughnessy, and the rape of an eight-year-old girl in Cork city are among 10 cases for which a £5,000 reward was announced yesterday.
The reward will be paid to anybody giving confidential information leading to an arrest and charge in each of the murder cases, and a resolution of the missing persons cases.
The £50,000 reward fund has been set up by Irish Crime stoppers Trust, which has been running a confidential information line since last year. Funded by the Dublin Chamber of Commerce in association with the Garda, Crimestoppers has received more than 6,000 calls, its director, Mr Ciaran Conlon, said.
Six missing women - Ms Fiona Pender, of Tullamore, Co Offaly; an American student, Ms Annie McCarrick; a Kilkenny woman, Ms Jo Jo Dullard; Ms Ciara Breen from Dundalk; and a Wexford woman, Ms Fiona Sinnott - are among the 10 cases. The reward is also being offered for information on Mr William "Jock" Corbally who, although officially missing, is believed to be buried somewhere in Co Dublin, after being murdered in a drugs feud.
The reward is also available in the case of the murder of Mr Felix McCann, a homeless man whose body was discovered in a shed in Stepaside last January.
The Deputy Garda Commissioner, Mr Noel Conroy, welcomed the initiative at its launch in Dublin yesterday morning.
The Cork rape happened last April when the eight-year-old girl, who was playing with her sister, was lured by a man to an area of waste ground. Mrs Costello-O'Shaughnessy was found murdered at Tinker's Lane outside Galway last December. Gardai have appealed for information on two men in the area at the time her car was abandoned, and two passengers on the early Galway-Dublin train on December 1st, who spoke with English accents.
Ms Pereira was beaten to death in an apartment at Mellor Court, Dublin, in December 1996. Ms McCarrick left her home in Sandymount on March 26th, 1993, and has not been seen by family and friends since.
