INTERVIEW:LAST WEEK forestry workers cut down hundreds of densely planted trees on a disused bog in a remote upland in Co Monaghan.
This morning a team of forensic archaeologists will begin to supervise the painstaking removal, one by one, of their roots. What Geoff Knupfer calls “refined information” has led to a new search in Bragan, Co Monaghan, for the remains of Columba McVeigh.
Knupfer, chief investigator with the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains, points out that back in 1975, when an IRA gang is believed to have buried the body of the 19-year-old Tyrone man here, the trees in this plantation – some of them now 30 metres tall and never thinned out – would have been small saplings. The ground, meanwhile, would have been easy to dig.
For Knupfer’s team, the dig is anything but easy and, whereas the IRA required no evidence whatsoever on which to base its choice of McVeigh for execution and Disappearance, the process of trying to recover his body is complex and intricate, relying on the expertise of forensic scientists, mappers, researchers, civil engineers, detectives, imagery analysts, forensic archaeologists, geophysicists and dog handlers. It starts with the taking of DNA samples from the closest surviving relatives of the victim.
The IRA needed a large team, too. People to set the victims up, to kidnap them, drive them across the Border into the Republic, provide a safe place in which to interrogate them, and someone to murder them.
It needed people to reconnoitre, select a burial place, dig the grave, bring the body, dump it, take the operatives away, destroy the evidence and intimidate those who might consider informing the authorities. Many of those involved will have been citizens of the Republic, where all but one of those known to have been Disappeared are presumed buried.
The IRA prolonged the agony for the families of the Disappeared by denying involvement for decades. McVeigh’s mother, the late Vera McVeigh, spent 23 years longing to hear from her son before learning from a newspaper story he had been Disappeared in 1975.
The commission takes care not to compound the trauma and has a liaison officer, Jon Hill. “We ensure that no family ever finds out about anything we do other than from us,” says Knupfer. “We also try to manage expectations.”
The families involved have had their hopes dashed before.
Knupfer, a Yorkshire man who has 30 years’ experience as a detective and has also worked in academia, has pioneered the use of forensic archaeology in the UK. He was invited to review the work of the commission in 2004, when the flow of information it had initially received had all but dried up. It was he who advised “going on the offensive” to find remains.
“We need every fragment of information we can get,” he says.
“We need to hear from people who don’t even think that what they saw or heard is of any significance.”
In the 1980s, Knupfer had worked on the aftermath of the Moors murders. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley had been jailed for abducting and murdering six children and disposing of their bodies on the vast Yorkshire Moors.
“We were searching a peat bog and we realised that parts of it could be seen from a road, so I asked Hindley whether it was daytime or night time when they buried the body there,” says Knupfer. “She said, ‘It was dusk, I could see the outline of the hills across the valley.’ It was a classic case of a throwaway remark providing the breakthrough.
“We went back to the site and realised that there were only a few spots which had that view.”
Shortly afterwards, they recovered the body of 16-year-old Pauline Reade.
“In one of our searches in Ireland, we were able to dramatically narrow down the area when a witness to a burial made a chance remark about where he was picked up afterwards,” says Knupfer. “We need to have sites that shout at us.”
Early searches by the Garda for the bodies of the Disappeared were characterised by the bulldozing of large tracts of land – Sir Kenneth Bloomfield told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday agreement last month the equivalent of 17 Croke Park pitches had been excavated since 1999.
Knupfer refuses to be drawn on the question of whether vital clues and even remains may have been destroyed. “Technologies are constantly being refined,” he says. “Our approach now is to begin with the non-invasive and only then move to the invasive.”
Invasive means using ground- penetrating radar, magnetometry and the slow sifting of earth, centimetre by centimetre. Knupfer is also diplomatic about the dearth of records of RUC and Garda investigations.
The area now being searched at Bragan Bog is, Knupfer says, “pristine”. Those searching it are dressed in high-visibility rainwear rather than white forensic suits. It is all part of the effort to drive home to those with information that they can give it to the commission without fear of exposure or prosecution.
“Our sole purpose is the recovery and repatriation of bodies. We are not looking for evidence. Nothing we hear, nothing we find will end up being used in a court case,” says Knupfer. “None of our records will end up in Boston College, either.”
There is considerable international interest in the commission. “The Ireland model is unique in many ways,” says Knupfer. “There is the co-operation between the two governments, the parallel legislation, the effective amnesty – it is a half-way house to a truth commission.”
To date, nine bodies have been recovered, including seven of the Disappeared. “There is excitement and elation when we find a body,” says Knupfer. “But it is tinged with sadness. This is someone’s loved one.”
Seven families are still waiting, and Knupfer says the list of the Disappeared could grow. “It would be naive to think there aren’t others, in loyalist or republican circles,” he says.
However, after Bragan, the commission has no information with the potential to lead to any new searches.
It can be contacted on freephone 00-800555-85500 or at PO Box 10827, Dublin 2.
‘They might as well have taken my mother too. She was never right after that’
EUGENE McVEIGH is being careful not to let his hopes get too high as a new search begins for the remains of his younger brother, Columba.
“This has been wound up and wound down a number of times over the years. You get used to that. It isn’t quite as emotionally draining each time,” he says. “When I think back to my parents, though, and how they lived in a kind of limbo with this tragedy hanging over them . . .”
His father died in 1997, his mother 10 years later. Columba’s name is carved on their gravestone.
Seán Megraw says he got an awful shock when he learned that his brother Brendan’s body was probably buried only about 40 miles from his own home near Dublin. “People here in the South don’t seem to take it on board. Whenever anything about the North comes up, their attention span is very short. In other countries this sort of thing is regarded as a war crime – here it is just swept under the carpet.”
Brendan was 22 and had been married for just a year when the IRA took him. His wife was pregnant. The family suspects he was murdered because he made a statement to the RUC after witnessing a shooting in west Belfast.
The IRA denied involvement in his disappearance until the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains was set up. “Fr Alex Reid came and told us the body was in Oristown. The guards dug there for weeks with a big digger. We felt they hadn’t much experience and they should bring in expertise. After we met the minister for justice, Geoff [Knupfer] was brought in and and that has made a big difference.”
When their mother died in 2002, the family put Brendan’s name on the family gravestone.
Sandra Peake is chief executive of the victims’ group, Wave, which supports the Families of the Disappeared group. “Brian McKinney’s mother, Margaret, came to me in 1995 and introduced me to some of the families and we started to organise things. The turning point was in 1998 when Margaret went to the White House and met the president Clinton. Within a year, she had met Gerry Adams and the commission was set up.”
The group allows people to talk “without fear”, says Ms Peake. Each year there is a Mass on Palm Sunday and, on All Souls Day in November, they lay a black wreath on the steps at Stormont.
“The wreath contains a white lily representing those still missing. It has gone down to seven now. As the circle gets smaller, it gets harder. It is bittersweet when someone is found. Mrs McKee was the last of the mothers to die, last November.”
Kevin McKee was just 16 when he was taken. His sister, Philomena, was nine. “They might as well have taken my mother too,” she says. “She was never right after that. She was just in limbo. We didn’t know what was happening – we thought she was just being cruel. We were sent from pillar to post while she was in and out of hospital with nervous breakdowns. Life was just so hard.
“After the peace process started they came and told her they were going to get the body. She got the house all decorated and ready and then when he wasn’t found, she just broke down completely. She went into hospital and never came out again. We are only now understanding what she went through. It is rotten. You wonder, did they torture him? We’ve been to the bog where they think he is. It is total heartache when you stand on that ground, and you walk up a path and think, is this where he walked his last steps?”
The disappeared: Who they were
The Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains was set up under a British-Irish treaty in 1999 to facilitate the recovery of the bodies of those who were “Disappeared” – abducted and murdered – by proscribed organisations before the signing of the Belfast Agreement in April 1998. In 1999, the IRA admitted disappearing nine people in the North and burying them in the Republic.
Those known to be among the Disappeared are all victims of republican paramilitaries. All but one of the seven still missing are believed to be buried in the Republic.
Kevin McKee and Séamus Wright disappeared in 1972. Their bodies are believed to be in Co Meath. Joe Lynskey disappeared in 1972 and is still missing. Jean McConville was abducted in 1972. Her body was found in 2003. Peter Wilson disappeared in 1973. His body was recovered in 2010 in Co Antrim – the only body found in the North. Eamon Molloy disappeared in 1975. His body was recovered in 1999.
Columba McVeigh also disappeared in 1975. His body is believed to be in Co Monaghan. Robert Nairac disappeared in 1977. His body is believed to be in Co Louth. Brendan Megraw disappeared in 1978. His body is believed to be in Co Meath. Brian McKinney and John McClory were taken in 1979. Their bodies were recovered in 1999. Eugene Simons disappeared in 1980. His body was recovered in 1984. Séamus Ruddy disappeared in 1985 and is believed to be buried in France. Danny McIlhone disappeared in 1981. His body was recovered in 2008.
Gerry Evans disappeared in 1979 and Charlie Armstrong in 1981. Their bodies were recovered in 2010. Gareth O’Connor disappeared in 2003 and his body was found in 2005.
The commission is headed by Sir Kenneth Bloomfield and Frank Murray, and funded by the British and Irish governments, which last year pledged to allow it to continue its work. Those who give it information can do so confidentially and will not in any circumstances be liable to prosecution, nor will its records ever be made available to third parties, including police.
SUSAN McKAY