Village joins in sharing a family's devastation

RAY Quinn was getting ready to do a radio interview at around 11 o'clock yesterday morning. He wanted to appeal to whoever had his wife not to harm her. Then Chief Supt Feely arrived at his door to tell him a woman's body had been found.

Earlier, up to 50 local people had gathered at the Milltown Lounge beside Joyce Quinn's small shop. They were dressed to search the ditches and fields around the village for the woman who had been missing since the night before.

Shortly before 10 o'clock, Supt Gerry Moran organised the searchers into groups of eight. He had the printed search routes on a clipboard and consulted an ordinance survey map propped against the back windscreen of a car.

Comdt Quinn had arrived looking grey and haggard, with fresh mud on his wellingtons. Someone handed him a mobile phone. Friends gathered protectively around him others kept a respectful distance.

Shortly after 10 a.m. armed members of the Army 3rd Battalion set off across the fields. In a ditch beside the schoolyard, where Joyce Quinn's car was found, there was a woman's black leather shoulder bag smudged with mud. Gardai said they were aware of it.

Eamonn Slattery, a taxi driver from the village, said he had joined the search early yesterday morning after seeing the activity on his way home. Like most people in Milltown, he knew the missing woman.

One of the two Air Corps helicopters was circling over the fields when the word spread that a body had been found. Opposite the Cill Dara Golf Course, about two miles from the village, the early morning horse riders were out. About 20 people were playing golf on the nine hole green.

The course is sandwiched between the Curragh gallops and the area known as the Little Curragh, where gardai had already cordoned off a large area. A flat triangle of land was covered in thick gorse bushes. Within 20 minutes of finding the body, the stakes were being driven into the peat to secure the garda tape. Behind an eight foot high ring of thick gorse bushes the forensic experts worked.

Later that afternoon a group of around 16 extra gardai arrived "to look for anything that doesn't naturally belong there" they were told. Some clothes were found about 140 yards from the body.

Back in the village, gardai remained outside Milltown National School. Its 145 pupils had no school that day and it was not expected to be open this morning. Local curate, Father Paul Fitzpatrick, said he was going to accompany Comdt Quinn to the place where his wife's body lay. The family was devastated, he said The village shared that devastation.