Gardaí contact missing women’s families after remains found

Gardaí have contacted the families of a small number of women who have gone missing in the past two to three years to inform them that the skeletal remains found in south Co Dublin almost certainly date from the period their loved ones disappeared.

While the Garda cold-case team that investigated the disappearances of a number of women from the Leinster area in the 1990s are involved in investigating the discovery of the bones last Friday, gardaí believe the woman had died much more recently. "It's looking like it could be as recent as two years ago," said one Garda source.

DNA profile
Another officer said a DNA profile extracted from the bones could be cross-checked against samples taken from the relatives of missing people and a match may be made by the end of this week. While only a section of the woman's skeleton was discovered at Killakee Mountain, Rathfarnham, Co Dublin, at least one jaw bone has been found. Cross-checking its characteristics against the dental records of missing persons should also help gardaí make a speedy identification.

The investigation by Deputy State Pathologist Dr Michael Curtis and forensic anthropologist Dr Lorraine Buckley suggests the remains are not those of missing US student Annie McCarrick or other women who went missing in the 1990s.