THE FAMILY OF a man whose body lay unidentified, buried in Co Louth, for ten years have expressed their frustration that they were never told about the remains at the time they were found.
Cavan man Joe Reilly was 50 years old when he disappeared back in January 2007. He was a single man and he lived in the centre of Dublin. He moved in the 1990s back to Ireland from London, where he had run his own business for more than 15 years. Back home he worked in security and pursued his passion for writing.
At a ceremony to mark Missing Persons Day on Wednesday, his brother Gabriel described Joe, who was a triplet and the eldest of eight children, as “an inspiration to be around and was much-loved by his family and those who knew him”.
“We first knew that he was missing from his home in about January 2007. A search of his apartment gave no indication that he intended to go away, nor was there any evidence of crime,” Reilly said.
Initial searches were conducted by gardaí without success and he was registered as a missing person at that time. Throughout the next ten years we continued to liaise with the guards and to look for Joe. It was very frustrating that there seemed very little that we could do, other than to chase up the gardaí for progress and pursue any story of any unidentified body that we came across.
“We never seemed to make any progress in terms of things accumulating, it was always back to square one when we tried to do anything. There were one or two false alarms along the way, but nothing else – he had completely vanished. Always, we hoped that he’d just turn up,” he continued.
In May of this year Gabriel and his brother Dermot were asked by gardaí to provide a DNA sample for the new database that has been set up. Four months later they were told there was a positive match with an unidentified body that was buried in Dundalk.
“This body has washed up in the Rockmarshall coastline [in Co Louth] in June 2007, ten years ago. And a DNA sample had been taken from it at that time. Based on the DNA match, and other evidence that was available to us, we have now accepted that the remains are those of Joe. And we look forward to bringing him home,” his brother said.
“We don’t know what happened to Joe and how or why he ended up in the sea. As time had gone on we were of course all becoming aware that we probably wouldn’t see him again. However, it has come as a terrible shock to us all to find him in this way. And there are questions which frustrate and upset us.”
How come we didn’t know about this unidentified body in Dundalk when we thought we were on the case? How come DNA samples were not collected from us earlier when a sample from Joe was taken in 2007?
Gabriel questioned why their case was not checked against this unidentified person who had turned up just months after Joe went missing and only 60 miles away.
“But most importantly of all – what on earth happened to Joe?”
He said it seems now that the family will never be able to answer all of those questions, but despite their frustrations and the confirmed death of his brother, there is “some relief” that he has been found.
Also speaking at the ceremony was Dr Linda Williams of Forensic Science Ireland (FSI) who encouraged the families of missing persons to get in touch with them so they can collect samples from them for the DNA database.
Already, 111 families have done so. Her team has also compiled DNA profiles for 18 different missing persons using samples from their personal items and has taken samples from 15 unidentified remains.
Gabriel Reilly said the establishment of the database had “been a very important development” because without it, his family may never have found Joe. However he also said he hoped that good, old-fashione detective work would not “get lost along the way”.
“Our family would like to thank the gardaí in Dublin and Dundalk for helping to bring our missing persons case to a conclusion, but we are also immensely grateful to the community in Lordship, Dundalk, who found the body and have cared for it with the greatest compassion and respect for the last ten years.”
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