The family of Kilkenny woman Josephine “Jo Jo” Dullard, who is presumed murdered, have marked the 30th anniversary of her disappearance.
The 21-year-old was last seen at approximately 11.37pm on November 9th, 1995, in the village of Moone, Co Kildare, while attempting to make her way home to Callan, Co Kilkenny.
“Her disappearance left a silence that words can never quite fill,” those who gathered to mark the 30th anniversary of when Jo Jo Dullard was last seen were told.
Ms Dullard was the youngest of five siblings, including her sisters Mary, Nora and Kathleen and brother Thomas.
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She had missed the last direct bus back to Kilkenny and had been hitching lifts from Naas, Co Kildare.
In October 2020, gardaí upgraded the investigation into her disappearance to a murder probe.
Kathleen Bergin, her sister, sister told around 100 people who stood together around the national missing persons monument in the grounds of Kilkenny Castle at on Sunday that as time has passed, “Jo Jo’s story continues to touch us all.”
“Her disappearance left a silence that words can never quite fill. But it has also awakened in us the shared commitment to remember, to care and to never forget. To gather not only in sadness but in the strength that comes of being together,” she said.
Ms Bergin thanked the crowd from the “bottom of the family’s hearts” and gave a “huge thank you for coming here to remember Jo Jo”.
“I would like to remember Imelda Keenan (22) who is also missing (from Waterford city since January 1994). I would also like to thank the (Garda) team which is working on Jo Jo’s case.”
Fr Willie Purcell told the gathering that there are “thousands of people joining and remembering us here.”
He added: “There’s an old Irish Celtic tradition which says that ‘whenever you gather the people you remember in that moment are remembering you’.”
Fianna Fáil TD John McGuinness, who has continued to support and fight for answers for Ms Dullard’s family, said it is “hard to believe that 30 years have passed so quickly and that the family of Jo Jo and her extended family have had to campaign for that length of time to keep attention on (her) disappearance”.
On the night she went missing, Ms Dullard had missed the last direct bus back to Kilkenny and had been hitching a lift from Naas, Co Kildare, after getting a bus to the town. The young woman was using a public phone in Moone when she told a friend, Mary Cullinane, that a car had stopped and she was going to get a lift. That was the last known sighting of her.
For three-and-a-half-weeks in November and December last year, land near Grangecon in Co Wicklow was excavated and searched in an effort to locate her body or any evidence to show she may have been there.
A man in his 50s was the first person arrested on suspicion of the murder of Ms Dullard in November last year but was released without charge.
Ms Dullard’s disappearance has been the subject of a sustained Garda investigation by the team based at Naas Garda station. The investigation is subject to ongoing review by the Serious Crime Review Team, National Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
