A Garda search team has concluded a major excavation at a disused quarry in Co Wicklow as part of the investigations into the murders of Deirdre Jacob and Josephine “Jo Jo” Dullard.
They were abducted, murdered, and their remains concealed in the 1990s, in crimes regarded as sexually motivated and which remain unsolved.
However, the site at Castleruddery Upper will be examined and analysed as part of the next phase of the operation to determine if any further excavation should take place.
Gardaí were acting on information, which they deemed credible, of a suspicious burial at the site, perhaps of human remains in a vehicle, back in the late 1990s.
The site of the search in connection with the disappearances of Deirdre Jacob and JoJo Dullard in Castleruddery Upper, Co Wicklow. Photograph: Colin Keegan/Collins
It is understood nothing of evidential value was found at the site since the search began last Monday week, though the location has not been fully discounted by the Garda teams investigating the killings.
The families of the two women visited the site last weekend in the company of Garda members, as mechanical diggers were being used to dig down deep into the soil.
“A further assessment of the site remains ongoing,” a Garda statement said of the current phase of the search concluding on Wednesday evening. “An Garda Síochána has provided an update to the families of Jo Jo Dullard and Deirdre Jacob in relation to this phase of the search and they have been fully appraised of these developments.”
Gardaí added they were grateful for the co-operation of the land owner, who has no connection whatever to the cases of the missing-assumed-murdered women. They have also urged anyone with information “no matter how small or insignificant you might believe it to be” to contact any Garda station.
The information the search was based on was linked to convicted rapist Larry Murphy, who lived in nearby Baltinglass, Co Wicklow, at the time the two women vanished.
The now 60-year-old, who has been living abroad since his release from prison in 2010, was also caught close to the search site trying to kill the woman he had abducted and raped in February 2000.
As he was trying to strangle and suffocate the woman – at Kilranelagh, just 6km from the quarry – hunters disturbed Murphy in the act and he fled. The men rescued the woman and also recognised Murphy, leading to his arrest and imprisonment on a 15-year sentence, although he was released early.
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Murphy has long been a suspect for the murder of Jacob in 1998, and gardaí sent a file to the Director of Public Prosecutions in 2021, hopeful he would be charged, though no charges were directed.
Dullard vanished from Moone, Co Kildare – 17km from the quarry site – in 1995. Although gardaí could not rule out the possibility the tip-off alleging suspicious activity at the quarry could relate to her murder, the search under way for the past 10 days related mainly to the Jacob inquiry.
Jacob was 18 when she disappeared shortly after 3pm on July 28th, 1998, near her family home at Roseberry, Newbridge, Co Kildare. She had walked into Newbridge town to organise a rent deposit for her second college year in London, where she was studying to be a teacher. Gardaí believe she was abducted from the roadside close to her home.
Dullard (21) was last seen on November 9th, 1995, while on her way home to Callan, Co Kilkenny, after socialising in Bruxelles bar off Dublin’s Grafton Street. She called a friend from a phone box in Moone at 11.37pm, telling her a driver had stopped and she was going to take a lift. She was never seen again.