Stolen Sister 02: Missing

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I'm just ready to ball my eyes out here.

It's so sad.

To think that this is the last place where she was alive.

It is a bit very emotive.

It's taken Bernie and Kathleen, Elizabeth Blunkett's sisters almost fifty years to come here.

It's surreal to be back here. There was a day like today that Elizabeth left home to come here in seventy six, for it all to go terribly wrong. You know.

Bernie and Kathleen are at McDaniel's Pub, the last place Elizabeth was seen alive on August twenty eighth, nineteen seventy six. It's only now, after all these years, that they feel able to come here to honor Elizabeth's memory in this place.

No matter how many years go by, it's never the same, and she's still only twenty three years of age in our minds. Because we're mothers now we feel responsible for her. We'd never ever wanted to mention the word Brits baby, couldn't even say it.

I'm Ro's purcel from Orte documentary on one This is Stolen's Sister, Episode two Missing.

That weekend in British Bay like the place was buzzing with people from everywhere.

Nicki Crennan was a Garda stationed in Wicklow Garda Station. It was around ten thirty pm on Saturday, the twenty eighth of August nineteen seventy six when Elizabeth Plunkett had left McDaniel's Pub in British Bay and Nicki Crennan remembers that weekend.

McDonald's probably busting at the seems the hotel, which is no there any longer. Rockfield Hotel was only half a mile away from it, and there was a downce stairs that night as well.

For the weekend.

There was a lot of people around, But I'm wondering did Elizabeth go left or right?

Standing outside McDaniel's pub. Bernie and Kathleen are trying to understand what their sister might have been thinking when she was last seen alive.

Was she going to come back to Dublin? Was she going to wait out at the caravan? I know, if I had a real I'd go outside night, huff and puff outside, night light, smoke night, go back in. That's such a beautiful rural place, you think you'd be a safe as anything.

Elizabeth was seen leaving the pub, and we know this by statements taken by guardee at the time.

I remember Saturday night, the twenty eighth of August nineteen seventy six, I left home with my husband, Albert Green.

Mary Anne Green lived near British Bay and her son was working in McDaniel's pub that night. After eleven pm, she drove with her husband to McDaniel's pub and saw Elizabeth on the road.

We'd only just parked the car when I saw a girl coming from the direction of the pub.

Mary Ann's statement, like all the statements in this episode, is being read by an actor.

She passed in front of our car, came down the steps onto the rough surface on my left hand side. This girl looked about eighteen or nineteen years slim build and medium height, fairly brownish complexion. The girl passed by her car on the left hand side and passed behind other cars on my left. I don't know which way she went after that. She was wearing white slacks and a T shirt. The T shirt was white and a dark color. The word santra Pe was on the front

That distinctive Santa Pe T shirt mary Anne saw was the one Elizabeth's boyfriend Damien described her buying when she was on holidays the month before.

When she left, she was wearing a dark navy blue jumper with the word sentro Pei and white lettering across the entire breast. White jeans with stitch pockets at the rear, navy sandals with wedge shaped heels, silver watch wearing small imitation Pearlier Lance.

Damien had had that argument with his friend Joe, and Joe remembered how it was quickly dealt with after Elizabeth left the pub.

About five minutes after Elizabeth walked away from some McDaniels, Damian and I went out to Damion's car. We both leaned on the side of the car and made up our dispute about the motor car that was the cause of the argument between me and Damion. After a couple of minutes, not more than ten minutes, Damion and I went into the pub and looked around for Elizabeth. We got a bit alarmed, and I noticed that Damon was getting a bit worried.

And now Damien started to look everywhere for Elizabeth. He went to find his sister Mela.

Damion came to me and and he said, do you know where Liz is? And I said no. He said, will you have a look at the ladies toy list and see if she's in there? So I went in and I said come out, and I said, no, she's not in there. So he says, well, she's gone. He says, she's disappeared. I don't know where she is. So we immediately went out and started looking for her.

But out on the roads in the dark night, Elizabeth had no chance against two men with bad intentions.

There's all sorts of things happened with its way, so they fitted in nicely in a lot of ways.

You know.

They The two men guard and Nikki Crennan is talking about were John Shaw and Jeffrey Evans, who had fled England from rape charges, come to Ireland and spent a year in prison for various robberies. They were now driving on the Wicklow Country roads.

We drove down to Britis Bay. We turned left onto the sea Front Road, where we were going towards McDaniel's Pub.

A man called David James McDonald was driving in the same area at the time and later gave a statement to Guardee.

About two hundred yards at the Wicklows side of Staunton's Supermarket, coming towards me, I saw a girl walking on her right hand side. This girl had her head tilted down and appeared to cover her eyes with her hand, as if to shield them from the glare of my headlights. She had black hair to her shoulders and she was wearing a blue T shirt and white slacks. After passing her by, I drove to the roundabout beyond the beach

It was around this time that Sew and Evans also noticed Elizabeth.

We saw the girl some of the lift. She was walking down towards Dark Club. Jeffrey said, she'll do.

The two men had a tactic they used to get women into their car. They were to go black and they were hunting.

They're predatory.

Sew would get out of the car as one man driving looked less threatening.

We passed her out and Jeffrey stopped. I got out, and he turned the car and went back and picked up the girl.

Without knowing what he was seeing, David James MacDonald saw the scene unfold before him.

Just as I passed the girl, I saw a car approaching. The car seemed to slow down as I passed by. I could see the rear lights of the car come to a stop through my rearview mirror near where the girl was.

Evan's pulled up beside Elizabeth.

She said, are you going to Dublin? And I said, were going to Dublin, but we could still give it a lift. She got into from passenger seat.

Elizabeth's good friend Mela believes Elizabeth would not have gotten in the car that easily.

I know Liz, she would never have got into a car without knowing who would they were. I know she wouldn't because she was a friend and we used to talk about things like that. We were always terrified of anything like that.

What happened next must have haunted David James McDonald because in his gut he knew something was off, and he turned to his friend sitting in the passenger seat.

I put it near the supermarket and said to my friend should I go back and see if everything is all right? And my friend advised me to go home, as you might be sticking our noses into something that didn't concern us.

It was at this point that Evans went back up the road to get john Shaw.

He then picked me up. I sat in the back and the girl was in the front seat. She was wearing hants and a jumper. We were writing on it.

Back at McDaniel's pub, Elizabeth's friends couldn't find her anywhere, and we're all confused as to what was happening. Mary Anne Green, the woman who was waiting for her son to finish work, was sitting outside McDaniel's pub.

Ten minutes after the girl passing, the people started to leave the pub. I remember a voice of a man calling Elizabeth about four times, but he was one of about four people. The thought ran through my mind that the girl who had passed down the steps earlier was the girl he was calling.

Elizabeth's friends were not going to find her because by this stage she was in the car with John Shaw and Jeffrey Evans.

She told us she'd had a row with her boyfriend. We were talking about normal things for a while in the car that we started messing with the girl.

I find it really distressing to imagine what Elizabeth was going through now, and she must have been really beginning to panic.

She jumps out to a car I was struggling with Jaunt.

She started to scream in the car and we stuffed tissues into her mouth. I drove along until I came to McDaniel's pub at left there. Drove along that road for a couple of mile. I'm not sure I parked in an opening on the left. It's an opening to Wood in a bit from the road where there's a wire fence across its opening. It's like a lane. The three of us then got out of the car. When we got to Woods, we dragged her out of the car.

Meanwhile, Joe and his girlfriend Ants drove around the local area to see if they could spott Elizabeth.

Joe and I drove to Wicklow Ratne and around by Joe White Cross. In spite of searching for that Saturday night, we failed to find Elizabeth.

After midnight, Mary Anne Green was driving home with her husband and son, who had just finished work. They passed castle time in Woods, the place where the men had described bringing Elizabeth.

At about twelve forty five am. When we drove home, we were passing by an opening into the plantation on the left hand side of the road, about a mile from McDaniel's pub. A vehicle was in the opening. It was parked on the right hand side of the opening with the back face in the road. The inside was lit up.

The following twenty four hours of Elizabeth's life in those woods was horrible. The detail would only come to light through the Guardian investigation over the following few months and years. But right now, in the early hours of the last Sunday in August in nineteen seventy six, as Elizabeth's friends went to sleep in a caravan in British Bay and her family went to sleep in rings End, nobody knew where she was and what was happening to her. The next morning was a Sunday morning.

It's the part that never leaves my mind.

And at home and Ring's End, Elizabeth's then fourteen year old sister Kathleen was baking.

I was in the kitchen with my mom making Sunday dinners.

And we always made apple tarts on a Sunday morning. Did you know these routines that were setting stone with you know, the jelly being made, and this Maratha paid to be steeping from the night before, and you'd be washing cabbage, and then while the other wasn't sure, you might as well throwing a few apple tarts.

So much of the detail in this series has never been publicly told. Before concluding what was going on inside Elizabeth's family home.

Was a knock on the door and I went out to answer the door and this girl said, it's Alizabeth there, and I said, no, she gone away for the weekend. Tut no more off it. And I came back out to the kitchen with masterid who was that? And I said, somebody looking for Liz And immediately my math's instinct, now that I look back on it, she walked out and I remember trying to wipe her hand to a flower, and she walked out to the hall door. She walked out into the footpath and said who was that?

Who was that? Sorry if she'd go away with her friends?

I said, I don't know.

Some guy and whoever it was had disappeared up the top of the street.

It later emerged it was Annette McLaughlin who knocked at the door. When Annette, along with Elizabeth's group of friends, woke up in British Bay that Sunday morning and realized there was still no sign of Elizabeth, they all came back to Dublin, hoping they'd find her there.

Damien was in the car up to the top of the street, and it sent this young one down to see had Elizabeth made it home.

She wasn't there, so he really, really, really, you know, got very anxious and very upset.

At this stage, the Plunkets were totally oblivious to what was going on.

That was a Sunday morning and we had our dinner and she wasn't due back home. I went to I was to see why abbect of whatever disco was on. I went on the Sunday night.

And Damien in the meantime was frantic, where is she? So the thoughts of him when eventually he did have to come to the house and say what had happened, the.

Fear of Elizabeth being missing was beginning to mount. Elizabeth's big sister, Joan lived nearby with her husband Jimmy, and Damien had checked was Elizabeth there, So.

I think they drove back up to Joan and Jimmy to say, look, Elizabeth's not in her mom's she's not with jo We have a serious situation here. They both came down to the house and started to tell my mom and Jamien came in. He told her that they had a row and that Elizabeth said she was going home and We've searched for her, and we kind of find her.

Kathleen came back from her disco to find a panicked scene.

When I came home, the house was falled. Joan and Jimmy were there. You could feel the tension in the house. But I remember and everything, what's wrong that Elizabeth got missing? And I'm like what, and my mom being I don't know whether it's mother or instinct, but immediately she said, well, why wouldn't she be able to make our way home from Wicklow? This young one had been all around like she knew her stuff, like there'd be nothing to stop for from getting from A to b.

Am.

I massive, my Elizabeth's dead, or why she'd be here and we're all going but she was. She just knew, And of course my dad.

Was going mad.

Then you can't be saying that, and she said, I'm telling you.

It was less than twenty four hours since Elizabeth had last been seen alive. But everyone who knew her, including her dad Tommy, knew this was not right.

My father said immediately, report or missing.

So Bernie and Damon went to the nearest guard, the station, Irish Town.

There was one guard there, but they said she was over twenty one and it hadn't been twenty four hours, and we said no, but she would not do that. She would never do that. She would never stay out and have us worried like this. So they said we'll come back. I think it was the following day before it would have been official.

While the local guardye said they couldn't do much about the case, Bernie and Damien knew there was no way that they could just leave it at that.

Damien was agitated. He couldn't have sat around. He couldn't have not gone back and see did she show about the caravan? Or see did she show up at the pub? So honestly, I'd say we were there till it started to get dark, and then we would have come back to Dublin, back to the house. Some people were waiting for to see what you show up. We waited up all night.

The next morning was Monday, August thirtieth, nineteen seventy six. Elizabeth had now been missing for about thirty six hours.

The Monday came. That's the panic then, and that's when ma'am said, I'm going to look for my child. And she did go with my dad. We went over the dunes I could see her walking around the dunes and looking in the grass and looking for any sign of her.

Elizabeth's two brothers, Eddie and Thomas, were living down in County Cork.

My brother Thomas and I were lobster fishermen out of Cove. That faithful phone call to say that Elizabeth is missing, Thomas and I jumped the car drove to Dublin. It was only then that we realized that the chaos. Barnie told me that from the minute my mother got word, she said problems.

We didn't.

We were going up to sort it out.

You failed, you'd find her.

Yeah.

The glorious summer weather had turned and it was now raining. Dan and Wicklow local guard and Nikki Crennan had heard about some strange behavior in British Bay.

There was a phone call from a guy called Alex Stone. He was the owner of my Towns that time and they also owned the caravan park opposite. He reported two guys down in the caravan park at an old jump. There was an old marrit hole in the middle of the fielding. We went out to check them out.

The two men garden. Nikki Crennan was about to meet with John Shaw and Jeffrey Evans, less than twenty four hours after they had murdered Elizabeth.

We stayed in British Bay. That day Monday, we went to a pit in the field behind the caravans.

There was a fire going there meant working.

The police came along spoke to us.

So these two guys were there drying their clothes. It was a whist the day before and you told us the camp from Tipperary, and I remember the guy for their names to me is John and Jeffrey Murphy from Bournskilled feathered in County Tipperary a road in the bag of a brown out of the lover head in the pocket garden.

Nicki Crennan and his colleague had no idea Sean Evans were actually earning some of Elizabeth's clothes John Baird.

The girl slacks and T shirt in a quality in that field.

But something didn't feel right about these two men.

My colleague remarked him when the toads there were John and Jeffrey Murphy, they were brothers, brothers, and even marked to him he don't look like brothers.

And then he said step brothers because.

One was small, that it was Evans small, and I was in nice lightly fellow the other guys show was a big rougher type, and I suppose he could say shifty.

No news of Elizabeth being officially missing hadn't yet emerged, and Nikki Krennan and his colleague weren't too concerned about the two men.

We found nothing, just took to address their naims. They don't boog all on his tresperson and I suppose we told him doing pavate property, shouldn't be here. To get out of this, said the wood.

We left him there.

Sean Evans didn't leave immediately, though.

We stayed around the caravan park until sometime late that night or Tuesday morning.

On that night we're broke into a top five caravans in the next wield. We got a television, one record player, transistor radio and a few shillings. We then returned to fetid.

Sean Evans left the area and headed back to the house they had stayed in previously, their friend Cliff Autram's house in Tipperary, near where I grew up in Feathers. Back in Dublin, Elizabeth was officially becoming a missing person.

It wasn't taken that serious for a few days. I think, but the family were all concerned, and her family were down here and our friends searching. I think that was going on for three or four days.

For the first week, all the searchers were done, the Civil Defense were there, Elizabeth's colleagues and work were there. Everyone that was so helpful. The neighbors swam wings end looking for evidence, looking for anything that would help us find Elizabeth.

Elizabeth's family then got an appeal into the.

Papers Evening Herald Wednesday, first of September nineteen seventy six. Family appeal to daughter Elizabeth Plunkett of twenty four Pembroke Cottage, as Irish Town went to British Bay for the weekend and by early today still had not returned. She is of medium build, five feet five inches in height, has brown eyes and shoulder length black hair.

I remember my dad's brother Willie from Donnybrook. Him and his sons came.

This is Thomas, Elizabeth's younger brother who would come up from Cork to search for her.

And we all meant to go to British and start searching for some clues. It was a strange atmosphere. You know, on the one hand that you were searching display and it's a beautiful place British and then you're just hoping that you don't find anything, but on the other hand you want to find something.

It's impossible to understand how Elizabeth's siblings were all now feeling, including her sister Bernie.

It's desperation you feel, and you're confused and you're like, no, who could where could she have gone? You can't just disappear off the face of the earth. Somebody has to know. So you're going and asking back into the pub in McDaniel's to say, did anybody say looking through the sand dunes wherever we thought we could.

When days were moving, we thought there might have been the chance that she was still alive. We spent hours and hours from day to dusk looking quite a bit of a blurd, to be very honest with you.

One week after Elizabeth's disappearance, on Saturday, fourth of September, a large scale methodical search by GUARDI took place with everybody joining in.

The garden pointed to a search area and it was undergrowth and scrubs and rough to ry rough rough.

Land, and then the search party found something near Castle Timon Woods, the location where a park car had been seen in the hours after Elizabeth had walked out of McDaniel's pub in British Bay. It was one of Elizabeth's friends, Joe McCoy, who made the discovery.

There was a lane way leading from the roadway into the forest. While searching around the area, I saw bra hanging on the browers and a scarf.

Then another of the searchers found a shoe. They went back to Joe's girlfriend in Nette to take a closer look at it.

I looked at the shoe and said, that's a shoe.

I had no doubt about a net showed the shoe to Liza's good friend Mela God.

I just held in my arms and I just said, oh, please let her be alive or letter, you know, please let us find her.

Everyone's heart sank. They knew this was not good and that most likely something bad had happened to Elizabeth.

Remember looking at the pair of shoes and the worst thing, and this is really difficult for me to talk about, is when she was being dragged, the dirt was on the back of the heels of the shoe.

By now, Elizabeth's disappearance had become national news on both ort E TV and radio.

Gordi at Wicklow, supported by detectives from Dublin Castle, have intensified their search for the Dublin Girl, Elizabeth Plunkett, who's missing for ten days. Clothing and shoes belonging to the girl were found about two miles from a public house outside Wickcloton. Today Gordy are using tracker dogs in the search and are systematically combing woods and fields.

In the area.

Elizabeth's shoe, her underwear a silver watcher father had given her for her twenty first birthday were all found, but not Elizabeth.

We never found her.

By now, Guardy were talking to local people and holidaymakers and the picture was beginning to emerge.

I saw two people we pass by.

They had a dirty appearance and very suspicious.

I would describe one as the stockybilled, dirty appearance overgrown blackbeard wild.

I saw of two men a stave near the dump in sleeping bags.

When I pulled up alongside my caravan, I noticed a strange car was parked beside it.

But what had happened to Elizabeth and where was she now?

I went to look at my boat and discovered it was missing from its moorings. Now had it been broken into by forcing the bolt off the door.

I found a lawn more missing.

And could Evans and Shaw be stopped from continuing to destroy lives?

Why Elizabeth? Why our Sister?

If you've any further knowledge of the actions of John Shaw and Jeffrey Evans in Ireland, please email us a documentaries at Orte dot Ie. Join us in our next episode as serial killers Johnshaw and Jeffrey Evans remain at large in Ireland.

We were in Castle Bar one night we saw the girl on the road walking along.

They were on the hunt again.

Mary was on the road at eleven o'clock at a lovely young twenty three year old after finishing or shift in a local cafe.

Stolen's Sister is narrated by me ros Percell. The music is by Oscar winning composer Stephen Warbeck and performed by the Ortie Concert Orchestra. Readings in this episode were by Hillary Bell, Keen Cleary Hand, Patrick Dunn, Shane Hartney, Jade Hill, Trevor Keegan, Kenny Mcgillifredrick and Jessica Feelon.

And sound design and orchestra recordings are by me Kiren Dunn.

Production assistance is by me Sean A. McGreevy and The series is written and produced by me Nicoline Greer. The executive producer is Lim O'Brien. If you've been affected by any issues raised in this episode, please visit or T E dot E forward slash helplines. Until next time, Thanks for listening,