Former garda investigating Ciara Breen’s disappearance admits he 'apologises to her for not finding her'
A former top cop who investigated tragic Ciara Breen’s disappearance has admitted he regularly “apologises to her for not finding her”.
Retired Detective Inspector Pat Marry is convinced the 17-year-old was killed and buried in bogland close to her home in Dundalk, Co Louth. Ciara snuck out the sitting room window of her home on Batchelor’s Walk on the night of February 13, 1997, and was never seen again.
In a new documentary, Mr Marry says he’s convinced she was murdered by an older man she was seeing, who was arrested twice but denied killing her.
He lifts the lid on an explosive Garda interview in which he says chief suspect Liam Mullen, a man in his 30s, was about to confess to the murder.
Mr Marry said: “She had been wayward and she had been let’s say targeted by the likes of Liam Mullen.
“[He] used to bring her for walks down the railway line and bring her drinking. She would have been in her school uniform at the time.
“Balmer’s Bog is where Ciara was last seen. Unfortunately, she met the wrong man that night and things didn’t go the way maybe she’d planned.”
Retired Detective Inspector Pat Marry
Ciara’s heartbroken mother Bernadette continued to fight for her only child until her death from cancer in June 2018.
In one interview she told how Ciara was “her world” and they were planning a holiday to Disneyworld in Florida before she vanished.
Reliving the night Ciara went missing, Bernadette revealed: “She wanted to tape Circle of Friends with Chris O’Donnell. She liked Chris O’Donnell.
“She got the tape ready, she wrote on the tape, ‘Circle of Friends, Ciara Breen’s tape, do not touch. Chris O’Donnell I love you’ and put it in the recorder to tape it.
“Now, that was at eight o’clock, does that sound like a girl that was going to go out and not come back?
“I sat in the armchair waiting for that leg to come through the window, but it never came.”
The scene at an area of waste land near Dundalk Garda Station
Mr Marry took over the probe in 2014 and it was upgraded from a missing persons case to murder. Fresh public appeals, issued through Operation Trace, uncovered new witnesses who said they’d had relationships with Mullen and were afraid of him. One woman came forward and said Mullen had told her he knew where Ciara was.
In 1999 Mullen was arrested on suspicion of the murder and questioned at length. Mr Marry revealed: “He did make a comment, ‘will I be charged with murder? I shouldn’t be charged with murder for what I did’.
“So that was an element of having a knowledge of what happened to Ciara and he wouldn’t say any more and that was that. He was released.”
In another telling incident, Mullen was drinking in a local pub the night Ciara’s mother made an emotional appeal on RTE’s Crimecall.
Members of the Garda Water Unit search through swamp land
When the segment was over he is reported to have stood up and said that Ciara would not be coming back.
Mullen was arrested a second time on suspicion of murder and Mr Marry said on this occasion he believed he was close to confessing.
The former garda continued: “He started putting his hands to his head when I asked did he kill her.
“He was falling to his knees and he was sobbing, I knew he was going to come out with it.
“Then his solicitor called and wanted to see him. After that it was no comment. He was released without charge.
Ciara’s heartbroken mother Bernadette
“We were able to establish that he’d said to people, ‘I could put someone in that bog and they’d never be found’.
“He said of a young girl ‘if I don’t get what I want I’m going to put her in the bog with the other one’.”
On foot of more fresh information, a large-scale search of Balmer’s Bog was carried out in 2015, but it yielded nothing.
Mr Marry recalled: “A witness came forward who said Liam Mullen’s friend had told him Liam was with Ciara that night down at Balmer’s Bog. We also had a witness who said she was down there that night and saw Ciara being chased by a man.
“The bog was 17 acres. We concentrated on two acres where we believed we would have found her. Every scoop of soil was gone through.”
Missing Ciara Breen, left, and her mum Bernadette
However, more than 500 tonnes of soil had been illegally dumped there and the forensic anthropologist said this would have crushed any buried bones.
A dress matching the description of Ciara’s was found, but her mother said it was not the same as it had buttons and Ciara’s had a zip.
Mr Marry said: “If she had said that was Ciara’s dress I would have had enough evidence to go to the DPP.
“And that has always stuck with me, that is how close we got. The icing on the cake would have been to find a bone of Ciara’s, even a toenail.
“To think of Ciara lying here some place gives me an eerie feeling. Poor Ciara. Oh my God, I pulled out all the stops to solve that one.
“I find myself apologising to her for not finding her, but we did try, we did try our best.”
Mullen died in Garda custody in 2017 after being arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence. He had ingested a bag of heroin which burst in his stomach.
Mr Marry recalled: “Bernadette rang me and she was devastated. She said, ‘I’ll never find out where my Ciara is now’.
“She told me she’d met Mullen on the street and she knew, she could see it all over him, that he did it.”
Ciara was due to be godmother to her cousin Sarah Coburn who was born just months after the teen disappeared. Instead Ciara’s heartbroken mother Bernadette took on that role.
Sarah said: “[Bernadette] passed a week after my 21st. Such a strong woman to go through that hardship and still have such energy and an amazing smile.
“There are people out there who do know. I would love for them to come forward so we can find Ciara and bring her back to Berna.”
Ciara’s story will be told in an upcoming Ar Iarraigh documentary on TG4.
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