"I believe that Mary Boyle was dead within one hour of going missing and she never left the hillside alive"

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Top cop says initial search was flawed as site is revisited

MARY BOYLE was murdered within an hour of her disappearance and never left the land around her family homestead alive, a top cop close to the investigation has told the Sunday World. Retired sergeant Martin Collins, who was part of the 40-strong team of officers who investigated the case in 1977, claims the secrets to her mysterious disappearance - Ireland's longest missing child case - lie around the hillside where she was last seen.

His dramatic claims come as gardai confirm they are to dig up the suspected gravesite identified by witnesses days after Mary disappeared, but which has never been examined since.

"Mary was dead within an hour of going missing and never left the Cashelard hillside alive.That was my view very shortly into the investigation and, 36-years later that view has not changed," Martin Collins told us, standing just metres from the spot where she was last seen alive.

Collins, who interviewed many of the Boyle and Gallagher family members in the immediate aftermath of Mary's disappearance on the afternoon of March 18, 1977, believes that little Mary was killed on the hillside and was buried and then moved to another location to avoid detection.

Killed

"Within 48 hours I was convinced that she had died and my view was cemented when an interested party came to me and said that he knew who had killed Mary," said Collins.

"He said that the perpetrator had some kind of history. He wouldn't talk after that and to this day that witness has never spoken of it again."

"On the first night there were five of us searching for Mary, with about a dozen civilians and some of the Gallagher and Boyle family members.

"We had a helicopter out for about an hour too.The next day we had anything up to 30-35 officers plus a couple of hundred civilians, but within hours of the search I was very concerned that Mary was dead and had died on the hillside near her family homestead."

"Over the next four weeks, without exaggeration, thousands of people scoured the nearby lands searching and searching again every inch of the area.

"To the back of the land where she was last seen - about four minutes walk from her home- we had 800 people in one line walking from Lake Columcille to the Gallagher lands and there was not a trace," he said.

"During the search we found men's pipes, discarded cigarettes, the remains of an apple, a couple of ladies' neck chains, some boxes of matches, but no child. There wasn't a hope in the world that there was a thing left behind."

He told the Sunday World that initially it was not a murder hunt but a missing child investigation and that was the key problem.

"Maybe we would have made more progress if we were a little more realistic and less hopeful. It is not plausible that she left the hillside under her own steam and that wasn't appreciated soon enough in the investigation," Collins said.

Consumed

As time went on, much of the policing resources were being consumed by the fallout from the Troubles in the North and the interest in Mary's whereabouts wavered in and out according to the media interest generated by anniversaries of her disappearance. The retired Garda Sergeant has always maintained contact with Mary's mother Ann Boyle and her twin, also called Ann, and all have leaned on him for support over the years.

Collins has dedicated years to finding Mary, but feels that from the outset there were problems which hampered the investigation. In the initial days he was most concerned that unauthorised members of the public had access to the incident room. Collins had raised objections, but was overruled.

"There were some people, members of the public, in the meetings who should not have been there. Today it wouldn't have happened and that may have compromised the investigation," he said.

Collins, who retired in 1994, has continued to fight to discover what happened to Mary. He was instrumental in passing on information about the discovery of a potential gravesite on the Gallagher lands after he was contacted by one witness, Michael McGonigle, who had seen his original sighting of a fresh grave go unchecked in 1977.

Four years after he retired, Michael McGonigle brought Martin Collins to the gravesite and the former cop passed all the information on to Ballyshannon Gardai. Just three weeks ago, a garda team visited the site, 36 years after they were first made aware of it. This remains the only real clue to Mary's fate and this week Collins joined another gravesite witness, John Gallagher (no relation to the family), as the Sunday World, along with land survey specialists Scantech, conducted a geophysical survey of the site to check for any clues to Mary's body.

Clue

Scantech provided the services for free in the hope of unearthing any clue relating to Mary's disappearance. The technical team scanned the potential gravesite for anomalies in the soil profile to see if there are any clues to where a body may be buried, or had previously been buried. The results, which are due out next week, will be handed to the gardai to help them with the renewed investigation.

"Although the land may have settled, we can give the gardai some direction and can help focus their search when our results come back. We have scanned the ground and now we have to analyse the results," Scantech operations manager, Declan Timlin said this weekend.

This week gardai confirmed to Ann Boyle, Mary's mother, that they will be searching the potential gravesite in an effort to uncover any clues to her mysterious disappearance.

"I phoned them this week and they told me that they will dig up that part of the hillside. It's very tough dealing with this now, all alone," she said.

John Gallagher, the cattle dealer who stumbled across the gravesite 36 years ago, had mixed emotions as he walked the ground again.

"It should have been searched back then. We knew a fresh grave when we saw one and hopefully it can help us to find Mary. That's what we all want," he said.