Specialist drone and imaging being used in search for Jo Jo Dullard and Deirdre Jacob
Sarah Slater
Garda forensic teams investigating the murders of two women in separate incidents in the 1990s have deployed specialist drones and on-site imaging analysis in efforts to locate evidence.
The excavation site on the Kildare/Wicklow border is part of ongoing searches for Kilkenny and Kildare women, Jo Jo Dullard and Deirdre Jacob.
The excavation at a quarry at Castleruddery Upper is now in its ninth day, with forensic gardaí expanding both technological and evidential activity at the scene.
Gardaí are using a drone over the excavation zone, along with gathering detailed aerial photography and mapping specific areas.
Gathered data from both drone use and photography is being analysed, which is helping forensic teams to refine search parameters and particular areas of interest.
Ms Dullard, 21, disappeared from Moone, Co Kildare at 11.37 pm, while hitch-hiking on November 9th, 1995.
She had missed the last direct bus back to Kilkenny and had been hitching lifts from Naas, Co Kildare, where she managed to get a bus to.
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.
Ms Dullard was the youngest of five siblings.
Her father, John, died before she was born, and her mother, Nora, died in 1983 from cancer. Since her disappearance, her sister, Mary Phelan died in 2018, not knowing what happened to her.
Ms Jacob, 18, was last seen outside her home in Newbridge on July 28th, 1998. She was a teaching student in the UK who had returned to see her parents during a short trip back to Ireland.
On the day she was last seen, Jacob had walked into Newbridge town to get a bank draft to send to a college friend in London for their rent deposit.
At 2.14 pm, she was observed on CCTV walking on Main Street, Newbridge, and shortly after was observed in the AIB bank.
At 2.26 pm, Jacob was observed again on CCTV queuing in the Newbridge Post Office and at 2.32pm was seen on CCTV speaking with a friend outside the Post Office on Main Street.
The last-known recording of Jacob on CCTV was at 2.35 pm, walking outside the PTSB Bank on Main Street. She was last seen shortly after 3 pm on that day.
Extensive amounts of soil have been removed at the dig site after credible information was received by gardaí that a number of cars were buried there, which may bear clues to the disappearance of either of the women.
In October 2020, gardaí upgraded the investigation into her disappearance and that of Kildare woman Deirdre Jacob to a murder probe.
A three-week-long large-scale search almost five years ago of Usk Little in the Kildare/Wicklow - a woodland area was investigated by gardaí after fresh information came to light.
For a second time in November and December 2024 a major garda excavation of land near Grangecon in Co Wicklow was searched for three-and-a-half weeks in an effort to locate her body or any evidence to show she may have been there.
Speaking for the first time since the latest dig began, Ms Dullard’s family, led by her sister Kathleen Bergin, said that their “thoughts and prayers” are with the teams carrying out the search.
“It is reassuring to hear the Garda Commissioner say in a recent media report that there is no rush on this search and they have got everything they need to do the work there.”
In a statement on the Jo Jo Dullard Missing social media page, the Dullard family added that they “would like to express our heartfelt thanks for all your wonderful support. Thank you for your kind words, prayers and keeping a candle lighting for JoJo and Deirdre.”
The family once again appealed to “those people who have information, no matter how small, to please, please come forward” to contact gardaí.
