‘You fought so hard to find Jo Jo’ - family of missing woman pay tribute to campaigner sister on anniversary
The family of Jo Jo Dullard have paid tribute to the missing woman’s sister on the anniversary of her death.A message on a Facebook page dedicated to Jo Jo, who was last seen in 1995, praises her sister Mary Phelan who had “fought so hard to find Jo Jo and gave so much of yourself”.“On April 20, 2018 you left our world, Mary,” the post reads. “It’s hard to believe eight years have passed, you will forever be in our thoughts and in our hearts.”It adds: “I believe Jo Jo and all of our loved ones in heaven are holding you with gentle arms. You are missed and loved so much by us all.“We know you are that shining star that is always guiding us. Remembering you today with love.”Jo Jo’s sister, Mary, who had campaigned tirelessly for justice before her passing in 2018 had never lost hope of finding her sister. Mrs Phelan (67), who was suffering from cancer, died at her home in Co Kilkenny, more than 22 years after Jo Jo disappeared.Read more‘I was sure there was someone in that grave’: Fresh dig at land linked to Larry Murphy Her funeral at the Church of the Holy Cross in Cuffesgrange, Co Kilkenny was told by friend of the family, Fr Willie Purcell, how the two most important things to Mrs Phelan, family and friendship, were well-represented at the Mass.“When I was trawling through the many tributes to Mary, there was one very powerful tribute that hit me. It said: ‘Mary Phelan - an inspiration’,” he told the congregation.She was a woman of great faith, Fr Purcell added, who never gave up on God and had many medals and relics of the saints, whom she would ask to “watch over and protect Jo Jo” and everybody else.Mrs Phelan’s campaign to find and get justice for her missing sister, who was 21 when she was last seen in Moone, Co Kildare in November of 1995, often brought her media attention.Jo Jo Dullard But when the interviews were over, she would say, “all I want to do is go home and wait for Jo Jo,” Fr Purcell said.“One day I met Mary on High Street and we were talking about Jo Jo... She said ‘there’s not one day that goes by when I don’t think of her. She’s in my heart all of the time’.”She never lost hope that they would bring her sister home, he said“She never gave up the search. It was that hope that kept you, and her friends and her relatives and all of us strong in the search for Jo Jo.“The greatest way we can remember her, and I know Mary would want to us to do this, is to keep the search going for Jo Jo.”On the night she disappeared, Friday, November 10, 1995, Jo Jo missed the last bus home to Kilkenny after an evening socialising at Bruxelles Bar on Harry Street in Dublin.Instead, she boarded a bus to Naas, Co Kildare, at 10pm and intended to hitch-hike the rest of the way to her home in Callan.She got her first lift from Naas to the slip road on the M9 motorway at Kilcullen, before getting another lift to Moone, Co Kildare, at around 11.15pm.Gardai commence a search for the remains of JoJo Dullard and Deirdre Jacob in an area of land on a quarry on Castleruddery Upper in Co Wicklow in February She called her friend Mary from a phone box at 11.37pm and told her during the call that a car had stopped and she was going to accept the lift.This was the last known interaction with Jo Jo, who was reported missing by her sister Mary Bergin the following morning.Jo Jo was the youngest of five, with just Kathleen and her sister Nora still alive.“She gave so much of herself in the fight to find out and get Jo Jo back home,” Ms Bergin said about Mary who had organised for a monument for her sister and other missing people to be placed in the grounds of Kilkenny Castle in 2002.“I suppose she gave so much of herself, she had nothing left to give, and she was such a wonderful person with a wonderful spirit about her.Read moreGardaí conclude ‘current phase’ of search operation for missing Jo Jo Dullard and Deirdre Jacob“By the time she found out she had cancer before Christmas 2017, she died within 17 weeks. It was an aggressive form of cancer.”Ms Bergin believes the stress of advocating for 22 years added up and put a strain on Ms Phelan, harming her health.The five siblings were close, with their father John dying before Jo Jo was born and their mother Nora dying from cancer in 1983.“It goes into the next generation. And both of her godparents passed without answers.“It has a ripple effect, it affects so many.”In November 2020, An Garda Síochána reclassified Jo Jo’s disappearance as a murder investigation as the force was satisfied that she had come to serious harm.Larry Murphy who served 10 years in jail and now lives in the UK, continues to be investigated by gardaí.The rapist remains a key suspect for the murder of Deirdre Jacob, who vanished in July 1998 while walking home from the post office and is also a suspect for the disappearance of Jo Jo.In February of this year, gardaí had begun a search operation on open ground at a disused quarry in Co Wicklow, near the border with Co Kildare.They later concluded the “current search phase” of the search operation in relation to the disappearance and murders of both women.
