Fiona pender search underway

The search for missing Tullamore woman Fiona Pender got underway on a 200 square metre plot of woodland at Capard, Rosenallis, in Co. Laois today.
Fiona Pender went missing from her flat at Church Street in Tullamore in August 1996. The 25-year-old hairdresser and part-time model was seven months pregnant at the time of her disappearance.
Laois/Offaly Chief Superintendent John Scanlan said the intelligence led search occurred because “we have a line of enquiry, it takes us to this area”.  
He said: “We have a primary objective of recovering Fiona and a secondary objective of a criminal investigation.”
“We are not doing it as a speculative thing or to create an event for today, this is something that is being done because we have developed a line of intelligence or information that needs to be pursued to its end,” the Chief Supt added.
He wouldn’t be drawn on the source of information but said, “it is an intelligence led search so I don’t want to delve any further into why we are going there, but we didn’t pick it off the map essentially.”
Chief Supt Scanlan expects the search to last for at least two weeks but he said no set time limit was being placed on the search. The 200 metre search area could also be extended, he added.  
Gardai cordoned off the picturesque site at Capard in the Slieve Blooms on Thursday night. A number of gardai began searching the area this morning. It’s located on the quiet rural Green Road to Glenbarrow Waterfall out of Rosenallis.
A Garda Command and Control Unit and several Garda vans were parked along the lay-by beside the wooded area. It’s located a number of kilometres from the location of a previous 2008 search in the Slieve Blooms and around 18 km from Tullamore.
Chief Supt Scanlan said: “We will be employing the services of our own specially trained people who are trained in searching for cold case persons who have been missing for substantial periods of time. We will also bring in forensic archaeologists, cadaver dogs and others to search this specific area of approximately 200 metres.”
He said the Pender family, Fiona’s mother Josephine and brother John, are anxious to have Fiona home so that they can give her a Christian burial.
“Fiona Pender’s family are hopeful and they always retain a hope that someday they will have the opportunity to get Fiona back. We have to be sensitive to their needs,” he remarked.
Acknowledging gardai’s belief that Fiona was murdered, Chief Supt Scanlan pointed out that over the course of the 18 year investigation five people had been arrested on suspicion of her murder.
He wouldn’t be drawn on the specific information which led to this latest search but said, “our enquiries are both international and local and I don’t wish to confirm any source of information.”   
Returning to the search, he said: “At some stages there will be as many as 20 (people) and at some stages there will be outside expertise as well and other resources we need to bring to the site. The clandestine grave search team are specifically attached to the Garda Technical Bureau, they will be supported by the State Pathologist and other expertise in historic searches for human remains and equally there are other resources that we don’t retain within the Garda Siochana.”
When asked how confident he was of finding Fiona, Chief Supt Scanlan responded: “It would be unhelpful and very remiss of me to hold out hope beyond saying to you this is part of the enquiry, this is what we are doing, we have a line of enquiry, it takes us to this area.”
“It is something that needs to be done, it has to be done and we will do it as professionally as we know how. We have consulted widely and internationally to make sure we do this right.”
He appealed to anyone who might have information regarding Fiona’s disappearance.
“One would hope that there are people out there who have information who may have been more vulnerable in their status at the time and have now moved on with their lives and know something that they should tell us. That’s what we are hoping for,” Chief Supt Scanlan said.
He said: “People must know things from time to time that they otherwise would not have been in a position to share with the world at that time, that they may be now and they should. Whatever way or means that they need to get this to us, I can assure them that it will be received in confidence.”
Tullamore Garda Inspector Kieran Keyes told the briefing that Fiona’s memory lived on in Tullamore.
He said: “Her photograph still hangs in Clarke’s unisex hair salon in William Street. The community regularly remembers her at meetings and events.”

Anyone with information in relation to Fiona’s disappearance can contact the Gardai in Tullamore on 057 9327600 or at the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111.