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Chapter 1: What happened to Sandra Collins on that December night in 2000?
Siblings Bridie and Patrick Collins have spent 26 years trying to find their missing sister, Sandra, who vanished on a December night in 2000 from the small fishing village of Kalala in County Mayo. Over the past year, the Crime World team has been working with the Collins and delving into the story of Sandra in the hopes of unearthing information that might lead Gardaí to her remains.
Today I'm talking with Bridie and Patrick about Ghost, the disappearance of Sandra Collins and their ongoing efforts to find her. You're listening to Crime World, a podcast from crimeworld.com. Patrick and Bridie, welcome to the Crime World studio. Tell me where you came from today.
We came all the way from Crossmalina in County Mayo, from the west coast of Ireland.
Train up through the country.
Through the whole countryside, yeah.
One of the rare days that you can actually see past the window out into the countryside.
Yeah, it was beautiful.
Was it? Yeah.
Warm and lovely scenery.
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Chapter 2: How have Bridie and Patrick Collins been searching for Sandra over the years?
Oh, they are, yeah. Yeah, it was very interesting and it brought us back 26 years. Yeah. It made us think a lot about our childhood and things probably that we hadn't thought of.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And it brought us back into places which maybe didn't seem relevant, but are relevant because that whole your childhood and to explain where Sandra was when she went missing. in December of 2000, you kind of have to look at where she came from, don't you? And why she was there, why she was living the way she was and examine all of that.
And I think it probably became apparent that it was just a decision she made to go and live with your aunt, Anne O'Grady. Maybe tell us a little bit about that, who Anne was and why Sandra ended up living with her in Kalala.
Well, Anne was our dad's aunt. So I suppose for anyone who's listening to the podcast, Sandra and Bridie and James, their dad was Francie and then he died in 1978. And our mum remarried my dad, Joe. And in that family, there was Francie and Joe, Bridie and Anne. And Anne was the baby of the family and she had rheumatoid arthritis.
And in the 1980s, Bridie was living in England with her husband, Ivan. And mum and dad were at home with James and Sandra and Bridie. And I hadn't come along at that time or Davey or Mary. There was only three at that stage and was married in Westport. And then sadly for her, her life took a bit of a turn unexpectedly when she got sick herself and got rheumatoid arthritis and
had loads of miscarriages and her marriage just broke down, unfortunately. So then she came back to live with us in Fortis just for a little while to get back on her feet. And then, obviously the house was too crowded with everybody in it. So she got a flat in Ballina and, um,
And when she went into Ballinad, then she just asked would one of them go in just for a little while to help her get established, I suppose, and just spend a bit of time with her over the summer because the kids would have been getting their holidays for summer from school. So that's how it transpired. Well, you went in first, of course.
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Chapter 3: What insights do Bridie and Patrick share about Sandra's childhood?
It is and it isn't because it explains really why she was maybe drawn to, there was a certain loneliness there for her, wasn't there? And she had appeared to have this sort of dream to meet a Prince Charming. Someone was going to sweep her off her feet, maybe take her out of that life. And probably had she, she would have insisted that Anne went with her.
It could have been a possibility.
Yeah. She felt a connection to her. She felt she was, this was her kind of life's work was to mind Anne.
Yeah. I'd say she would have said to whoever he was, well, if I go, Anne has to come with me because I have to look after her. It came, they were like salt and pepper, not compared to them, but they came as a set really. Yeah. You know.
Yeah. So Sandra did actually at one point, she would have been what, 24 was she when she had a baby?
About 26, I think.
26, okay. And she kept the baby in that little house for a period of time before she decided she had to give the child up for adoption. Sort of selfless decision when you look back on it because she wanted the best for the child.
Oh, absolutely, Nicola. She adored her and she loved her. And we have lovely pictures of the two of them together. But
She knew like a couple of weeks before, well, a good few weeks before the baby was adopted, she gave her to, or the baby was given to me and mum and dad and that kind of thing to help her with minding and that, because she knew that where she was living and more so who she was living with.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Sandra face while living with her aunt Anne?
And that sort of loving environment that she herself had grown up in with two parents, albeit she lost her dad. There was a, you know, you had a great childhood in many ways, didn't you? Oh, yeah.
And she reassured us all that she had met the mum and dad and that they were ideal. Right. Absolutely ideal. And she knew that her baby was going to Have a great life. And they were so thankful and grateful to her.
And she did the right thing. Yeah.
And I can remember her saying to Mam at the time, because obviously they were devastated, because it was their first grandchild, so they were so excited, naturally. And I remember her saying, but I'm doing two nice things, Mam. And she said, well, what are they, Sandra? And she said, well, first of all, I'm giving the baby everything that I can possibly give her.
And then she said, the next nice thing is that I've met these lovely, lovely people. And, you know, I've obviously been given a gift to be able to make them mum and dad. They can't do it themselves for whatever reason. So she said maybe that was what God wanted me to do, to give them the gift of being parents. So I'm giving them the greatest gift that they can't do for themselves, unfortunately.
So she thought it was a lovely gift to them. they were going to look after her daughter.
Yeah.
And she was, they were going to be paired and so, and Mam said, oh, that's a lovely way to look at it, Sandra, you know. I suppose she had to look at it, you know, in a positive way because I don't know.
And she was right on both those things. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, because that has been a gift to both her daughter and the people who got to to rear her as their own.
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Chapter 5: How did the family's dynamics change after the disappearance?
It was a little thing you made for them going back after the summer.
Yeah, because they'd miss us so much and we had no phone so they couldn't ring us. Right. All we could do was write letters over and back to each other. And when they'd be leaving, we'd be always crying and they'd be crying. So we came up then with the brainwave that we'd make this for them when they go home then, if they felt sad or missed us. They could rest.
play this and listen to us and have a laugh as well yeah yeah and we had Nicola now we had some fantastic times with them yeah when they'd arrive she was strict the stricter one and he was the real fun one yeah so we would take we were like bees around honey he sat on the chair and I can picture the three of us and then as the next generation came along but at that stage there was three of us and we'd be all on top of us and he'd say oh for god's sake yes
Get up, I'm sweating, you're making me sweat. But we had some great times with them. And when we found the cassette, the four of us sat down and we played it like, and it was, oh my God, the things that we were saying and singing, we thought we were great.
Absolutely. And Sandra reads this lovely little poem into it. And it's her voice and it's, you know,
by James Reeves. I think she must have learned it at school. Yeah. I think they were trying to encourage James to do a bit more on the tape. Bridie was like, what do you think, James? And he was the typical middle child. Don't involve me now. I'm not interested. It was, you know. Yeah.
There'll be a few fights now, Nicola, as well. There'll be a few words between us, like. Yeah. And he'd be like, oh, no, I'm not getting involved, you know. Yeah. Talking about dresses or clothes or different things like that.
bit of competition between myself and Sandra then like and he'd be kind of in the middle of me saying oh no I'm not getting involved I heard Bridie Howard say what do you think about that James you were fighting over something I don't know and he said oh no don't involve me don't put me in the middle and I don't know was it you or Sandra said you were born there or something so you know take a side pick a side like
but extraordinary the tape survived all those years and then you press play in an old cassette recorder and she's there her voice because somebody's voice is so it's kind of feels as if it's more part of their soul and their body doesn't it yeah yeah part of their identity yeah and of course we have used it on the podcast um so and hopefully it's going down well people are
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