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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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To give it a go, visit butternutbox.com forward slash lines of inquiry and use the code lines of inquiry for 50% off your first two boxes. Fresh food, happy dogs. It's the early hours of Thursday the 13th of February 1997 in Dundalk. On Bachelor's Walk, a small residential road off a busy street, the town is quiet. The houses along the street are draped in darkness.
Bachelor's Walk is close to the centre of Dundalk Town, lined with two-storey terraced houses and some smaller cottages. The front doors of those cottages open out onto the street. The windows look out onto parked cars, passing traffic and the steady beat of everyday life. It's the kind of place where a person leaving a house is easier to see than to miss.
But in the early hours of this winter morning, all is quiet. Inside one of those houses, Bernadette Breen wakes. A few hours earlier, she had been in the town with her 17-year-old daughter, Ciara. They'd gone for something to eat before returning home and watching television together.
It was an ordinary evening for the mother and her only child, her child who was growing, preparing to become her own person in the real wider world. Bernadette was due to receive the results of a biopsy the following day, and Ciara knew that. Before going to bed, they spoke for a short time in Bernadette's room. They told each other it would all be okay.
Then they said goodnight and Ciara went to her own room. When Bernadette wakes, the house is quiet, as it should be. Then she checks Ciara's room and sees that her bed is empty. Bernadette goes downstairs, opens the front door and looks out onto the road. They'd locked up before going to bed, but then she notices the front window. It's open.
She reckons Ciara has left it open so she can get back into the house when she returns from wherever she's gone. Ciara hasn't taken clothes. She hasn't taken money. There is nothing to suggest she left with intentions to stay away. A teenager stepping out into the night. A window left open. A moment of teenage rebellion, but with a way back in. So, Bernadette decides she will stay up.
She will sit and wait for her only child to come home.
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Chapter 2: What happened on the night Ciara Breen disappeared?
But in missing person cases, the evidence can be far harder to find. Often, there is no body. Perhaps no confirmed crime scene. No clear last movement beyond a doorway or a window. And in those cases, all the investigators are left with are fragments. A last conversation. A last sighting. A rumour. A witness who comes forward years later. Faded memories that can be unreliable.
And a mother who never stops asking questions. This is Lines of Inquiry, a Go Loud original podcast, where we look beyond the headlines and follow the evidence step by step. In this episode, we examine the disappearance of Ciara Breen, a 17-year-old girl who left her home on Bachelor's Walk in Dundalk in the early hours of the 13th of February, 1997.
For more than 20 years, her mother Bernadette searched for answers. Gardaí believe Ciara left that night to meet someone. They also believe somebody in Dundalk knows what happened next. This is Lines of Inquiry. Keira Breen. The Open Window. Ciara Breen was born on the 31st of March 1979. Her early life was shaped by family, closeness and routine.
Her mother Bernadette had married when she was just 19 years old, but young love is not always made to last.
The marriage ended not long after, and her husband later moved to the United States. Bernadette stayed in Dundalk. Later that year Ciara was born. Ciara was Bernadette's first and only child.
As a young single mother, Bernadette built her life around her daughter. They had the kind of bond that comes from years of being each other's whole world. Ciara was not just the child in the house, she was Bernadette's pride and joy. She spent her early years surrounded not only by her mother, but by her grandparents too, aunts, uncles and cousins.
She was never short of care or attention. As Ciara grew older, people thought of her as a shy kid.
Teachers saw her as quiet and reserved, but polite and mannerly. In 1994, Ciara, now a teenager, and her mother moved into a house on Bachelor's Walk, close to the centre of Dundalk. Ciara grew into a striking young woman, with long dark brown hair, a pale complexion and clear blue eyes. Her face had a softness to it, rounded and youthful, with full cheeks and a small mouth.
In photographs she could look serious, almost solemn. There was a shyness in her expression. By 1997, the 17-year-old Ciara was at that stage of life where childhood is almost over, but adulthood has not yet arrived. For Bernadette, Bachelor's Walk was home. For Ciara, it was the place she moved through as a teenager, beginning to test the edges of her own life.
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Chapter 3: How did Bernadette Breen react to Ciara's absence?
Ciara was no different in that sense. She could be rebellious. There had been an incident that scared Bernadette in the early months of 1997. Ciara had gone missing for two days and Bernadette had gone looking for her. She asked all around town if anyone had seen her.
Eventually, when Bernadette returned home to Bachelor's Walk after being out searching for her, Ciara was standing there waiting for her, alive and well. Ciara's aunt was with Bernadette that day too, having been out pounding the pavement as well. She said to Bernadette, You two have a lot to discuss. I'll leave you to it. And left the house.
Bernadette worried about some of Ciara's friends, people she didn't know well. One man was named Liam Mullen. Mullen was a man in his thirties living in Dundalk. He lived near the Breen's on Bachelor's Walk, and Mullen would meet Ciara after school and bring her drinking down by the railway line. When Bernadette became aware of the contact, she warned Ciara to stay away from him.
Then one day, out of the blue, Liam Mullen came to the house. He arrived at Bachelor's Walk, knocked on the door, looking to speak to Ciara. For Bernadette, that crossed the line. Whatever had been happening outside the home, he was now at her front door, asking for her teenage daughter. Bernadette ran him from the house, warning him to stay away from Ciara.
On the evening of Wednesday, the 13th of February 1997, just hours before Bernadette would wake to find that open window, Ciara and her mother decided to break up the night by going out for something to eat. The next day's biopsy results weighed on them and they sought a distraction. They went to the Roma restaurant on Park Street, a short six-minute stroll from their home.
Afterwards they came back home to watch telly and at around 8pm Ciara set the video recorder up to tape a film. The film was called Circle of Friends. It came out two years earlier in 1995 and starred Chris O'Donnell. He was something of a 90s heartthrob and an actor that had many teenage girls among his fans. Keira got a marker and wrote a message on the VHS tape.
Chris O'Donnell, I love you. Keira Breen's tape.
Do not touch. Before going to bed, they spoke for a few moments in Bernadette's room. Keira asked her mother if she was scared of what the next day's medical results might bring. Bernadette told Keira she was ready to meet whatever came head on. She joked with her daughter, Don't worry, you won't get rid of me that easy.
Having gone to bed at midnight, Bernadette would wake around 2am and find Ciara's bed empty. Downstairs, the front window had been left open. She thought Ciara had gone out through the window and left it open, intending to return later that morning. Maybe she had gone to meet someone. It was not unusual for Ciara to slip out of the house at night.
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Chapter 4: What were the initial steps taken by Gardaí in Ciara's case?
Two of Ciara's friends told Gardaí that she had spoken about sneaking out of the house through a window to meet Liam Mullen in the days before Valentine's Day. Gardaí had identified Liam Mullen as a person of interest, but suspicion was not enough. By the following year, 1998, Ciara's disappearance had also become part of a much wider picture.
Operation Trace was established to examine the disappearances of six young women in the Leinster area between 1993 and 1998. These were cases that had unnerved the nation. Annie McCarrick, Jojo Dullard, Fiona Pender, Fiona Sinnott, Deirdre Jacob, and now Ciara Breen.
Different women, different counties, different circumstances, but all of them young, all of them missing, and all of them without any concrete leads. A special investigation unit was set up at Nais Garda station to examine the files and look for possible links.
Garda were considering one of the most disturbing possibilities in any investigation, whether some of the disappearances could be connected and whether a serial killer might be responsible. The scale of the operation reflected the seriousness of that fear. The National Bureau of Criminal Investigation was involved, and two FBI agents from America were brought in to assist.
Their role was to examine the files and bring specialist experience in profiling of serious criminals, particularly in cases involving serial violence and sexual offending. Keira's case was reviewed within that wider Operation Trace work.
But even as Gardaí examined the possibility of links between Ciara and the other missing women, her disappearance continued to point towards an answer closer to home. Gardaí still believed she'd gone to meet someone. They felt the answer to what had happened to Ciara Breen was held by someone in Dundalk.
Through one of the public appeals connected to Operation Trace, a woman came forward to Gardaí with information about Liam Mullen. She told detectives that Mullen had told her that he knew where Keira Breen was. Gardaí regarded this tip as a breakthrough and in 1999, two years after Keira Breen disappeared, Liam Mullen was arrested on suspicion of murder. Gardaí questioned him at length.
He made no admissions, but he did make one remark that detectives found highly unusual. As the time Gardaí had to detain and question him was running out, Mullan asked the detectives directly if he would be charged with murder. Then he said, I shouldn't be charged with murder for what I did. For what I did. These four words gave Gardaí a lot to consider.
For investigators, it raised more questions than it answered. It didn't locate Ciara. It didn't establish what had happened to her after she left Bachelor's Walk. But it suggested that Mullan knew more. Gardaí ran out of time to hold and question Mullan. They had to either charge or release him. They didn't have enough to bring him before court.
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Chapter 5: Who were the key individuals involved in Ciara's life?
No comment. No comment. Gardaí had fresh information from the people that had come forward, and a suspect they believed was central to the case, but little more than suspicion. They still didn't have the evidence they needed to charge him. Once again, Mullan was released without charge, and again he maintained his innocence.
Four months later, Gardie had enough information and evidence to enact their first physical search for Ciara. In August 2015, Gardie sealed off Balmer's bog. It was the first major physical search for her since she disappeared more than 18 years earlier. The search was now being led by Detective Inspector Pat Murray, who was now spearheading the renewed investigation.
Gardaí would not say publicly whether they were acting on one specific piece of information, but Superintendent Gerard Curley said the search was one of a number of lines of inquiry being followed after information had come in through local and national appeals. The area itself was difficult ground. It was close to the bus-erring yard on the Ardee Road.
It was almost a kilometre in from the road, near the Dublin to Belfast railway line. Heavy excavators were brought in to prepare the site. Gardaí used strimmers and cutting equipment to clear reeds and water grass from the edge of a small river. In the stream, five divers from the Garda sub-aqua unit stood chest deep in the water, shoulder to shoulder across the width of the banks.
They moved forward slowly, using long metal rods to probe beneath the surface. The conditions were so poor that they were covering only about one metre every ten minutes. It was careful physical work, carried out in difficult terrain, with every section of the ground and water treated as a possible place where evidence might have been hidden or lost.
The search was joined by members of the Garda Technica Bureau. The International Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains, which is the body that had helped return some of the disappeared to their families, were assisting too. A forensic anthropologist was also involved. It was a specialist search of land and water using expertise usually associated with the recovery of human remains.
For Bernadette and the wider family, the development was overwhelming. Superintendent Curley said the family had asked for space to come to terms with what was happening. Gardie also made clear they would not be providing daily updates. They needed time to work the ground, and the ground was not cooperating with them. There had been illegal dumping in the area.
Tons of rubble, rubbish and debris had been added over the years, changing the landscape Gardie were trying to search. Detective Inspector Mary was warned by the forensic anthropologist that if Keira's remains were there, the conditions may have left very little to recover. After so many years in that ground, any bones could have broken down to the point where they were close to dust.
The search was not happening in private. Balmer's bog was sealed off, but word of what Gardaí were doing had travelled through Dundalk. During the operation, Liam Mullen was seen near the search area. He watched Gardaí as they carried out the excavation. Gardaí found his appearance at the scene suspicious. Balmer's bog gave Gardaí something they were not looking for.
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Chapter 6: What were the significant developments in the investigation over the years?
On both occasions he was released without charge, and he maintained his innocence. But in the eyes of the detectives who had worked the case, he remained central to it. Then, in July 2017, one of the last possible routes to an answer was lost forever. One Thursday evening in July 2017, Liam Mullen was arrested in Dundalk Town Centre on suspicion of drink driving. He was 57 years old.
Mullen swallowed a substance before his arrest. Gardaí believed it was heroin. While in custody at Dundalk Gardaí station, he became seriously ill. A doctor was called and attempted to resuscitate him, but Mullen was later pronounced dead. the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission launched an investigation into the circumstances of his death.
A few days later, Liam Mullen was buried following a small funeral ceremony in Dundalk. At his funeral mass in the Church of the Holy Redeemer, mourners heard about a man who had worked as a mechanic from a young age, who loved cars and motorcycles, who read the local trader magazine from cover to cover, and who was remembered by his family and friends as someone they loved.
But outside that church, another truth remained. To Gardaí investigating Ciara Breen's disappearance, Mullan had been the chief suspect. He had lived on Bachelor's Walk, only yards from Bernadette Breen's home. Ciara's friends had told Gardaí that she had made arrangements to meet him on the night she disappeared.
He was almost twice her age, but he denied any meaningful relationship with Ciara and any involvement with her disappearance. His death closed off one of the most hopeful routes left in the investigation. There could be no further interview. No future charge. For Bernadette, it was another ending that was not really an ending.
A few months after Mullen's death, Dundalk became the focal point of the case once again. In September 2017, human remains were discovered in the back garden of a house on Mary Street in the town. Builders had been carrying out work at the property when the discovery was made. Gardaí were called, the scene was preserved and forensic experts were brought in.
The location immediately drew attention. Mary Street was only a six-minute walk from Ciara's home on Bachelor's Walk. After more than twenty years, any discovery of human remains in Dundalk carried the same dreadful possibility for Bernadette Green. And if it was, then the long wait would finally have an answer.
But it would be the answer Bernadette had feared since the morning her daughter disappeared. The remains were examined carefully. Until they were identified, nothing could be said with certainty. Later, Gardaí confirmed the remains were historical and were not connected to any ongoing investigation. They didn't belong to Ciara.
Another possible answer had appeared briefly before it disappeared.
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Chapter 7: How did public appeals impact the search for Ciara?
And never miss a new episode. Lines of Inquiry is presented by me, John Sweetman. The podcast is created by Darren Cleary. Our executive producer is Eoghan Brennan. Siobhan Walsh and Siobhan Maguire are our producers. This episode was written by Darren Cleary and edited by Eoghan Brennan. Sound design and editing by Neil Kavanagh with editing support from Ed Smith.
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