Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Tessa, this is the first episode of Seachtain. There's a new episode every Tuesday with stories and stories about your life on the island.
I'm very happy to be here. It was like I was talking to Stephen McCullough. It was like I was talking to the audience team. It was like I was talking to the audience team. It was like I was talking to the audience team. It was like I was talking to the audience team. It was like I was talking to the audience team. It was like I was talking to the audience team.
It was like I was talking to the audience team.
It was like I was talking to the audience team.
Hey there, we are Indosport with me, Joe Malloy. We cover sport and we have things like this.
If you ask Arsenal's defenders, Gabriel and Saliba, to play in that PSG team or that Bayern team, they would be exposed as much as those centre-backs were last night. Because effectively, the attackers were on top. Then you ask the question, how many defenders were actually on the pitch last night? Because none of the full-backs have no interest in defending. They're like wingers.
And I've seen Saliba and Gabriel in an open game in that League Cup semi-final doubleheader against Newcastle last season get torn apart by Izak. I won't have anyone convince me that they can defend in that space.
This is an Irish Independent Podcast.
Just a heads up, this podcast contains references to suicide, so please take care when listening.
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Chapter 2: What happened to Sandra Collins on December 4, 2000?
So that was a bitterly cold winter's day in Kalala. If you've been to Kalala, it seems for me to always be cold as a wind comes in off the sea that will cut you in two. So I can only imagine what it was like on the December 4th, 2000. She'd been seen in the local shop around 7.30pm and
and had bought a few messages she would go down for the aunt plus also call into a couple of the elderly neighbours and ask them do they need anything little chat with the shop owner she was always very quiet and then she was seen by staff in a local takeaway shortly after 11pm where she bought a large bag of chips and that was it she was never seen again now some days later so a search was initiated and some days later
a fleece jacket she had been wearing was found on the pier. It hadn't been found in the initial search and in it was a packet of sausages and two phone numbers. One of them was for an abortion clinic in the UK and the other was a mobile number for a local man named Martin Early.
When did the alarm bell ring that she had disappeared? I mean, who noticed first and how did the search happen?
Well, that was the aunt, Anna Grady. So she didn't come home that night, which would have been very, very unusual for Sandra. So Anne ran in a bit of a panic in the afternoon. She rang Grady at her workplace. And this is Bridie, sorry, yes, Bridie Collins, the sister. And Bridie tells us that she actually was kind of a little elated when she heard that Sandra had gone.
She assumed that maybe they had begged her to leave for years. They had kind of like, you know, spread your wings, go and be fine. She doesn't need you. Sandra refused. She felt some kind of crazy sense of duty to her. So when Bridie hears this at first, she kind of thinks to herself, oh, my God, she's done it. She's finally done what we've been begging her to do all this time.
So Bridie will herself say they didn't take it that seriously at the beginning. But when she got home later that night, they decided we better go down to Killala and see what's going on. And again, the police would say you have to be gone for 24 hours.
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Chapter 3: Who was Sandra Collins and what was her life like before her disappearance?
So it was about two or three days before the kind of search really launched in earnest. And then, as Nicola mentioned, the fleece turns up five days later on the pier, which is very suspicious. Hundreds of people have been on that pier in the meantime looking for her. And then suddenly, you know, it's right there in the middle of the concrete. So there was a very, very big launch.
We've spoken to locals who remember it well. They talk about, you know, hundreds of people going through all the sheds, fields. There were lifeboats launched. They searched the waters in case that she'd gone into the sea. It was assumed by many that perhaps she had killed herself. People spoke about how she had been in, you know, in the local pubs when she would have met people.
She spoke at length about her brother James's horrific accident.
Chapter 4: What were the circumstances surrounding the discovery of Sandra's fleece?
And then also, you know, 18 months previously, she had given up a daughter for adoption. She had been pregnant before, kept the baby for six months, but then decided that she was going to give the baby. And so that was a very, very tough moment in her life as well.
And was that something that was known that she'd been pregnant before? Yes.
She kept the baby for six months in the house with the aunt and then she just felt that she wanted the child to have a normal, as she thought, upbringing as she had with a mother, father and a happy family. And she had sort of made this heart-wrenching decision to give the child up because she didn't feel she could give the child a proper birth. upbringing in that house with the elderly aunt.
So she'd been through a lot. Selfless really. Yeah. So they start to investigate and also find out that three days previous to her disappearance, she had been to a doctor and that she had been confirmed pregnant again, which everybody would assume was another devastating kind of moment in her life. But she was planning to go and have an abortion.
Now, she had been in a relationship with a local man and one of the police who was very active in the whole investigation throughout Eddie Knox and spoke to us, he's retired now. And he spoke about how they'd gone to the ex-boyfriend's apartment. First place they went. He was very open and let them in and showed them around the house.
They realised quickly that he had absolutely nothing to do with her disappearance. Knew nothing about it. And really the searches sort of weaned down eventually and there was no satisfying explanation as to what might have happened.
But also they discovered that she had brought nothing with her. You know, none of her possessions were gone. She didn't have a passport. She had never been abroad before. She would have had very little money. She was on a carer's allowance.
You know, one of the, I suppose, poignant things that what her brother Patrick tells us is that she'd been saving up and planned to buy her first mobile phone for herself that Christmas. So that's... You're talking about that level of straitened circumstances. So, you know... I think there was an assumption generally in the area that perhaps, you know, it had been a suicide.
Jenny, there was a man that came to the attention of Gardaí. This is Martin Early. Tell me a little bit about how he factors into all of this.
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