Sister of Jo Jo Dullard says she wants 'light to triumph over darkness' over Easter

Sarah Slater

A sister of murdered Kilkenny woman Jo Jo Dullard has said that “light should triumph over darkness” over Easter and thanked the public for their ongoing support and to those working to find her remains over the past 30 years since she went missing.

Jo Jo Dullard, 21, disappeared from Moone, Co Kildare, at 11:37pm, while hitch-hiking on November 9th, 1995.

The Callan native had missed the last direct bus back to Kilkenny and had been hitching lifts from Naas, Co Kildare, where she managed to get a bus to.

The young woman was using a public phone in Moone when she told a friend Mary Cullinane that a car had stopped and she was going to get a lift. That was the last known sighting of her.

Ms Dullard was the youngest of five siblings. Her father John died before she was born and her mother Nora died in 1983 from cancer.

Since her disappearance, her sister Mary Phelan died in 2018 not knowing what happened to her.

In a post of the official Jo Jo Dullard Missing Facebook page, her sister Kathleen Bergin thanked everyone for their “wonderful support, prayers and keeping a candle lighting for Jojo and all our missing loved ones.

“Thinking of those we have loved and lost who are spending this Easter in heaven, though they are no longer with us, their memories live on in our hearts forever.”

Ms Bergin highlighted that, “Easter is a time of hope, new beginnings and the triumph of light over darkness. It acts as a reminder that hope never ends and love never dies.”

She again appealed for those who have information, to “find the courage to come forward and help Jojo to finish her journey home so she can finally be at peace and laid to rest beside her Mam and Dad.”

Last February garda forensic teams investigating Ms Dullard’s murder and that of Kildare woman Deirdre Jacob in separate incidents in the 1990s.

The excavation site on the Kildare/Wicklow border is part of ongoing searches for the Kilkenny and Kildare women.

The excavation at a quarry at Castleruddery Upper lasted several days with forensic gardaí expanding both technological and evidential activity at the scene.

Gardaí used a drone over the excavation zone, while gathering detailed aerial photography and mapping specific areas.

Gathered data from both drone use and photography was analysed which helped forensic teams to refine search parameters and particular areas of interest.

Ms Jacob, 18, was last seen outside her home in Newbridge on July 28, 1998, she was a teaching student in the UK who had returned to see her parents during a short trip back to Ireland.

On the day she was last seen, Jacob had walked into Newbridge town to get a bank draft to send to a college friend in London for their rent deposit.

At 2.14pm, she was observed on CCTV walking on Main Street, Newbridge, and shortly after was observed in the AIB bank.

At 2.26pm, Jacob was observed again on CCTV queuing in the Newbridge Post Office and at 2.32pm was seen on CCTV speaking with a friend outside the Post Office on Main Street.

The last-known recording of Jacob on CCTV was recorded at 2.35pm, walking outside the PTSB Bank on Main Street. She was last seen shortly after 3pm on that day.

Extensive amounts of soil were removed at the dig site after credible information was received by gardaí that a number of cars were buried there which may bear clues to the disappearance of either of the women.

In October 2020, gardaí upgraded the investigation into her disappearance and that of Kildare woman Deirdre Jacob to a murder probe.

A three-week long large scale search almost five years ago of Usk Little on the Kildare/Wicklow - a woodland area was investigated by gardaí after fresh information came to light.

For a second time in November and December 2024 a major garda excavation of land near Grangecon in Co Wicklow was searched for three-and-a-half weeks in an effort to locate her body or any evidence to show she may have been there.

Ms Bergin said during the latest search that it was “reassuring to hear the Garda Commissioner say in a recent media report, that there is no rush on this search and they have got everything they need to do the work there.”

She expressed her and the extended Dullard family’s “heartfelt thanks”.