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The daughter of a woman who disappeared from her Connemara home has asked for answers, as her mother’s fate is unknown more than three decades after her disappearance.
Speaking on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta today, Catherine Uí Chonghaile said her family would find comfort even in recovering a body after her mother Barbara Walsh disappeared from her home in Rusheenamanagh in Carna 35 years ago.
Ms. Uí Chonghaile said that there were many people in the house the night her mother disappeared on June 22, 1985 and that someone knew what had happened.
Connemara is small … she’s over 35, but they could still come forward and say I know what happened that night, or that I was there.
“An aunt, an uncle, a father, two gardaí, it was said that there was a priest there, but there was no priest there that night … Most of the people who were there now are dead. There were a lot of people there and they know what happened, ”she said.
Ms. Uí Chonghaile has asked anyone with information about the case to speak with the Gardaí so that the family can finally close.
“Connemara is small … she is over 35, but they could still come forward and say that I know what happened that night, or that I was there,” she said.
“No matter how small it is, just to say it, this takes too long. If someone knows something, go to the gardaí … we need closure for ourselves and for the next generation of the family ”.
“We want this to end … that we could have a place to go, it would be good, everyone wants to be able to go to the grave, say a prayer, talk to them.”
Disappearance
Ms. Uí Chonghaile, who is the oldest of Ms. Walsh’s seven children, said that the last time she saw their mother she was making tea and sandwiches in the kitchen and that it was a few days before the children understood that was gone.
“In the morning, we thought he had gone to the store in Carna … we knew by Saturday afternoon that he was gone, but we didn’t really understand … we were just young people,” he said.
Ms. Uí Chonghaile said that the Gardaí had told them several times that they had received letters to the station in Clifden from someone in the family dissuading them from investigating the case.
The Gardaí told them and I guess it took them two weeks to start looking … we wonder why they took so long to do something.
He also said the family had doubts about the delay in starting the search for his mother.
“The Gardaí were informed and I suppose it took them two weeks to start searching. Now we are older and we have our own children, and we wonder why it took them so long to do something, “he said.
Ms. Uí Chonghaile said that Ms. Walsh had been a kind mother, teaching her children to swim at the beach and taking them to picnics.
He said that it was impossible for them to imagine that she would leave her seven children: “A mother would not leave us all seven … Someone knows something, and they can call the gardaí in Clifden or in Galway. “
Barbara Walsh’s case will be examined in Crimecall on RTÉ One on Monday.
In 2015, a full review of the case was conducted with 66 people interviewed. Gardaí now plans a new series of searches.
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