IRA victim's family hope for Christian burial
The family of IRA victim Danny McElhone were today hoping to finally give him a Christian burial as the last of his suspected remains were taken from a hillside.
Forensic detectives believe they have now recovered the west Belfast man’s entire remains from a remote bogland site in the Wicklow Mountains.
In a statement, Mr McElhone’s family said they were praying their agonising 27-year wait for the return of his body was coming to an end.
“It seems likely that they are the remains of our late beloved brother Danny but, unfortunately, the authorities have confirmed that they will be unable to verify this categorically for a further four weeks,” they said.
“We sincerely hope and pray that these are the remains of Danny and that their discovery will allow us to afford Danny a proper Christian burial and to finally lay him to rest.”
Investigators found a human foot, a boot and a sock at Ballynultagh, on the side of Wicklow’s second highest peak, Mullaghcleevaun, near the village of Lacken nine days ago.
After a painstaking excavation of the site, the remainder of the suspected remains was today taken in a black hearse to the State Pathologist offices in Dublin.
More samples will be taken and sent to a special DNA database in England that contains the genetic codes of families of the so-called Disappeared, victims murdered and secretly buried during the Troubles.
It is hoped this will provide a match with samples already taken from the McElhone family and positively identify the remains as that of the teenager who vanished in 1981.
The Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains (ICLVR), which is leading the search, said its work at the Wicklow site was now complete.
“The remains have been removed and will be retained by the coroner in Dublin until identification,” said a spokesman.
“The excavated area will be reinstated.”
Mr McElhone’s family asked for their privacy to be respected as they struggled to deal with the developments, adding that they would make a fuller statement on the completion of the DNA testing.
“Our hopes and prayers are today with the families of the other missing persons,” they said.
“We sincerely hope that in the course of time they will be successful in locating the remains of their relatives which will afford them the opportunity to bring closure to their loss.”
Mr McElhone, 19, was named by the IRA as one of nine victims it abducted, murdered and secretly buried during the Troubles.
They claimed he was being questioned about stealing IRA weapons from an arms dump when he was killed in a struggle with a gunman who was guarding him.
The ICLVR, set up by the British and Irish governments to locate the bodies of the Disappeared, previously made two unsuccessful searches at the forest-surrounded bogland close to Blessington Lakes in 1999 and 2000.
Last year they brought in Geoff Knupfer, the investigative scientist who helped find the bodies of the victims of Moors murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, to spearhead a new scientific approach.
This included the use of an archaeological “time-team”, made up of geophysicists who used ground radar, scanners, probes and cadaver dogs that detect human remains.
These ground-breaking methods are already being rolled out at five more suspected burial locations in Counties Monaghan, Meath and Louth.
