Missing: A Prime Time Rewind is another chance to re-visit four significant missing person reports that were previously broadcast on RTÉ’s Prime Time.
RTÉ Prime Time reporter Barry Cummins, details the circumstances and subsequent investigations into missing persons in different parts of the country over the last 40 years.
Mary Boyle
The disappearance of Mary Boyle features in a special report which included new images and interviews with her family in April 2017 marking 40 years since she went missing.
Mary had followed her uncle Gerry Gallagher when he was delivering a ladder back to a neighbours house which was 400 yards away on a hillside. The last reported sighting of Mary was by her uncle that afternoon as she turned back towards her grandparents home just over halfway on the journey to the neighbour’s house. Gerry continued on to the neighbour’s home and returned the ladder.
Mary‘s mother Ann told RTE Prime Time she believed Mary did make it to a nearby road on the day she vanished.
Gardai released images of clothing similar to that worn by Mary Boyle when she disappeared from near her grandparents home in Cashelard in south Co. Donegal in March 1977. Mary was wearing a lilac coloured cardigan and black wellington boots when she vanished. No trace of Mary, nor her clothing has been found in the last 40 years. Her twin sister Ann wore identical clothes that day, and those images were shown on RTE Prime Time, as the programme were granted access to the Garda Incident Room in Ballyshannon.
Her mother Ann Boyle also described her upset at receiving anonymous hate mail. Gardai were investigating the material including one which was posted by someone pretending to be Ann’s missing daughter.
Gardai ask anyone with information on Mary’s disappearance to contact the Incident Room in Ballyshannon at 071 9858530 or the Garda Serious Crime Review Team on 01 6663444.