Arlene Arkinson was a 15-year-old Northern Irish teenager who disappeared on 14 August 1994. Her body has never been found. Robert Howard, a convicted murderer and sex offender, was found not guilty of her murder in 2005. However a 2021 inquest found him responsible for her murder. [1]
Arlene Arkinson was a 15-year-old girl from Castlederg, County Tyrone. The final years of her life were described by the media as ‘troubled’ with her mother dying when she was just 11 and her father suffering from alcoholism. Following her mother's death, Arkinson lived with a number of her older siblings and experienced sexual abuse at the hands of her brother-in-law, Seamus McGale. [2] McGale was convicted for the crime. He was released from prison 10 days prior to Arkinson's disappearance. [3]
Arkinson had gone missing before her final disappearance, but these incidents were resolved within 48 hours. [4]
On 13 August 1994, Arlene Arkinson attended a disco in Bundoran, County Donegal in the Republic of Ireland. She attended the disco with her friend Donna Quinn, Donna's partner Sean Heggarty, and Robert Howard who was the partner of Quinn's mother Patricia Quinn. [5]
Arkinson was last seen sitting in Howard's car in Castlederg in the early hours of 14 August 1994. [6]
At the outset of the investigation, Patricia Quinn provided an alibi for Howard, claiming that he returned to her home with Heggarty and Donna Quinn at 3 am on the morning of 14 August after already having dropped Arkinson off at a pub. Heggarty later came forward to the police and admitted that Patricia Quinn had asked him to lie to the police. He told police that Howard had dropped him and Donna Quinn off at the Quinn home and then drove off with Arlene. [5]
Robert Howard was on bail at the time of Arlene's disappearance. Priscilla Gahan, a 16-year-old lodger who lived with Patricia Quinn, accused Howard of holding her captive, placing a noose around her neck, and raping her over a period of three days. Gahan escaped from a second-story window and sought police help. Howard was later found guilty of unlawful carnal knowledge despite having been initially charged with multiple rapes and with buggery. [7]
Despite having been the last person to see Arkinson and being on bail for a sex offence, it took 46 days for Howard to be arrested and questioned. This decision was later criticised by later investigators. [8] Howard was released without charge and later moved to Scotland where he received a council house, but began moving when a newspaper reported on his past. [9]
Police heard from friends of Arkinson's that she had confided her fears that she was pregnant by someone who was close to the family. As Arkinson's body has never been recovered, this cannot be proven. [4]
In 1996, police excavated the garden at the home of Arkinson's sister, Kathleen Arkinson, in a search for remains. Police used a sledgehammer to gain access to the house as they were initially denied entry by the residence. No remains were found. [10] The Arkinson family later sued in relation to this incident. [11]
In March 2002, Howard was charged with the murder of Arlene Arkinson. Before this case could be taken to court, he first had to be tried for the murder of Hannah Williams in London.
Extensive searches for Arkinson have taken place, as recently as 2024, however no remains have been recovered. [12]
Prior to the trial for Arkinson's murder, Howard was tried and convicted of the murder of Hannah Williams in London. William's body was recovered from a disused cement works on March 15, 2002. Reporting restrictions were in place during the trial as Howard has charges pending in Northern Ireland. [13]
Hannah Williams was a 14-year-old girl from Dartford, Kent who disappeared on April 21, 2001. She came from a working-class family and had experienced sexual abuse as a child. [14]
Howard had been in a romantic relationship with Mary Scollan, the former partner of Williams’ father. Howard used Scollan's phone to lure Williams to him. [14]
Howard was found guilty of the murder of Williams and sentenced to life in prison. [15]
Howard went on trial for the murder of Arlene Arkinson in 2005 in Belfast Crown Court. The jury did not hear evidence of other crimes Howard was convicted of and the defence solicitor argued that it could not be proven Arkinson was dead and suggested alternative explanations such as running away or committing suicide. Howard was acquitted of the murder by a majority verdict of 10 - 2. [16] [17]
Robert Howard died in prison in 2015 while serving a life sentence for the rape and murder of Hannah Williams. [18]
An inquest into the death of Arlene Atkinson opened in February 2021 following years of delay and lasted until July 2021. [19] [20] The inquest found that Robert Howard has murdered Arlene Atkinson and the coroner dismissed claims that Arlene had left voluntarily or died by suicide. [21]
During the inquest, allegations were made that Howard was a state agent. [22] This claim was later repeated by Kent Police Detective Chief Inspector Colin Murray who led the investigation into the murder of Hannah Williams. [23]
Following the inquest, the Police Ombudsman's Office found that the police failed to adequately investigate the disappearance of Arlene Arkinson and did not properly investigate reports that she was last sighted with a known sex offender. They also reported that they had grounds to arrest Howard within 48 hours, but instead waited 46 days to do so. [24]
Arlene Arkinson's disappearance and murder have been heavily covered in the media, often alongside that of Hannah Williams. It was featured in the BBC documentary series Murder in the Badlands, [25] in the TG4 documentary series Marú inár Measc [26] and in the true crime novel Unsolved by Barry Cummins. [27]
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) is a unionist, loyalist, British nationalist and national conservative political party in Northern Ireland. It was founded in 1971 during the Troubles by Ian Paisley, who led the party for the next 37 years. It is currently led by Gavin Robinson, who initially stepped in as an interim after the resignation of Jeffrey Donaldson. It is the second-largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly, and won five seats in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom at the 2024 election. The party has been mostly described as right-wing and socially conservative, being anti-abortion and opposing same-sex marriage. The DUP sees itself as defending Britishness and Ulster Protestant culture against Irish nationalism and republicanism. It is also Eurosceptic and supported Brexit.
Jean McConville was a woman from Belfast, Northern Ireland, who was kidnapped and murdered by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and secretly buried in County Louth in the Republic of Ireland in 1972 after being accused by the IRA of passing information to British forces.
Conor Terence Murphy is an Irish republican Sinn Féin politician, who has served as Minister for the Economy of Northern Ireland since 2024. He has been a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Newry and Armagh since 2015, having previously served as the Member of Parliament for Newry and Armagh from 2005 to 2015, observing the Sinn Fein policy of abstentionism.
On 21 April 2001, Hannah Williams, a 14-year-old English schoolgirl was murdered after going missing during a shopping trip in Dartford, Kent. Williams's body was discovered on 15 March 2002 at a cement works in an industrial area of Northfleet.
The murder of Danielle Jones was an English child murder case involving a 15-year-old schoolgirl who disappeared from East Tilbury, Essex, England. There was a large and exhaustive search to find Jones' body and it was considered one of the biggest cases Essex Police had to deal with at the time. Despite the police's best efforts, her body was never found.
Michelle O'Neill is an Irish politician who has been First Minister of Northern Ireland since February 2024 and Vice President of Sinn Féin since 2018. She has also been the MLA for Mid Ulster in the Northern Ireland Assembly since 2007. O'Neill was previously deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland from 2020 to 2022. O'Neill served on the Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council from 2005 to 2011.
Tara Lynne O'Neill is an Irish actress from Northern Ireland, who has appeared in film, theatre and television.
John F. Larkin, is the former Attorney General for Northern Ireland.
The Ballymurphy massacre was a series of incidents between 9 and 11 August 1971, in which the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment of the British Army killed eleven civilians in Ballymurphy, Belfast, Northern Ireland, as part of Operation Demetrius. The shootings were later referred to as Belfast's Bloody Sunday, a reference to the killing of civilians by the same battalion in Derry a few months later, known as Bloody Sunday. The 1972 inquests had returned an open verdict on all of the killings, but a 2021 coroner's report found that all those killed had been innocent and that the killings were "without justification".
The Third Executive was, under the terms of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, a power-sharing coalition.
The Disappeared are people from Northern Ireland believed to have been abducted, murdered and secretly buried, the large majority of which occurred during the Troubles. The Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains (ICLVR) is in charge of locating the remaining bodies, and was led by forensic archaeologist John McIlwaine.
Gerard Davison was a Northern Irish militant who was a commander of the Provisional IRA. He was shot and killed on 5 May 2015. One of the first operations he was involved in was shooting dead of IPLO Belfast Brigade commander Sammy Ward during the same Night of the Long Knives in Belfast.
The 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election was held on 5 May 2022. It elected 90 members to the Northern Ireland Assembly. It was the seventh assembly election since the establishment of the assembly in 1998. The election was held three months after the Northern Ireland Executive collapsed due to the resignation of the First Minister, Paul Givan of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), in protest against the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Lyra Catherine McKee was a journalist from Northern Ireland who wrote for several publications about the consequences of the Troubles. She also served as an editor for Mediagazer, a news aggregator website. On 18 April 2019, McKee was fatally shot during rioting in the Creggan area of Derry.
Events from the year 2021 in Northern Ireland.
The New Irish Republican Army, or New IRA, is an Irish republican paramilitary group. It is a continuation of the Real Irish Republican Army, which began to be called the 'New IRA' in July 2012 when Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD) and other small republican militant groups merged with it. The group calls itself simply "the Irish Republican Army". The New IRA has launched many attacks against the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the British Army. It is the largest and most active of the "dissident republican" paramilitary groups waging a campaign against the British security forces in Northern Ireland.
Events from the year 2022 in Northern Ireland.
Events from the year 2023 in Northern Ireland.