Philip Cairns (born 1 September 1973) disappeared on the afternoon of 23 October 1986 while walking back to school in south Dublin, Ireland from his home in Ballyroan. A large-scale investigation was carried out but no trace of the boy has ever been found.[1][2] His disappearance is now treated as a high-profile child murder case; the only similar incident in Ireland was the murder of Robert Holohan in January 2005.[3] It is one of the most high-profile disappearances in recent Irish history.[4]
Philip's family have issued numerous appeals for information. A reconstruction took place in 2007 and was later televised on RTÉ One, while a reward of €10,000 has also been offered. The book When Heaven Waits, published in 2007, featured an interview with Philip's mother. Nobody has ever been arrested.[4] The case remains open.
Disappearance
"The very sad fact is that life went on after we lost Philip. I can remember we all went out and helped with the search, it was the neighbourly thing to do. But after a while you had to just get on with things. Young people, I think, are more resilient about things like that, they are able to forget more easily and put things behind them."
Philip Cairns disappeared while returning to school in Rathfarnham.[6][7] He had departed Coláiste Éanna secondary school at 12:45 to go home for lunch.[8][9][10] He left his home at 13:30 to return to Coláiste Éanna.[8][9][10] There have been no confirmed sightings of the boy since.[8] His family believe he was abducted by someone who knew him personally.[5]
Speculation at his school the day after his disappearance had Philip being kidnapped by a "bad man" who had offered him sweets then lured him into a van.[5]
Investigation
Several hundred Garda Síochána officers and divers took part in a large-scale search of forests, lakes, mountains and rivers.[8] Psychics and clairvoyants were called in to assist.[5] Posters were distributed by milk companies.[11] Cairns' classmates were interviewed by Gardaí at the school during their mid-term holiday break the following week.[11]
Six days after his disappearance, Philip's school bag was located by two girls in an alley close to his house.[8][9][12] The lane had already been searched, and the bag was not there at that time.[4] The school bag was thought to hold vital clues, but nothing is known of how it came to be in the lane.[6] It is believed that the bag had only been in the alleyway a short time before it was discovered.[13] It was examined forensically but no clues were located. Philip's implements, including pens, pencils, copybook, maths textbook, school journal and his pencil case were within.[7][13] Some of Philip's books were missing, including a geography book and two religion books.[4][5][9][10][12][13] A forensic examination produced no clues as to Philip's whereabouts.[9] Gardaí have sealed the bag and it is now locked in a safe.[5][14]
Over 400 sightings were reported in the aftermath of the boy's disappearance.[8][11] In one, Philip was reportedly seen in Manchester in the United Kingdom after his disappearance.[5] Each sighting was seriously investigated, but none led to Philip.
Philip's parents appeared regularly on the news and clutched what has now become a well-recognised picture of a smiling Philip in his confirmation clothes of a blue jacket and a red rosette.[5] This photo has been deemed a precursor to that of British infant Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in Portugal 21 years later.[5] However, the family, unlike the McCanns, have been relatively private about their loss, speaking to the media on only a few occasions in the past 25 years.[5] It has been reported that this is due to several inaccurate reports of the incident of which they have disapproved.[5] Gardaí have, however, praised the media as a proven method for encouraging people to come forward with further information on the case each time an appeal is broadcast.[5] Residents' organisation ACRA also launched an intense campaign to attempt to find Philip.[12]
Several theories have been reported by the media, most of which have been discounted by investigators. These have ranged from death by accident to Philip having been taken by extremists such as paedophiles and Satanists.[5] One theory had a woman tell gardaí that her partner, an alleged paedophile, had killed Philip after abducting him.[5] This was later declared a false allegation.[5]
“I hoped every day for months. I left the light on in the hall downstairs and in the bed at night. I used to listen to see if he would come in the door. You would be hoping the phone would ring and that would be him."
Alice Cairns, speaking in the book When Heaven Waits.[5]
Detectives based at Rathfarnham Garda Station have been reinvestigating the disappearance of Philip Cairns for several years.[7] Several searches of land have been carried out in the years since the disappearance, often without the media being informed.[7]
In October 2006, the Cairns family issued an appeal for information on the twentieth anniversary of the disappearance.[6][15] They said they had not given up all hope of finding him alive.[4] A special Mass was also held to mark the occasion.[14][15] A further appeal for information was launched following the twenty-first anniversary of Philip's disappearance in 2007, when it emerged that over 50 people had approached investigators individually and had provided new lines of inquiry.[13] That month saw a reconstruction of Philip's typical school route being broadcast on RTÉ One's Crimecall television series and the Irish Crimestoppers Trust offering a €10,000 reward for information.[10][12][13][16] Within one day, over 80 people had been in contact with Gardaí or Crimestoppers in what was described as a "tremendous response".[16]
In May 2009, a stretch of private, wooded south Dublin land near a golf club on the M50 motorway was searched by investigators.[7][17][18] On 6 May, the area was sealed off and vegetation was cleared.[7] Specialist equipment and finger tip examination techniques were used in an attempt to detect evidence of soil movement.[7] A second search was carried out around 50 metres away later that month.[8][9] An elderly woman from Dublin told Gardaí that Cairns was murdered and later buried at both sites.[8][10] She said that a man she was in a relationship with some time before had confessed to killing Philip.[19] Despite the involvement of geophysicists,[20] the searches both proved to be a failure.[21][22] The man is now a pensioner who lives in Rathfarnham, and cannot be charged due to lack of evidence.[19]
In 2020, former detective Alan Bailey former stated he believes the person behind Philip’s disappearance knew the area well. He stated:[23]
“It certainly wasn’t a random stranger or random grab off the street." “I think with the bag being dumped back in the same area it would suggest to me that whoever went back with that bag was comfortable in the area.
—Alan Bailey, speaking to the Irish Sunday Mirror
2016 investigation
In May 2016 a woman contacted Gardaí to tell them that she suspected former DJ and convicted paedophile Eamonn Cooke of having killed Philip Cairns.[24][25] She claimed that she witnessed Cooke strike Philip with a blunt implement at Radio Dublin studios in Inchicore.[26]
Gardaí questioned Cooke and he was reported to have confirmed that he had known Phillip, inter alia, but he did not reveal the location of Philip's body.[24][25] He died in June 2016.[25]
In August 2016 it was announced that DNA samples taken from Philips' schoolbag did not match Cooke, but he had not been ruled out as a suspect.[27][28] Gardaí also sought to identify two people who may have left Philips' schoolbag in the laneway.[27][28]
In October 2016, 30 years after Philip was last seen, a mass gathering took place at the location his bag was found. [29]
Family
Philip's mother is Alice Cairns and his father was Philip Cairns, Snr.[15] Alice is a grandmother now and lights a candle each evening in memory of her missing son.[5] Philip has four sisters, Mary, Sandra, Helen and Suzanne.[15] Sandra and Suzanne are active in organisations promoting missing children.[5] He has one younger brother, Eoin, who was 11 years of age when Philip disappeared.[15] Eoin has spoken of his memories of Philip which include childhood games of soccer, fishing and hurling.[15]
The disappearance of Philip Cairns affected the entire country.[5] The case was particularly unusual because it happened in the early afternoon and prompted parents to fear for the safety of their children, even in broad daylight.[5]
Raonaid Murray was an Irish teenager who was stabbed to death at the age of 17 in the early hours of 4 September 1999. As of March 2023, this murder case remains unsolved. The murder weapon has not been located either. Each year her family and the Garda Síochána issue new appeals for fresh information. In 2009, a tribute website was set up but was targeted by vandals and naysayers who posted upsetting messages.
Linda and Charlotte Mulhall are sisters from Dublin, Ireland, who killed and dismembered their mother's boyfriend, Farah Swaleh Noor, in March 2005. Noor was killed with a Stanley knife wielded by Charlotte and struck with a hammer by Linda following a confrontation with the sisters and their mother, Kathleen Mulhall. His head and penis were sliced off and the rest of his corpse dismembered and dumped in the Royal Canal in Dublin where a piece of leg, still wearing a sock, was spotted floating near Croke Park 10 days later.
Sidney Charles Cooke is an English convicted child molester and suspected serial killer serving two life sentences. He was the leader of a paedophile ring suspected of up to twenty child murders of young boys in the 1970s and 1980s. Cooke and other members of the ring were convicted of three killings in total, although he was only convicted of one himself.
Ireland's Vanishing Triangle is a term commonly used in the Irish media when referring to a number of high-profile disappearances of Irish women from the late 1980s to the late 1990s. Several other women were also murdered within the triangle and their cases remain unsolved as well. All of the cases appeared to share some common characteristics. The women's ages range from their late-teens to late-30s, they disappeared inexplicably and suddenly, and no substantial clues or evidence of their fate has ever been found despite large scale searches and campaigns by the Gardaí to find them. Gardaí believe their remains are likely to be buried in remote fields, bogs and forests. The triangle is in the eastern part of the island, roughly the boundaries of Leinster, in an 80-mile area outside Dublin.
Martin Allen is a British teenager who mysteriously disappeared on 5 November 1979. No trace of Allen has been found and his fate remains unknown.
Elaine O'Hara was an Irish childcare worker who was murdered in August 2012 by architect Graham Dwyer. She was last seen alive at a public park in Shanganagh, Dublin, Ireland, on 22 August. The remains of her body were discovered on Killakee Mountain, south of Dublin, in September 2013. The investigation of her disappearance and later of her death was widely reported.
Mark Anthony Tildesley was a seven-year-old English child who disappeared on 1 June 1984 whilst visiting a funfair in Wokingham, Berkshire. A widespread search of the Wokingham area, involving both police officers and British Army soldiers, did not locate him. Thames Valley Police initially suspected that his body was buried near Wellington Road in Wokingham, near the funfair from which he was abducted, but they now believe that he was probably buried in a shallow grave on abandoned farmland.
"Captain" Eamonn Cooke was a former owner of pirate radio station Radio Dublin. He was a convicted paedophile, and a suspect in the disappearance of Philip Cairns. He assumed ownership of the station in 1977.
Annie Bridget McCarrick is an American woman from Long Island, New York who went missing under suspicious circumstances on March 26, 1993, while she was residing in Ireland.
The murder of Patricia O'Connor occurred in Dublin. Patricia O'Connor was an Irish woman whose dismembered remains were found scattered along a road in the Wicklow Mountains in June 2017. Several members of her family were subsequently convicted of concealing her murder by Kieran Greene.
Vishal Mehrotra was an eight-year-old boy who was abducted from Putney, London, England, on 29 July 1981. The child's partial remains were discovered on 25 February 1982 on an isolated farm in Sussex. The killers were never identified and no one has ever been charged with the murder.
Mary Boyle was a six-year-old Irish girl who disappeared on the County Donegal-County Fermanagh border on 18 March 1977. To date, her disappearance is the longest missing child case in the Republic of Ireland. The investigation into her disappearance has been beset by allegations of political intervention and police incompetence.
Deirdre Jacob is an Irish woman who disappeared near her home in Newbridge, County Kildare on 28 July 1998 at the age of 18. In August 2018 the Garda Síochána announced that her disappearance was being treated as a murder case.
On 8 December 2000, Irishman Trevor Deely disappeared in Dublin. He had been walking home around 4a.m. from his work Christmas party, having stopped at his office on the way to retrieve an umbrella and arrange certain things for his shift the next day. He was seen on a security camera entering and leaving his office building. The footage shows him speaking to a man dressed in black before he entered the building. This man has never been identified. Deely was later seen on another security camera in front of a bank he passed on Haddington Road as he headed home on foot, which is the last image that exists of him. Despite continuous police investigations, his disappearance remains a mystery.
Keane Mulready-Woods of Drogheda, County Louth, was an Irish teenager who disappeared on 12 January 2020, and whose dismembered body was then found in Coolock, County Dublin. More of his remains were found in Drumcondra in a burnt out car the following week.
William Maughan and Anna Varslavane are a couple who disappeared on 14 April 2015 from the Gormanstown area of County Meath.
Events during the year 2021 in Ireland. As in most of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has dominated events in Ireland during this year.
Philip Finnegan was an Irishman who was killed in August 2016. Originally reported as missing, his remains were discovered on 2 September 2016. On 15 November 2021, Stephen Penrose was found guilty of his murder.
Tina Satchwell was an Irish woman who went missing under suspicious circumstances on 20 March 2017. Her remains were found hidden in her home in October 2023. Her husband, Richard Satchwell, was arrested and charged with her murder.
↑ (3) Caoimhseach Connolly on X: "March passes lane where Philip Cairns' school bag was found in the days following his disappearance in Oct 1986. https://t.co/ldBnd1YYhO" / X (twitter.com)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
