Updated 27 April 10pm
THE PARENTS OF missing woman Deirdre Jacob have said they have never been able to move on and are still hoping someone with information will come forward.
On 28 July, 1998, the 18-year-old walked into Newbridge town to get a bank draft. She was due to start her second year of teacher training in Twickenham and needed to send a rent deposit to her friend.
After going to the bank, she went to the post office and then visited her granny in her shop before heading home. She was last seen shortly after 3pm inside the gate of the family home in Roseberry, Newbridge.
Despite extensive searches for the teenager, no trace of her has ever been found. Tonight, RTÉ’s Crimecall took a look back at her disappearance, revisiting the early days of the investigation.
Her parents also made a new appeal on the show.
Speaking to the show, her father Michael said:
It may be you wake in the middle of the night and we’ll have a discussion about it. You know we’ll just say; ‘what happened to Deirdre, where is she? ‘ You know is there someone out there that knows something about the whole thing. It just never goes away.
“We’re as wise today as we were the day Deirdre went missing, we have absolutely nothing to go on and it’s very hard to continue,” her mother Bernadette said.
Tonight on Crimecall, Michael said that it “flashes into [their] mind[s]” that they might get the piece of information that might make the difference to the case.
They have to “do our best and try and make as much progress as we can” in their search for their daughter.
They appealed for people with information, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, to contact gardaí.
“Those little pieces of information may start to bring it all together and we can make meaningful progress,” Michael Jacob said.
His wife added: “This could be your child, could be your daughter. You could be in our position. Please help us.”
Appeal for information
Detective Superintendent Walter O’Sullivan from the Serious Crime review team was also in studio to talk about the investigation.
He said that gardaí are investigating if there was any criminality associated with the case.
He said that time can become a friend of the investigation, as technology has moved on and relationships have moved on.
“Attitudes change,” he said. “Persons who once held extreme indifference to human life may appreciate that life [now] through the lives of their children or family.”
He asked anyone who has information on the case not to to assume the gardaí has the information, and to call gardaí.
- Additional reporting Aoife Barry
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