ESRA UYRUN WAS a caring and giving person, both with her family and friends and in the charity work she did. She was a creative person; she loved drawing and painting and had an arts and crafts room at her home in Clondalkin, Dublin.
Esra was also a mother, something she had always wanted. She had even loved being pregnant, according to her sister Berna Fidan:
“I think she would have liked to stay pregnant longer. The actual pregnancy went well for her she loved carrying the bump. When Emin came along, he was her world.”
This day nine years ago, the 32-year-old woman left her home in Collinstown Grove in Clondalkin and got into her car to go buy some milk.
Later that night her car, a silver Renault Twingo (08 D 23067), was found near Bray Head in Wicklow, but there has been no trace of Esra since then and her family has never heard from her.
“I miss her voice. I miss picking up the phone and just having her on the other end. Sometimes I listen to video clips we have of her just to be able to hear her voice,” Fidan told TheJournal.ie ahead of her the ninth anniversary of her sister’s disappearance.
There are no new leads in Esra’s case nine years on and her family have been told by gardaí that they believe she died by suicide at Bray that day. The last signal from her phone was on Bray Head.
Her sister does not believe Esra took her own life. Their mother was due to arrive in Dublin for a month-long visit the day after she went missing and they had made a number of plans for the trip.
Berna Fidan said she wants to appeal to members of the public to help the family answer questions they have been asking for the last nine years.
Esra left her home between 7.20am and 7.30am on 23 February 2011 and was due to return shortly because her husband needed their car to get to work. Her number plate was recorded at the Power City roundabout in Clondalkin, which was just minutes from her house, just before 8am.
CCTV captured her car coming down Bray strand, driving erratically and having a near collision with a silver Skoda Octavia before it parked up by 8.40am.
The driver of this car has never come forward and Esra’s family are asking anyone who owned one of these cars and who would have been in the area in February 2011 at that time of the morning to think back.
Footage that has been shared in previous appeals shows a woman moving up towards Bray head. She stops a number of times, looking back, before walking on. Gardaí have said they have not found footage to show this woman walking back this way.
The rotating CCTV camera that captured this footage did not swing around to watch the car park Esra parked in until after 10am. It was at this time that the woman seen in the footage was walking towards Bray Head.
“That was at least two hours after her car pulled up. At 8.30 in the morning that car park was virtually empty, the footage they’ve used shows it full with families walking around. People need to know the difference in time. She didn’t park up at the time that woman is seen,” Fidan said.
A small object moves into the corner of the frame near the woman before she starts walking on and Esra’s family believe this is a dog that the woman was waiting for. The family have also said Esra was taller and slimmer than the woman in the footage.
Berna has never believed this was her sister. She said the focus on this trip to Dublin has been is to ask women who walked in Bray in the mornings around that time in 2011 to consider whether it could have been them and to get in contact.
“We just need to eliminate certain things,” she said.
She met this week with gardaí who are in charge of the investigation into Esra’s disappearance and she said they told her they are reviewing all of the CCTV footage again. Gardaí have also taken a new statement from Fidan.
“They’ve said they would have liked to have been further along by now but due to the here-and-now cases it had delayed them and it could take a few more months.”
Esra is described as 5’3” in height, with dark hair and green eyes. When last seen she was wearing black leggings, white Nike trainers, and a dark top.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Ronanstown Garda Station on 01 666 7700, the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111, or any garda station.
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