Search for missing man in south Kerry called off
Charles Brooke Pickard, a 43-year-old married father of four, has been missing since his abduction on the coast by a number of masked, armed men in South Kerry a quarter of a century ago.
Clearance and excavation work began at first light on September 14 on a site, approximately 40 sq m, in a forest clearing at Derrenageeha near the high mountain pass of Ballaghisheen near where Mr Pickard’s van was found burnt out in May 1991.
A renewed appeal to the public by gardaí earlier this year had elicited fresh information which pointed to the site.
A team of up to 20 gardaí and army personnel have been involved in the search and specialised equipment was brought in to deal with tree stumps in the formerly forested site.
Yesterday, Supt Flor Murphy of Killarney said that nothing had been found at the site.
The finding of the remains was important but was only part of a major investigation that is still very much on-going, Supt Murphy said. Gardaí were liaising with the North’s police force as well as those in Europe and the UK, Supt Murphy said.
Some of the people who were on the garda radar, at the time, as peripheral to the investigation, now lived in the UK, and in mainland Europe.
Mr Pickard, who had moved from the UK to live in south Kerry, was last seen being bundled into his van at White Strand, Castlecove by armed and masked men on April 26, 1991, after setting out from home earlier that morning to go turf-cutting.
His wife Penny and the couple’s four children aged aged 15, 11, seven, and five never saw him again.
Mrs Pickard, who still lives in south Kerry, and their second youngest child Crohan, have both appealed for anyone with information to come forward to allow the family closure and peace after 25 years.
