‘Leave a letter in the local church’ - podcaster’s appeal for information on Mayo woman's disappearance
A leading Irish crime reporter has appealed to anyone with information on the disappearance of Mayo woman Sandra Collins to leave an anonymous letter in their local church.
Nicola Tallant from Crime World is investigations editor with The Sunday World and believes that a small number of people know where Sandra is buried and what happened on December 4, 2000, the night she was last seen in Killala.
Nicola, who has spent more than 15 years covering the case, is the presenter of a nine-part series on the case which was recently released on crimeworld.com
"I think there's a small few people who can end the torture for the Collins family, and this is their opportunity," Nicola said.
"As her brother Patrick mentioned in one interview, anyone with information should leave an anonymous letter in the church. Just give the family something to go on.
"With the bogs around Mayo and the landscape around Mayo, it's impossible to just send people out searching aimlessly. They need to know where to look.
"There are many ways for somebody to give that piece of information. If they're afraid, they don't even have to come forward. They just need to say where Sandra’s body is. Isn’t it sad that that's the hope now?
"At the same time, I can just imagine the relief for that family to be able to bury Sandra. They still talk about lying in bed on a cold winter's night and knowing that she's out there somewhere."
Nicola said she first became aware of the case in 2010 when Sandra's disappearance was re-classified as a murder investigation.
“In 2000, it was a very big story in the local area, but it sort of blended into nothingness for the national media. That’s because, at first, there was no murder inquiry.
"So when it became that, that's when the interest was piqued. I went down and I met with Patrick and her sister Bridie. Another time after going down, they had keys for that little house in Killala, where Sandra looked after her aunt Anne.
"So we went in, and you could get the sense of the space that they shared. It was really overwhelming to be honest. It was just quite shocking. It really was dark as regards the life that Sandra had."
Over the years as Sandra's siblings Bridie, Patrick, Mary and Davy, campaigned for information, Nicola said she has been hugely impressed by their determination.
"They're such decent people. There's absolutely no airs and graces. They're so willing to talk about every aspect of the story, including the guilt they feel about how Sandra lived for the last years of her life. They discovered that slowly. The secrets of her life untangled over the years.”
As the podcast series explores, Ireland in 2000 was a different place.
"What hit me was the isolation Sandra lived in back then. She had no phone,
Her aspiration for that Christmas, before she went missing, was to buy herself a mobile phone, which every 12 year old in the country has nowadays.
"She had no car, no lifts anywhere. You can take a snapshot of someone's life and make a judgment of them, but if you delve deeper, you can really begin to understand and empathise with their circumstances."
Nicola is hopeful that that sense of empathy with Sandra will finally prompt someone with vital information to come forward.
"I think you start hopefully getting people to look into their conscience if they do have anything that is of help to the Collins family.
"The sadness now is that what they're looking at now is getting Sandra’s remains back, so they can bury her. Justice is a secondary thing to them. They're not looking to go out for revenge on whoever did this. They're just looking for her body."
Like gardaí, Nicola believes some people may now feel prepared to provide information.
"Things change. Relationships break down. People get older. People stop being afraid. People can sometimes go 'Right, I've kept this secret this long, I have to unburden myself of it'.
"All these sorts of things can make a difference. I personally think that while one person killed Sandra, a number of people, and not very many, a tight circle of people may know where she likely is buried. Maybe somebody helped."
Nicola added that finding Sandra would also lift a 25-year burden from the village of Killala.
""There's a lot of focus on Killala being this village of secrets. The people of Killala want this solved too.
"There's just a tiny, tiny amount of people in and around that area - probably only three or four people - who have information of value. It's not the people of Killala.
"They would love to see this solved as well. It's been a black mark on the community. I really found everybody so friendly, so willing, so open to sit down and talk, even after all this time."
The podcast series features several local voices including Killala-based Councillor Jarlath Munnelly, as well as retired Detective Garda Eddie Naughton. It was written and produced by Jennie Friel with senior producer Ian Maleney.
All nine episodes of 'Ghost: The Disappearance of Sandra Collins' are available on crimeworld.com.
A new documentary is also available on YouTube.
In their most recent appeal on the 25th anniversary of Sandra’s disappearance, gardaí appealed to anyone with information to contact Ballina Garda Station on (096) 20560.