Fiona Pender Memorial Walk and Run takes place in Tullamore on Sunday

TWENTY-nine years after the Tullamore woman’s disappearance, the annual Fiona Pender Memorial Walk and Run will take place this Sunday, August 31 at 11.30am.

Those remembering Fiona, who gardai believe was murdered, will gather at the Fiona Pender memorial monument at Fiona’s Way on the Grand Canal in Tullamore.

Fiona’s Way is a 4.5km looped walk along the canal bank and it begins just a few hundred metres from Fiona Pender’s family home in Connolly Park.

Fiona Pender was aged 25 and seven months pregnant when she was last seen at her flat at Church Street, Tullamore on August 23, 1996.

Gardai have been investigating her disappearance in the decades since and earlier this year reclassified the case from missing person to murder inquiry status.

The move to upgrade the investigation coincided with a search of bogland at Graigue, Killeigh on May 26 last.

That garda search continued for a second day and when it concluded another search began at a site in the Slieve Bloom mountains about four kilometres south of Clonaslee.

That second search also lasted two days. Gardai said the results of the searches were not being released for operational reasons but Fiona Pender’s family were informed.

Sources close to the investigation indicated that nothing useful was found in either search but that both avenues of inquiry had to be “closed off”.

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A number other searches have taken place at various locations since Fiona was last seen in 1996. Despite arrests being made that year, no charges were ever brought. People have been questioned and a suspect, a man known to Fiona, was identified and is believed to be now living abroad.

Tragedy first hit the Pender family when Fiona’s brother Mark was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1994.

Her father Sean died tragically at home in 2000.

Fiona’s mother Josephine made many public appeals for information and said she believed her daughter was murdered and the body buried.

She believed she knew the man who killed Fiona and right up to the time of her own death in 2017 she always hoped her daughter’s remains would be found.

She said of the killer: “He destroyed all of us. He didn’t just destroy Fiona, he destroyed every member of the family.”

Fiona’s other brother John has previously spoken of the struggle the family endured: “My mother and father both died of a broken heart and I have only been able to say goodbye to one family member, my mother, who passed away from natural causes – while no one else in my family did.”

Gardaí continue to appeal to any person who may have previously come forward who felt they could not provide gardaí with all the information they had in relation to this matter, to contact the investigation team again, at Tullamore Garda Station on 057 932 7600, or any garda station. Anyone who wishes to provide information confidentially is advised to contact the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111.

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