The disappearance of six-year-old Mary Boyle, dubbed Ireland’s Madeleine McCann, from her grandparents’ remote dairy farm in County Donegal continues to baffle experts almost 50 years on.
The Boyle family were enjoying their annual trip to their elderly relatives’ farm in Cashelard for the St Patrick’s Day holiday when Mary vanished on March 18, 1977.
Despite multiple searches and extraordinary theories that have emerged about what might have happened to Mary – Ireland’s youngest and longest missing person case – her body has never been found and the investigation remains open.
Mary was playing outside with her identical twin sister Ann, older brother Paddy and two cousins after lunch when she followed her uncle Gerry as he set off across the boggy fields to return a ladder he’d borrowed from a neighbouring farm.
At some point on the way to the neighbour’s house, Gerry told Mary to turn around and go back.
The walk shouldn’t have taken more than five minutes, but sadly the youngster was never seen again.
Mary’s mother Ann Boyle recalls she was washing the dishes inside the house around 3.30pm when her father asked her to check on the children.
“I went as far as the door and I could only see a couple of them,” she recalls.
“I went over then as far as the gate and I said, ‘Where’s Mary?’
“The other four children were there, and they said they hadn’t seen her since dinner time. I panicked right away because she didn’t know the area.”
Family, police and scores of neighbours scoured the 410-metre stretch of land between the only two houses in the area, in a desperate search that escalated into a trawl of bog holes, lakes, streams and the countryside beyond.
But Mary’s body has never been found.
The little girl, who was last seen wearing a handknitted lilac cardigan, brown jeans and black wellington boots disappeared without a trace.
Several bizarre theories about what happened to Mary have emerged over the decades, including the involvement of sadistic child killer Robert Black, who was convicted of murdering four young girls in the 1980s and suspected of being responsible for countless others.
A fisherman claimed he saw Mary being driven off in a red car and there were also allegations of corruption and cover-up after a politician was accused of telling police not to detain their main suspect.
In 2017, Mary’s mum revealed she had been receiving hate mail from someone pretending to be her daughter.
While police suspected they had found the man responsible, he died before he could appear before the courts and the notes stopped.
Fear of the unknown and Mary’s absence has torn her loved ones apart, with her mother and sister Ann Doherty, now 48, no longer speaking.
Recently, Ann dropped a bombshell when she called for an inquest into her sister’s death, claiming Mary was killed by someone known to her in order to cover up a string of abuse.
“I believe Mary had a secret, and because Mary was feisty, Mary would have told,” says Ann.
“So, I believe that Mary had to be killed to stop her from telling.”
While Ann says her mum shares the same suspicion, the mother-of-three insists she doesn’t know and doesn’t want an inquest because it would mean accepting her beloved daughter is certainly dead.
“I don’t want an inquest that Mary is dead,” she says.
“I want to believe that Mary is still alive somewhere. I have to live that way.”
