Philip Cairns New Development

The Disappearance of Philip Cairns

0:00Today on the podcast, we're going to bring you a new development in relation to the case of Philip Cairns, a 13-year-old boy who disappeared in Rathfarnham, Dublin, in October 1986. Philip's disappearance has long been linked to Eamon Cook, the convicted paedophile and former pirate radio station owner. And today, our colleague Peter Mulrhyne, who made the RTE podcast series Pirate Predator, will join us with new information about that link.

0:40I'm crime journalist Barry Cummins. And I'm RTE presenter Katia Mia, and this is Unsolved, an RTE True Crime podcast series. And we're joined now in studio by Peter Mulrhyne of Pirate Predator. Thank you for being here today, Peter. Thank you. Now, Peter, this is going to be somewhat of a different episode of Unsolved, and it's because we want to talk to you about this new development in this case. And just to say, the first in our two-part series about the disappearance of Philip Cairns will be out later this week.

1:11But first, and before we speak to Peter, let's just briefly bring our listeners, Katia, the background to the disappearance of Philip Cairns. So Philip Cairns was a 13-year-old boy who disappeared on the 23rd of October 1986 on his way back to school after lunch in Rathfarnham, a Dublin suburb. The only piece of tangible evidence ever found in the case was Philip's school bag, which appeared in the laneway near his home exactly seven days after he disappeared, with half of its contents missing.

1:43However, there were dozens of witness statements taken and one high-profile accusation made in 2016 against notorious convicted pedophile Eamon Cook. And we're going to talk in detail about that statement made in 2016 because there is a significant development with that that we're going to get into now with you, Peter, and the developments that we're going to talk about. And there are a few different things that are new today that we're going to get from you and talk to you about. And it all comes as a result of Pirate Predator, an incredibly high-impact podcast by yourself.

2:22You produced and presented it, and the Dock on One team. There's a team effort behind all of this. Completely, yeah. It's a great team. Yeah, and it is incredible. And we learn a lot about Eamon Cook.

The Rise of Eamon Cook

2:32And he probably is a household name for many people who grew up during the time he was active. But for those that don't know, let's establish him a little bit. Who was he? What years was he active? What did he do, Peter? Eamon Cook was born 90 years ago, so 1936 in Glasnevin in Dublin. And very early in his life, he came to the radar of the authorities for stealing lead off roofs and then building pipe bombs. So there was nothing particularly in his family background that would lead you to understand where this came from.

3:07But from a very early age, he was clearly very troubled. He got involved in radio and television repair. He ran a shop on Thomas Street in Dublin. And it's from that that he kind of segued eventually into the pirate radio scene, which was really growing in the mid-70s in Dublin. And with Radio Dublin, it was a pirate radio station. It broadcasted illegally, but nevertheless, it garnered a big audience. Oh, huge. Just how big was Radio Dublin?

3:38Monster. I mean, it's very hard for me to explain this because we're now 50 years on. But back then, there was one radio station, Radio Aaron, and that was kind of it, really. So if you wanted to listen to pop music or anything trendy, you could listen to maybe the BBC, maybe Radio Caroline. They were very scratchy. Maybe Radio Luxembourg. When this radio station came on air and you had people in Dublin with Dublin accents playing pop music, you could ring them, they'd play you a request.

4:09It was suddenly they're speaking your language and it took off. It was like a rocket, really. I'm sure that's what attracted the youth to Radio Dublin. If you could just get into the demographics of the station, what did they look like? Oh, gosh. I mean, I was in my late teens when it really kicked off and it was just huge. So all your friends would listen to Radio Dublin. You go into any shop in the city centre, they'd be playing Radio Dublin. I mean, it was a massive success.

4:42And behind it at that point in time was Eamon Cook. Now, from listening to your Duck on One series, Pirate Predator, I learned that, you know, operating a pirate radio station, you had to be savvy about it. With Radio Dublin, they had often changed their locations to avoid Garda raids. But whereabouts in Dublin was the station situated? Well, when Cook got involved, that's kind of how he took over the station. He stole it. He didn't set it up. He liked rewriting history. He was the founder of Radio Dublin.

5:13He was no more the founder of Radio Dublin than he was the founder of the British Empire. He stole the station and he put it into his front room in Inchicore, which is just a suburb in the south side of Dublin. And then his home became a radio station because very, very quickly he went from running a pirate station, which would operate as a hobby station, maybe on a Saturday or a Sunday afternoon, to going seven days a week and then going 24-7. I mean, this is before radio stations would do this. They would come off air at lunchtime. They would finish at 11 o'clock in the evening.

5:44He was running 24-7 out of his sitting room in Inchicore. And they were generating an income. Huge income. Yeah. It was on cash. I mean, yeah, if you were a DJ, the deal was, could you speak? Great. Okay. Can you sell ads? If you sold ads, you would keep half the money and he would keep half the money. Okay. And we know from certain DJs that they were clearing £300 a week per show. He was getting the same amount of money per week per show. All cash. I don't think tax was really an issue.

6:17I know. I know. And with the excitement of radio at that time in the 70s and the 80s, I can imagine Eamon Cook became a bit of a local celebrity and he rubbed shoulders with the right kinds of people in society. He made sure he did. He went out of his way to front charity walks to get the Lord Mayor of Dublin on the radio station on New Year's Eve to be tight with the Gardaí, to be tight with politicians. There was nothing accidental ever about Eamon Cook. Everything he did was premeditated.

6:48He was a very, very smart man. It comes across like a bit of an opportunist. That's how it seems. But his career, I suppose his criminal career, dates back as early as his teenage years. Can you walk us through a bit of a timeline of the crimes he had committed? Well, it's a very early on in his life when he was 13, he was already in court and he's already, you know, had a conviction. What happens then really is that he gets involved with radio.

7:18And don't forget, that is also illegal, running on the legal radio station. So throughout his life, really, he just has a series of events where he avoids being a lawful citizen. Now, Peter, could we talk a bit about Eamon Cook's crimes?

Criminal Convictions and Prison Sentences

7:34Could you bring us through a timeline of what he was convicted of? Well, he was convicted over his life of many, many things. The big one being finally when justice caught up with him in 2002 and he was convicted, it took three hours to read out in court all the charges against him. He was convicted, he was sentenced to 10 years, and he got out on appeal. The appeal was that the crimes were historic and that the judge had not told the jury that crimes that take place so far in the past,

8:10maybe the evidence, the witness evidence, won't be as clear or as strong as it could be because that warning was never given, he was released. And then the question was, would the DPP go back and put him back on trial? And that was always touch and go. In the end, only two people, only two victims decided they wanted to take it or could take it all the way, and they did, and they finally convicted him. In the end, on 42 counts of an indecent assault, rape on underage children, underage girls, and he got 10 years for that.

8:43Now, if we take it up from there, Peter, because that's not the end of the story of Eamon Cook's criminal convictions because that's one of the reveals in this podcast through work that you've done on the Pirate Predator team. You can tell us more. We're going to come back to Philip Kearns in a little bit, but specifically about Eamon Cook and prison sentences he was serving. You mentioned a 10-year sentence imposed in 2006.

9:13He was actually serving, at the time of his death in 2016, he was by then serving an even longer sentence. He was serving a life sentence, and this wasn't something we could address in the documentary series itself. But since then, and since listening to the documentary, one of his children, Karen, has come forward and has decided not to be anonymous anymore and to talk to us. And she has done that, and that will be a forthcoming extra episode.

9:45But what she has revealed is that she was assaulted by her father, and for that, he got a life sentence, sexually assaulted. And this is Karen speaking with you. Yeah. Comes as a result of her having listened to the podcast, come through all of that. Have you been in touch with Karen? Yeah. I mean, look, I've been making documentaries for 30 years,

10:15and this is the first one, really, where no one wanted to talk to me, which is a really strange position to be in. We know a lot of people listened, and as the story evolved, people did get in contact with us. I think we've had over 100 contacts to the Doc on One team, specifically about Eamon Cook, since we started publishing. That's an enormous amount of people to come forward. Before we go back to Philip Cairns, Karen is not the only person who is speaking out, in a sense,

10:51and she got justice through the life sentence imposed on her father. But there are other people, other people have come forward who may well be victims of Eamon Cook. Oh, yeah. I mean, this is the point, really, is, in the end, two women, as I just referenced, got 42 convictions against them. So two women, I suppose, got justice. How many others did not? We don't know. What we do know is that since we started publishing, around 20 new victims have come forward

11:23to either to the guards or to social services or to other survivors. We know that. And that's an awful lot of people to come forward with their story. How many others are there out there? We just don't know. And these people have come forward. It's recent weeks, recent months. Yeah. I mean, you're talking literally in the past couple of months. Absolutely. Since we started bringing this story back into the spotlight, because for too long, Eamon Cook's story wasn't spoken about.

11:55And one of the reasons I wanted to do Pirate Predator was to shine a spotlight back onto the survivors and let them tell their story if they so wished. And they did. And they did.

New Evidence and the Witness Statement

12:07Also, in recent weeks and months, there's new information that Pirate Predator has established, which will be of great interest to Gardie, who are investigating the disappearance of Philip Kearns. And many people may know of the story from 10 years ago that was broadcast about a woman who had given a statement to Gardie of what she said she witnessed in October 1986. And this was all linked to Eamon Cook.

12:38But that this woman had said back then, 10 years ago, that she had been in a car. She was only nine years old back then. She had driven from an address with Eamon Cook in Talla down towards Ballyroan Road. And that she remembered a boy getting into the car and that boy then going to the Radio Dublin studios. She, in her statement to Gardie, would have said she believed it was Philip Kearns and that she said she saw Eamon Cook strike this boy,

13:10who she believes to be Philip Kearns, with an object. And the boy fell to the ground. And then the girl herself, sainted. But these were very clear, a very clear account that this woman was giving of things that had happened 30 years before. And this was obviously of big interest to Gardie. They went and spoke with Eamon Cook. He was dying in a hospice at that time. They put various things to him. And what's intriguing is that Eamon Cook, although he was perhaps medicated, quite ill,

13:42but he did give answers which indicated that Philip Kearns had been in his home in Talla, had been in his car, but he was also denying other things. But it's obviously huge interest to investigators, all of this. But there was an anomaly which developed back then. And specifically, the girl had said, the woman had said, that as a girl, she traveled from a specific house in Talla. But official records seem to indicate

14:14that Eamon Cook was not linked to that specific property back then. This all relates to Talla, different properties in Talla. And so it seemed to Gardie, it seemed the woman, the girl, that nine-year-old girl might be mistaken. It seemed to take the shine or the light off Eamon Cook in this investigation. But, and here's the but, and that's why we're talking with you today, there's something new here. So, there was a discrepancy, you might say, in the statement

14:47or an anomaly. You've discovered new information which puts the focus back on that woman as a witness and back on Eamon Cook. First of all, before we get into what it is, how did you get this new information?

15:04This information was a typed document written by Eamon Cook. In around the year 2000, when Detective Sergeant Jerry Kelly is building his case to convict Eamon Cook. Eamon Cook starts writing a history of his own life in the third person. This is very Cook. It's a strange document. It contains lots of information that is true, lots of information that maybe is not true. The dates all seem to hang together.

15:35I mean, I have some of it here. He talks about 1961, married Helena Holland. True. In 1965, Helena Holland died of a heart attack. No children. I mean, that may or may not be true if you've heard the podcast. There might be a more sinister cause of death. Married Joe Nolan, separated in 1978. Now, that's, he did marry Joe Nolan, but they were together until the mid-80s. And that's important because in the mid-80s, Cook was living in the radio station in Inchicore.

16:08He and his second wife went their separate ways, and Cook moved out to the Tala area. If you think about Tala, you've got the Dublin Mountains behind. That's important because he had his transmitter in the Dublin Mountains. So, he was very, very close to where you could see the transmitter, and from there, he could get a signal right across the city. So, we do know from this document, he records the various addresses where he lived. And the address in question, which Gardaí could not place him at,

16:40he says in the document, he lived there from September 1986. So, that puts him and the witness in the same place at the time she stated 10 years ago. So, that document typed by Eamon Cook, and we'll get into why you say, and I agree, it's Eamon Cook typed this document. Oh, yeah. But that, it corroborates, it stands up what that woman said in her witness statement, where maybe official records,

17:11if you go looking through housing records or folios, Eamon Cook might be living officially at a different address in Talla, but actually, in reality, it seems that he was living at the address that this woman said he was living at. Yeah, I mean, we know he had about three to four addresses in the Talla area at the time. He was renting some. He also would purchase houses in other people's names. We know that as a fact.

17:41And the land registry is far from accurate, and someone like Eamon Cook is well able to get around that. So, the official record of where he lived is not actually worth really looking at. But if he admits in a document that he typed in about the year 2000 that he lived a certain address at a certain time, there's a lot of evidence there. There's a lot of weight behind that statement. And just to clarify, when you said that Detective Jerry Kelly was building a file, that was in relation to,

18:12completely separate to Philip Kearns, in relation to some of the children he would have abused over years. Yeah. And that that's what that investigation was. Yes, Jerry Kelly was leading the team that eventually brought Cook to justice for child abuse. Yeah. Let's talk about this document and how you say, and it is clear that this is a document that Eamon Cook himself typed.

18:42Yeah. How can we say that? It wasn't, this isn't just plucked off the street. There's a chain of evidence as it were as to working back to say Eamon Cook typed this. Tell me why you say that. Eamon Cook had various lockups in the Doublin Mountains. He had buried underground containers, for example, and he would put stuff in the containers. In one of these containers there was 10 boxes. These were discovered around the time of his death. Garthi did go through the boxes

19:13and they did take a lot of this evidence away, but some of the stuff was more personal and that was handed to someone else. That person just kind of forgot about the documents really and they just sat there gathering dust and it's only recently they've gone back to those documents and they want to sort of purge him from their life. So, through that contact who we do trust and we have spoken to, we have got the documents which have since been passed on to the guards.

19:44So the Gardaí know and this is all happening in, you could say, real time. Oh yeah. In recent days, Gardaí, or recent weeks, Gardaí have been informed of what pirate predator have learned and that this is happening kind of right now. This is happening right now, which is why I'm here talking to you. This evidence is now with the Gardaí. So, they have it. They know now what, they already know what I'm telling you. So that really then does put a spotlight back on the original statement made by the witness.

20:15And that really does need to be re-examined. And speaking of that statement made by the witness in 2016, this also tallies with some intel that we have on Unsolved, we have an on-the-record witness, a motorist saying he saw a 50-year-old-ish grey-haired man picking up a schoolboy in a car. This was a red, whiny-coloured car. He thought maybe it was a Renault or a Mazda. He wrote down the license plate because he was a bit aggregated.

20:45This motorist was a bit frustrated about where this motorist had parked and he lost the license plate number. But he had reported this sighting to the Gardaí. So it is interesting to hear this new information that you do have and how it ties in with Philip Cairns' case. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, people ask me a lot, do I think Eamon Cook was involved or not? I actually don't know. I don't think it's important that I know. I think what is important is that if you shine a light on this witness

21:17and go back to the statement and examine it, will it bring us any closer to finding out what happened to Philip Cairns because someone absolutely does know. Yeah. And the sooner that this moves to say a murder trial or murder investigation I should say, the better because then you have the resources to look into

Calls to Upgrade the Investigation

21:37stuff like this. That's it. Barry, we've talked about this at length. We're almost coming into the 40 year anniversary of Philip Cairns' disappearance and this is still classified as a missing person's case. What changes can be made if this is upgraded to a murder case? Yeah, it's this whole idea of Gardie being specifically tasked with a senior investigating officer, with a team of detectives, with the ability to go onto any property and conduct searches as part of a murder inquiry if it was. They don't need the permission.

22:08They don't need to, they might ask nicely anyway, but they don't, if you say no, they're still coming in where they can get all the search equipment involved. They could get a cadaver dog involved as well, if need be, to conduct searches in different places. What jumps out at me here is that there would be perhaps more than one property linked to Eamon Cook in the Tala area that should be, and I imagine Gardie are looking at these properties now, I would hope, and that they're assessing what they do,

22:38but still it's a missing persons investigation. And when we look at other cases and we'll talk about it more specifically in the other podcasts about Philip, where other cases have been upgraded to murder in recent years and the benefits to those cases where searches have happened, there's been an arrest in at least one case, that things happen. Here we have new information which is of relevance to the Philip Kearns investigation, and like you say, Peter, we don't know what the answer is,

23:08but certainly what jumps out at me in terms of the reaction to your podcast and other people coming forward saying they were victims of Eamon Cook, there's more to that man than we actually do know, and that warrants really close inspection by everybody, and this is happening right now, this isn't 10 years ago or 20 years ago, people are right now in the zone of talking about this man. Yes. The feeling I get about Eamon Cook is that the truth

23:38is just somewhere beyond the edge of my piece of paper. It's there, but I can't touch it, even if there was a public inquiry into Eamon Cook because two of his victims got justice, but they didn't get any answers. We don't know, we don't know what Cook was up to. How did he get away with what he did for the best part of 50 years? What were his connections to the Gardaí? And he did have connections.

24:10He ran a radio station for Fianna Fáil. What were his political connections? How did that or did it not protect him? There are so many questions. And if you, again, shine a light on Eamon Cook, will that throw up something in the Philip Kearns case or not? You're not going to know unless you look. And I think it's important that at this stage we do look. And just to talk about Philip Kearns' case, if we take it back to 2016, initially when the witness statement was made,

24:41Philip Kearns' mother, the late Alice Kearns, had spoken to you, Barry. What was her stance on this new intel? I met her in her home at Ballyroan Road, the house from which Philip had left back on the 23rd of October 1986 to go to school and never arrived. I met her in that home and we were talking about Eamon Cook and what was in the news at that time about what was being reported about a witness saying what she had seen 30 years before.

25:12And Alice, I remember her specifically saying she was very grateful to the woman for coming forward and for giving information and that's, the appeals are always for people to come forward. So very grateful but, and the but was, Alice said to me that she couldn't see that as the answer that she didn't know of any link between Philip and Eamon Cook and she, so she just couldn't, maybe couldn't go there, couldn't see it,

25:42didn't believe it was possible or true but still grateful that somebody was giving information. And I think now we're at a point where Gardie, we can say maybe 10 years ago, Gardie didn't go any further eventually with that particular statement or that part of the investigation, maybe when they saw what they felt was an anomaly with the address, basically saying this woman is not correct in what she's saying because the public record doesn't support it. And now

26:12they may be looking back at that thinking, hang on, they at least have to explore this. I certainly believe it should be a murder investigation at this stage. I also think perhaps we, a public inquiry, maybe the way things are looking with the broader Eamon Cook story if I put it like that. Because information just gives you more insight. I mean, for example, if you can now place Eamon Cook in Tala as opposed to in Shakur, Tala's not far from Hathfarnham.

26:44It's not. Yeah. And he had access, on my right, to a number of properties in Tala. They're all a stone's throw from each other. So they're not too far apart. And again, again, that's just more information. This is more insight into potentially what might have happened. And it's not up for me to say what happened. It's up to me to ask questions and say, well, maybe we could have some answers at this stage. Because, you know, Eamon Cook is dead 10 years. Philip Kearns is missing

27:1440 years. Time is moving on. And also people are, you know, they're finding the courage to speak out. And from listening to Pirate Predator, you realise, you know, the amount of victims that suffered at the hands of Eamon Cook and how it wasn't until maybe he had passed away or they knew for sure he was behind bars that they felt more comfortable to come forward to authorities. So it's a huge part of, you know, child sex abuse victims. It's the fear that's infiltrated.

27:46And that's one of the things I got from this series, from talking to people who knew Cook is fear. They were literally just scared of him. Scared of not only physically what he might do, but of the information he had on people. He would walk around the place recording stuff. And this is way before, you know, secret hidden phones and cameras and glasses. He'd wire himself

28:16up and he would record conversations and he would use those and he would use information against you. He wanted to know, you to know, that he knew everything about you and that petrified people. One of the survivors we spoke to when Cook was locked up in 2002, she moved back to Ireland. He was then released. She left the country. That's fear. It says a lot. And now, after the release of Piper Predator,

28:46you've had a number of victims contact you. Talk to us a bit about that. Some have come to me, not that many. Most have gone to, I guess, the people who are there to help. So advocacy agencies, for example, other survivors. And they're a tight group and they know each other and they support each other. And they will, anyone who comes to them, they will say, look, go to the guards, go to an advocacy agency, go get help. You are not alone. And I will say that now to

29:16anyone who's listening, please do reach out. Please do.

Bonus Episodes and Ongoing Appeals

29:21What is to come in the bonus episodes of Pirate Predator, Peter? Well, as I said, we finally got to speak to one of Eamon Cook's children on record, Karen, who was one of his older children. And she was very, very frank about her relationship with her father, the good and the bad. Because this is the thing, someone's father, it's a different kind of relationship. There's a kind of a trust there. And she is so

29:51clear on the fact that when social services started to get involved and tried to take her away from her family, how hard she fought to keep the family together. Again, things aren't black and white. There's a lot of other stuff going on here. And I found that probably the most difficult interview that I've possibly ever done in my life. It's a lot of grey areas. Yes, we're really looking forward to listening to that interview and seeing it all unfold. Peter, narrator and producer from

30:23Doc on One Series, Pirate Predator, thank you so much for chatting to us on Unsolved. Thank you. Thank you very much, Peter and Katia. We'll have our two-part episode specifically on Philip Kearns that will be coming out really soon. The first of that two-part series will be out later this week where we'll outline through those two episodes building up as to why we believe and we believed it before we learned about these developments but why we believed that a Philip's case should be upgraded to a murder investigation and

30:54now I think having learned through Peter what Pirate Predator have learned and shared with us even more so that this needs all the attention of a murder investigation whatever the answer and whoever is responsible for keeping Philip from his family.

31:14If you know anything, have seen anything or remember anything about any of the cases discussed in our series please contact our tip line by emailing unsolved at rte.ie . . . . . . . . . . .