Disappearance of Jo Jo Dullard

Josephine 'Jo Jo' Dullard is an Irish woman who disappeared at the age of 21 (born c. 1974) on 9 November 1995. The last confirmed sighting of her was at a public phonebox in Moone, County Kildare. Gardaí suspect she is dead and was murdered.

Background
Dullard was from Callan County Kilkenny and had recently returned to the area after working in Dublin for two years. She was due to start a new full-time job as a waitress on the Monday following her disappearance.

Disappearance
On the day of her disappearance Dullard travelled to Dublin by bus to sign-off social welfare and to collect her final social welfare payment as she was due to begin a new job. While in Dublin she went to Bruxelles pub on Grafton Street with friends.

Dullard travelled to Busáras bus station at 10pm that night but she missed her bus home to Callan. She then decided to take the bus to Kildare and disembarked at Naas at 10:50pm. She successfully hitched a lift to Kilcullen. At Kilcullen around 11:15pm she hitched a lift to Moone and arrived there at 11:35pm. While at Moone, Dullard used a public phonebooth to call a friend to see if she could stay in Carlow and explained how she had missed her bus. Dullard interrupted the call and then returned to the phone to say ‘’she just got a lift’’. Dullard then ended the call. She was not seen again.

Investigation
When Dullard failed to return home, her sister Kathleen reported her disappearance 24 hours later. Two days passed before Gardaí took the notification seriously. Gardaí then searched the River Barrow and the road from Moone to Carlow.

Sightings were reported that claimed to have seen Dullard at Castledermot around midnight on the night of her disappearance.

In 1997 a witness came forward to say that on the night of the disappearance, he witnessed two men with English accents bundle a woman matching Dullard's description into a red car with English license plates at Kilmacow. The car was described a being similar to a Ford Sierra Sapphire.

In 2020, a witness said he saw a woman running naked and screaming through Moone on the night of Dullard's disappearance. The man stated he was travelling with his boss at the time and his boss left to car to follow the woman but she ran away. The witness stated that his boss then rang the Gardaí from a phonebox and Gardaí stated they would send a car out. After Dullard was reported missing they gave a statement to Gardaí but Gardaí believed they had seen a different woman as Dullard had been sighted in Castledermot.

Dullard's disappearance has been included in Operation Trace, a Garda operation set up in 1998 to investigate cases included under the Vanishing Triangle moniker and to investigate any potential links between them.

In 2019 a priest in County Kilkenny received an anonymous letter about Jo Jo Dullard after he publicly appealed for information. The letter was handed over to Gardaí and its contents were not revealed publicly.

The investigation into her disappearance was upgraded to a murder investigation in 2020 following a reinvestigation by the Garda Serious Crime Review Team.

In 2021 a search was conducted a search in woodland in County Kildare in relation to the disappearances of Jo Jo Dullard and Deirdre Jacob. Unusual activity in the area on the night of Deirdre Jacob's disappearance led to the search with the Gardaí also noting the Jo Jo Dullard was last sighted a 10-minute drive away from the search area. No evidence was found in the search.

Aftermath
Dullard's disappearance has been included and discussed in relation with a series of disappearances in Ireland known as Ireland's Vanishing Triangle. This term has been used to describe a series of disappearances of young women in the east of Ireland during the late 1980s and 1990s.

A memorial for Dullard was installed in Moone at the site of the phonebox where she was last seen.

Media
Dullard's disappearance was highly publicised in Ireland and was included in the true crime books Missing by Barry Cummins, Missing, Presumed by Alan Bailey, and The Vanishing Triangle by Claire McGowan.

The 1997 alleged sighting of Dullard was reconstructed for the TV show Crimeline. Her disappearance was covered on Crimecall, an Irish television show which seeks public assistance in solving unsolved crimes, in 2020 and 2021.

Her disappearance was also featured in the Sky Documentary series Six Silent Killings: Ireland's Vanishing Triangle.