Gardai investigating the murder of Kyran Durnin are set to arrest another suspect early in the New Year, the Irish Mail on Sunday has learned.
Detectives are also considering new searches in a bid to find the tragic schoolboy, who has not been seen in over two years and whom gardaí say is presumed to have been murdered.
The Garda investigation has been ‘frustrated by lies’ so far and was further impeded earlier this month by the death of a suspect days after his arrest.
Anthony Maguire, aged in his mid-30s, died at his house in Drogheda, Co. Louth, which had been searched by gardaí following his arrest.
Gardaí believe he was involved in a bizarre decision to pass off a decoy boyto the authorities as the missing Kyran. However gardaí do not believe he was involved in Kyran’s death.
Mr Maguire and a woman were arrested on suspicion of murder earlier in the month, and further searches were also carried out at two houses in Drogheda.
Now, with Kyran’s remains still missing, gardaí are set to make another arrest and may also conduct more searches as the investigation continues.
Missing Louth boy Kyran Durnin, pictured here when he was six years old in 2022. (An Garda Síochána)
Only a small number of murder cases in which the victim’s body has not been found have gone to trial, and almost none of these prosecutions has ended in a conviction.
One of the sites now being considered for a search is a house and a garden that was dug up in July of 2022, a month after Kyran’s last known photograph was taken.
Although gardaí have established the work on the garden was booked ‘before the child died and only started months after he was last seen’, a source familiar with the investigation said that the property will ‘most likely’ be searched.
‘That [garden work] checked out. It was booked before the child died and only started months after,’ they said.
‘Gardaí were reluctant to search this property because the owner was co-operating, but they may have to proceed now as Kyran’s body remains missing.’
Detectives suspect that Kyran was either accidentally or deliberately killed in the summer of 2022, when he was aged six, and that an elaborate cover-up was subsequently staged to shield his disappearance and death from the authorities.
The chief suspect in the case was arrested after she had returned to Ireland from the UK earlier this month.
The woman, who is aged in her 20s, had been abroad for a time but was arrested after arriving back in Ireland by ferry on suspicion of murder, before being released without charge.
* This article was originally published on Extra.ie.
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