Did married Jastine killer Mark Hennessy brutally murder ten more women who disappeared in area dubbed the ‘vanishing triangle’ in Ireland?
Police are hunting for links between the killer, and a string of disappearances of eight women in the 'Vanishing Triangle'
NOBODY thought of dad of two Mark Hennessy as violent, let alone a potential murderer – until he was spotted on a quiet village street bundling a terrified young woman into his car.
One day later the builder was dead, shot by police who found a note beside him scrawled in blood, giving the location of the student’s body and adding: “Sorry”.
Married Hennessy, 40, had no criminal past apart from a few scrapes with the law as a youth.
But it is now feared accountancy student Jastine Valdez, 24 — strangled by Hennessy within 45 minutes of being snatched — may be one of up to 11 victims.
Police are hunting for links between the killer, now dubbed the Beast of Bray, and a notorious string of disappearances of eight women in the same area of Ireland — known as the “Vanishing Triangle”.
There are also a further two unsolved cases within the area being re-examined by police to see if they can find links to Hennessy.
And experts fear Hennessy’s mode of killing Jastine means it is unlikely it was his first attack.
Forensic psychologist Professor Mike Berry, of Ireland’s Royal College of Surgeons, said: “The fact he strangled her indicates, to me, that he’s done this before.
“He’s tried out previous situations — maybe not killed somebody — but he’s certainly grabbed hold of a female and tried to sexually assault her.
“I’d have thought he’s practised it several times, because you don’t normally expect somebody to kill by strangulation, which is a very personal way of killing somebody.
“Normally they’d have attacked somebody with a blunt instrument or something of that nature.”
Hennessy, of Bray near Dublin — within the so-called Triangle — was identified by police after a motorist reported a woman being forced into his black Nissan Qashqai in nearby Enniskerry on Saturday May 19. She was soon identified as Jastine.
Police tracked him down in his car the following day and when he produced a knife and refused demands to drop it, he was shot.
According to police reports, he left a note scrawled in blood with the worlds “Sorry” and “Puck’s Castle”.
This is the name of an overgrown former golf course in nearby Rathmichael, where a massive search quickly began in the hope Jastine might be found alive.
But the next day her body was found in thick gorse bushes.
Jastine had come to live in the village of Enniskerry with her parents Danilo and Teresita three years ago, after growing up in the Philippines.
She loved her new life — and was especially thrilled when, earlier this year, she saw snow for the first time.
The young woman had been walking home from the bus stop after a shift of her part-time job as a waitress when she was taken in broad daylight around 6pm.
A post mortem revealed that she died by “manual strangulation”.
Hennessy had popped into a nearby pub to watch the first half of the FA Cup final just before leaving to abduct and murder Jastine — then brazenly returned hours later for a nightcap.
One local who knows him and saw him at the boozer told The Sun: “You’d look at him and say, ‘Jesus he’s a creep.’ He was a sleazeball.
“The whole place is in shock. Like I said, we knew he was a creep but never expected anything like that.”
There are no known links between Hennessy and Jastine, although the cafe where she worked was in Bray, where he lived with his wife and two preschool children.
But the parallels between the Triangle cases and Jastine’s death are striking.
Each woman was young, each disappeared suddenly and each, like her, went missing in the “triangle” roughly matching the shape of the province of Leinster in eastern Ireland. One even disappeared soon after being seen in Jastine’s village.
They all went missing between 1993 and 1998, as they went about their daily lives — and their cases are seared into the Irish consciousness because all the disappearances happened over such a short period of time and no bodies have ever been found.
As well as checking for links between Hennessy and the eight women — Annie McCarrick, Eva Brennan, Imelda Keenan, JoJo Dollard, Fiona Pender, Fiona Sinnott, Ciara Breen and Deirdre Jacob — his DNA profile will also be checked against evidence collected in the murder of Raonaid Murray in Glenageary, south of Dublin.
Raonaid, 17, who wanted to be a writer and loved the poetry of Dylan Thomas, was found stabbed to death in the street near her home in September 1999. Also among those wondering if Hennessy struck before are relatives of Esra Uyrun.
The 38-year-old mother disappeared after leaving her home in Clondalkin, west Dublin, to go shopping on February 23, 2011 and has never been since.
Her car was later located on the promenade in Bray.
Esra’s distraught sister Berna Fidan has contacted police, seeking details of links between the cases.
She told The Sun: “It is distressing. Somebody saw this man take this woman but then who says he hasn’t done it before? And how long he has been doing it for? We don’t know.”
During their fresh probe of the cases, police will be making full use of Ireland’s new DNA database, introduced in 2014.
Officers are also said to be examining Hennessy’s social media accounts and possible use of dating apps. His laptop has been seized from his house.
Even though police do not believe all of the Triangle cases are linked, they set up Operation Trace to investigate them all in 1998, partly in a bid to soothe public fear.
Then-detective sergeant Alan Bailey was the operation’s national co-ordinator for 13 years. In 2015, after his retirement, he wrote a book on the mystery called Missing, Presumed.
He now runs a centre for homeless people in Dublin and told The Sun: “The trouble with the Vanishing Triangle cases is that there are no crime scenes and there are no bodies, so there’s no DNA from the missing women.
“They haven’t been located. But as a cold case investigator what I would be doing is creating a timeline for Mark Hennessy to see if his movements coincide with any of the missing women. As in, was he in the area working on a job? Or was he on holiday elsewhere, which would rule him out completely? His movements should be fully checked out.”
The first to disappear, in March 1993, was Annie McCarrick, 26, originally from Long Island, New York.
She was spotted in Jastine’s village of Enniskerry before last being seen at a pub in nearby Glencullen.
At the time, Hennessy was only 15. This does not prove he had no involvement but many think he was just too young. Of the remaining cases, it is understood police are most interested in finding out what links Hennessy might have to the last of the eight to go missing, Deirdre Jacob.
The trainee teacher, 18, had returned from London to Newbridge, Co Kildare, for the summer.
She disappeared on July 28, 1998, last being seen walking home and only yards from her parents’ driveway.
When The Sun approached her father, Michael, he said he could not comment but would be happy to speak “in the coming weeks”, fuelling speculation police have informed him of this active line of inquiry.
Ex-detective Alan Bailey said: “Because of Hennessy’s modus operandi you couldn’t ignore him. You ignore him at your peril.”
The only other man who has ever been a suspect is Larry Murphy.
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In 2004, while serving 15 years for the abduction and rape of a businesswoman, he was quizzed by police over the disappearances of both Annie McCarrick and Deidre. The victim was bundled into his car boot in a car park, tied up and raped.
Murphy then tied a plastic bag around her head and tried to strangle her. She managed to escape and was rescued by two men who took down Murphy’s car registration, leading to his arrest.
Murphy, now 52, moved to London on his release and has always denied involvement in the women’s disappearances.