Lines of Enquiry

00:05 It is the summer of 2024. Social workers from Tusla are trying to establish the whereabouts of an eight-year-old boy. 00:13 His name is Kyron Durnan. 00:16 They have concerns about his welfare and where he might be living. 00:20 In July, a child is brought to meet them and they are told he is Kyron. 00:25 A second meeting follows in early August. 00:28 For the first time in a while, it seems to have an answer to the most basic question. 00:33 Where is Kyron? 00:36 Then, weeks later, Kyron and his mother Dele are reported missing. 00:42 As Gardie begin investigating, they obtain family photographs of Kyron and show them to the officials who attended those earlier meetings. 00:50 But the boy in the photographs looks nothing like the child they met over the summer. 00:55 Gardie realised the child that the social workers met was not Kyron Durnan. 01:01 Until that moment, the goal had been to make contact with Kyron and check that he was safe. 01:07 Now detectives are trying to answer a much more troubling question. 01:12 When was the last time anyone can prove Kyron Durnan was alive? 01:17 As investigators work backwards, the answer keeps receding. 01:22 Weeks become months. Months become years. 01:26 A little boy appears to have disappeared from school, from public view, and from every reliable record capable of proving where he was. 01:35 And for more than two years, nobody realized he was gone. 01:48 . . . 02:03 Every investigation begins by fixing a person to a place and a time. 02:08 For 25 years, I worked as a detective in the Garda Technical Bureau. My job was to examine what a scene could prove, the marks that remained, the objects that had moved without reason, and the small physical details that could confirm or contradict a person's story. 02:25 My name is John Sweetman. This is Lines of Inquiry, a Go Loud original podcast. 02:32 In each episode, I follow the evidence step by step, looking beyond the headlines, to understand what an investigation can establish and what it cannot. 02:42 This case is different from most we cover. 02:45 Gardie are still in the depths of their investigation. No one has been charged. Arrests have been made, but arrests are not proof of guilt. 02:55 No charges have been filed and no case is heading towards the courts. 03:00 This is not an attempt to solve an active case from the outside. 03:03 It is an examination of the verified timeline and the gaps within it that allowed Kyron to vanish and the state safeguards that failed him. 03:12 This is Kyron Durnan, vanished in plain sight. 03:24 In late August 2024, a mother and her young son were reported missing. 03:30 The last reported sighting of 23-year-old Dela Durnan and her young son Cairan came from a family home in Drogheda, where Dela had been staying with her three children. 03:40 Hand Street lies in the shadow of Drogheda's railway viaduct, the huge 19th century bridge that carries trains over the River Boyne. 03:49 It is a tightly packed street in the centre of the town, where rows of terraced houses stand shoulder to shoulder. 03:56 The home belonged to Dayla's mother and Kyren's grandmother, Rhonda Byrne Tyson, a well-known figure in the local community who worked as a lollipop lady at a nearby school. 04:07 On the night of August the 28th, Rhonda went to bed at around 11pm. 04:13 The summer holidays were ending and the children were due to begin school and childcare the very next morning. 04:19 Downstairs, Dayla and Kyron were still in the sitting room. 04:24 During the early hours of the morning, Dayla's seven-year-old daughter, Lacey, came downstairs twice. 04:31 The first time, sometime between 1.15 and 1.30am, she saw her mother awake. 04:38 When she came down again at around 2.30am, Dayla was still there, sitting on the couch with her phone in her hand. 04:45 Lacey would later recall that her mother appeared to have put on make-up. 04:51 By the time the family woke the following morning, Dayla and Kyron had vanished. 04:58 There was no sign of where they had gone, only a note left behind on the couch. 05:04 Rhonda said it was addressed to her and told her that Dayla needed to get away for a few days with the little fella. 05:11 At first, Rhonda hesitated to raise the alarm. 05:15 The note said a few days. 05:17 She worried that a public appeal might upset her daughter and make her less likely to return. 05:23 But there was another reason that timing troubled her. School was beginning. Plans had been made. 05:30 Yet on the very morning they were supposed to begin, Dayla and Kyron were gone. 05:37 On August 30th, two days after this alleged last sighting, a member of Kyron's family made a formal missing persons report. 05:46 The report stated that Dayla and her eight-year-old son had last been seen on or around August 28th. 05:54 Gardie responded to the report as they would any recent disappearance of a young mother and her son, missing for less than 48 hours after apparently leaving a family home of their own accord. 06:07 A public Garda appeal was issued on September 4th. 06:11 Meanwhile, Rhonda repeatedly called her daughter's phone. 06:15 She said her calls went straight to voicemail and believed her number had been blocked. 06:21 As the days passed, her concern deepened. 06:24 Dayla was a type 1 diabetic who relied on regular insulin. 06:29 At home, Dayla's two young daughters kept asking Rhonda when their mother and brother were coming back. 06:39 Three weeks after Dela and Kyron were reported missing, local journalist Andy Spearman bumped into Rhonda on the street. 06:47 Spearman had founded the website Drogheda Life 14 years earlier after being made redundant, initially intending for it to showcase all the good in the town. 06:57 Despite it being a departure from the usual content, when Dela and Kyron disappeared, he had published the Garda appeal in an effort to help find them. 07:06 Spearman lived just three doors down from Rhonda on Hand Street. 07:11 They weren't friends, but they knew each other well enough to exchange greetings in passing, and he had featured her on the website before. 07:19 Given his proximity to the family and his role in publicising the appeal, he asked Rhonda how the search was progressing. 07:27 Despite weeks of publicity, the appeal had generated few meaningful leads. 07:33 Andy suggested conducting a full interview with Rhonda for Draw the Life. 07:37 A personal appeal, he reasoned, might attract wider attention. 07:42 Rhonda agreed. 07:45 A short time later, Spearman was sitting across from her in the kitchen of her Hand Street home. 07:51 Rhonda spoke about her strong and independent daughter and told Spearman how she and Dayla's other two children were worried sick and missed her dearly. 08:02 As his recorder ran, Rhonda turned her attention to her missing daughter and made a direct appeal to Dayla. 08:09 She asked her to get in touch and let them know they were okay. 08:14 She said the family just wanted them home safe and sound. 08:18 Gardie approached the case as a straightforward missing person investigation. 08:23 Their starting point was the account provided by the family. 08:27 According to that account, Chiron and his mother were alive and well at Hand Street on the night of August 28, before they left during the early hours of the following morning. 08:37 Gardie were aware that Chiron's father did not live with the family, and he was not under any suspicion. 08:45 Investigators set about attempting to retrace their movements after leaving the house on Han Street. 08:51 They reviewed phone and digital records, sought out witnesses and looked for photographs and CCTV footage. 09:00 On the 16th of October, the Gardaí stood down their appeal for information about Dayla's whereabouts. 09:06 They had found her. 09:10 She was living in Ipswich, a small town in the east of England, and she assured the police that she was safe. 09:17 But Kyron was not with her. 09:21 Dela told investigators that she did not know what had happened to her son. 09:27 For the guardee, the case had now changed fundamentally. 09:31 If Dayla could offer no explanation for Kyron's whereabouts, investigators would have to establish the facts for themselves. 09:39 They began by examining the assumptions underlying the missing person report. 09:44 Chief among them was a seemingly straightforward claim, that Kyron had been seen alive and well in the weeks before he was reported missing. 09:53 To test that assumption, Gardie returned to Tusla, carrying the photograph of Chiron that had been supplied by his family for the public appeal. 10:03 A young boy smiles up at the camera. 10:06 He is dressed in a bright blue hoodie, with Spider-Man emblazoned across the front of it. 10:11 His brown hair is tightly cropped, and his eyes are crinkled at the corners from his smile. 10:17 Officials who had been involved with the family in the months before Kyron was reported missing revisited their earlier contacts with him. 10:26 Tusla's staff had met a child they believed to be Kyron on at least two occasions, once in mid-July and again in early August 2024. 10:36 But doubts began to emerge. 10:39 When they examined the image that the Gardie presented, they realised they did not recognise the boy in the photograph, staring back at them. 10:48 The child they had met in July was not Kyron Durnan. 10:52 Neither, they concluded, was the child they had seen again just weeks later. 10:57 They believed another child had been presented in Kyron's place. 11:04 The missing person report described an eight-year-old boy who disappeared from Han Street overnight on August 28. 11:11 His grandmother had given a detailed account of his last known movements, both to Gardaí and to local journalist Andy Spearman. 11:19 But, as investigators dug deeper, they found no independent evidence that Kyron had actually been at Han Street that night. 11:27 And if the child seen by Tusla in July and August was not Kyron, then the entire timeline of the case was wrong. 11:37 The investigation was no longer focused on where Kyron had gone after August 28. 11:42 It was now centred on a far more troubling question. 11:46 What if Kyron Durnan had disappeared long before anyone realised he was missing? 11:57 The episode you're listening to is brought to you by Butternut Box. 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Now, back to the podcast. 12:49 As detectives searched for Kyron, they worked backwards, piecing together the life of a child who, for the first years of his life, appeared frequently in family photographs and online posts. 13:01 And then, at some point, he seemed to slip almost entirely from public view. 13:08 At 1.13am on Sunday, May 15, 2016, Kyren Durnan was born at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda. 13:17 He was Dela Durnan's first child. 13:19 She was 16 years old when Kyren was born. 13:23 In the years that followed, two younger sisters joined the family. 13:28 Like many young parents of her generation, Dayla documented her children's lives on social media. 13:34 Her Facebook page became a record of birthdays, family outings and everyday moments, with photographs of Kyron and his sisters appearing regularly over the years. 13:45 On Kyron's first birthday, she called him My Number One and My Baby Forevermore. 13:52 She wrote that becoming his mother had completed her happiness and that he was going to make the perfect big brother. 13:59 It was clear from the pictures and her posts that she was a loving mother who cared deeply for her children, including Kyron. 14:09 As a toddler, Kyron appears again and again in those family photographs, usually smiling. 14:16 A photograph from Kyron's first day at St. Nicholas Monastery National School shows him standing outside in his new uniform. 14:24 His grey jumper is slightly too big for him. His school bag hangs from his shoulders and he is smiling at the camera. 14:31 He has just started junior infants. 14:34 He was known at school for his big smiles and his love of superheroes. 14:41 On April 17, 2022, Dayla posted a picture of all three children together, Kyron and his sisters. 14:49 Her caption read, The three who mean the most. 14:53 After that photograph, the images stopped. 14:59 Dayla never posted another picture of Kyron. 15:03 Gardie also investigated an apparent record of Kyron from the summer of 2024. 15:09 Official documents appeared to place him with his mother in emergency guesthouse accommodation in County Lowth. 15:16 Staff at the B&B later found themselves answering questions from Gardie about a stay that had been booked in Kyron's name. 15:24 Investigators showed them a photograph of Chiron, but none of the staff recognised the child in the picture. 15:31 The boy who had been with Dayla during her stay had been a different child. 15:36 Staff recalled that Dayla appeared very happy during her stay and spent time socialising with other guests. 15:43 They also remembered a visit from a man. 15:46 According to management, he told another resident that he was the father of the boy who had been presented as Chiron. 15:53 He also claimed to be Dale's carer. 15:56 Staff said they did not believe him and asked him to leave the property. 16:03 As they searched, exploring every lead and avenue, the investigators soon came to a simple but worrying conclusion. 16:10 The last verifiable sighting of Kyron was shortly after that final photo was posted on Facebook in June 2022 at his school. 16:20 No independent evidence publicly identified by Gardaí placed Chiron at Hand Street in August 2024. 16:27 No photograph or video showed him there. No independent witness was found who could reliably confirm seeing him. 16:36 the account of an eight-year-old boy disappearing from Drogheda began to collapse. 16:41 Now they had two questions to answer. 16:44 What had happened to Chiron after the summer of 2022 and why, two years later, was another child being presented to state officials as Chiron? 16:55 Gardie were able to establish the identity of the other child relatively quickly. 17:00 His name has never been made public, but identifying him only deepened the mystery around the Tusla meetings. 17:07 Investigators now had to reconstruct how this child had come to be there, who had accompanied him, what social workers had been told, and how they had come away believing they had seen Kyron Durnan. 17:21 For several weeks, the true direction of the inquiry remained out of public view. 17:26 Then, on October 16th, Gardie made an extraordinary announcement. 17:32 Despite extensive inquiries, they had been unable to locate Chiron or find any evidence that he was alive. 17:40 And then Gardie made a decision, an unusual one, but one they felt had become unavoidable. 17:47 Kyron Dernan was officially classified as missing, presumed dead. 17:53 It was now officially a murder investigation. 18:08 When local journalist Andy Spearman learned that Chiron had in fact been missing for two years and that investigators were treating the case as a murder inquiry, he was shocked. 18:19 Spearman had sat across from Rhonda in her kitchen and listened as she appealed publicly for help to find her daughter and her grandchild. 18:28 The revelation that Chiron may have been missing for the two years before then would keep Andy awake at night and left him struggling to reconcile that interview with what would now emerging. 18:39 The language used by Gardaí was precise. 18:42 Presumed dead didn't mean that his body had been found. 18:47 Beginning a murder investigation did not establish how, when or where he had died. 18:53 There were no remains. 18:55 There was no publicly identified place of death and no known cause. 19:01 All Gardaí had was an account that could not be corroborated. Meetings involving a child purported to be Chiron and an evidential trail that appeared to go cold. 19:12 They began to look further back in Chiron's short life. 19:18 Kyron and his family were known to Tusla. During 2021 and 2022, the agency's Child Welfare Services and a Family Resource Service had contact with them. 19:31 Tusla would later say it made significant efforts to support the family. 19:35 There had been no reports suggesting Kyron was at risk, he was never taken into state care, and there were no concerns raised about his schooling. 19:45 Families come into contact with TUSLA for all sorts of reasons. Many are referred for relatively ordinary concerns, such as educational welfare issues, family support needs or social work assessments, rather than because a child is considered to be at immediate risk. 20:03 At the time, nothing appears to have distinguished Chiron from thousands of other children receiving some level of support. 20:11 By the spring of 2022, several branches of the state held information about the six-year-old. Tusla knew who he was, and he had started junior infants the previous September, meaning the education system knew his name, his date of birth, his address, and the classroom he attended. 20:31 The last independently confirmed sighting of Chiron came at St. Nicholas's Monastery National School on Phillips Street in Dundalk. 20:39 Housed in a large red-brick building that had served the Castletown area for more than a century, the school is home to only around 160 pupils. 20:48 It was not the sort of place where a child could easily disappear into the crowd. 20:54 Every weekday, teachers, staff and classmates would have seen Chiron arriving through the school gates. 21:01 Then, towards the end of May 2022, he stopped coming. 21:06 Dayla told the school he had contracted COVID-19 and was in hospital. 21:12 By the end of the school term, she told staff that he would not be returning after the summer holidays because the family was moving to Northern Ireland. 21:20 Instead, he would be starting again in a school in Newry that September. 21:25 No school in Northern Ireland has been identified as having enrolled him. 21:30 It seemed that the next chapter of life never materialised. 21:37 The trail that should have continued from one classroom to another simply ended. 21:42 For investigators, it was another gap in the timeline of Chiron's short life. 21:47 There was no classroom, role record or teacher who could independently place him at school after May 2022. 21:55 Kyron's school in Dundalk believed he had transferred to Northern Ireland. Because he was expected to leave the school, his absence when the new term began was not treated as unexplained, and no absence report or educational welfare referral relating to him reached TUSLA between 2022 and 2024. 22:15 TUSLA Chief Executive Kate Duggan later said that, in the absence of any referral, the agency's education support service had no reason to make further inquiries about his school attendance. 22:28 There were working relationships between TUSLA and child protection agencies in Northern Ireland. 22:33 If a concern was referred, contact could be made across the border. 22:38 But no concern was raised because Kyron was never in school in Northern Ireland. 22:44 Kyron should have begun senior infants in September of 2022. 22:48 It seemed that school year passed without him entering a classroom. 22:54 On May 15th, 2023, he would have turned seven. 22:58 He should have started first class later that year. 23:02 But as far as we know, based on publicly available information, no teacher, doctor, social worker or other government professional ever saw Kyron Durnan. 23:14 Then, in early 2024, Tusla became concerned about the Durnan family over the welfare of a different child. 23:22 But as social workers engaged with the family, Tusla staff began to question Kyron's whereabouts. 23:29 The precise details of what happened at this time have not been released because they form part of the Active Garda investigation into this case. 23:38 What is known is that concern did not arise because Kyron had missed school. 23:43 By then, he had been absent from his Dundalk classroom for almost two years. 23:48 There was no record of him in school across the border either. 23:52 Tusla staff began trying to establish where he was. 23:56 Social workers made enquiries and requested face-to-face meeting with the family and Kyron. 24:03 That meeting took place in mid-July 2024. 24:07 Family members attended, along with a young boy whom Tusla officials understood to be Kyron. 24:14 A second face-to-face meeting followed in early August. 24:18 Again, officials believed they were seeing Kyron Durnan. 24:22 At that stage, the meetings appeared to provide reassurance that the child Tusla had concerns about was present and accounted for. 24:31 Questions remained, including around school attendance and welfare, but there was nothing to suggest that the boy before them was anyone other than Cairan. 24:40 Tusla anticipated further engagement with the family. 24:45 When Cairan's father visited Dundalk, he asked Dela where Cairan was. 24:50 She told him that he had begged to go to Drogheda to see his grandmother. 24:57 As the Garda investigation progressed, investigators sought to establish the last point at which Chiron's presence could be confirmed beyond doubt. 25:06 The answer came not from school, social work or family records, but from a mobile phone. 25:13 The last confirmed indication that Kyron was alive came from two mobile phone photographs. 25:20 Based on the evidence available to Gardaí, June 2022 is the last point at which Kyron can be reliably confirmed to be alive. 25:30 In one photograph, Kyron is sitting on a dark leather sofa, a wide smile lit up his little face. 25:37 He looked directly at the camera, wearing a bright blue Spider-Man hoodie. 25:42 He had turned six just weeks earlier. 25:46 No later photograph has been publicly verified. 25:49 No later school attendance has been found. 25:52 No later medical appointment or independent witness has been identified that can reliably place Chiron alive after that moment in June 2022. 26:04 What happened afterwards has so far proved hard to establish. 26:08 When he disappeared or may have died remains under investigation by the Gardaí. 26:15 Four days after announcing the murder investigation, on the 21st of October 2024, Gardie obtained a warrant to search the Durnan's former home on Eamer Terrace in Dundalk. 26:27 This was not the house on Hand Street in Drogheda from which Kyron had been reported missing weeks earlier. 26:33 Eamer Terrace was the family home where Kyron was last known to have lived, and the address most closely associated with his life before he disappeared. 26:44 His family had occupied the property for several years before leaving in May 2024. 26:50 This was the house he returned to from St. Nicholas Monastery, his former school. 26:55 It was where he lived with his mother and younger sisters when the photographs and references to him on Facebook from his mother stopped. 27:03 For investigators, the significance of the house was obvious. 27:07 If answers existed, this was one of the few places where they might still be found. 27:13 The house stood in a terrace of red brick homes off the Castletown Road. 27:18 Beyond the back gardens lay a stretch of rough, open ground, an untidy patch of vacant land that ran behind the row of houses. 27:26 As investigators arrived, residents looked on from a neighbourhood that, according to neighbour Peter Traynor, was not what it once had been. 27:36 Nobody knows anybody anymore, Traynor said. Nobody stays too long. 27:42 To him, the constant turnover had changed the character of the neighbourhood. 27:47 It's an ideal place for someone to get lost in, he said. 27:53 On the morning the search began, forensic officers moved in and residents gathered outside to watch. 28:00 Blue Garda tape cut across the familiar streetscape. 28:03 Technical Bureau specialists came and went through the property while machinery was positioned on the adjoining ground beyond the rear gardens. 28:12 For three days, Emer Terrace became the centre of the investigation. 28:18 Behind the red brick houses, forensic teams worked their way through the overgrown strip of open ground that stretched beyond the gardens. 28:26 Residents peered from doorways and watched from behind cordons as officers in white protective suits moved between the house and the land behind it. 28:36 Outside Dundalk Garda Station, Chief Superintendent Alan McGovern set out the objective in simple terms. 28:43 We want to discover where Kyron is, he said. 28:47 We want to discover what has happened to Kyron. 28:51 The challenge facing investigators was considerable. The search was taking place more than two years after the period they were attempting to reconstruct. 29:01 Any family home accumulates traces of the people who live there. 29:05 Fingerprints, DNA, fibres, clothing, toys and personal possessions can all demonstrate that someone was present. 29:13 But Kyron's presence at Emer Terrace had never been in dispute. It had been his home. 29:19 Forensic evidence does not explain itself. A mark, a stain or a biological trace only becomes significant when it can be linked to a person, an event and a place within the timeline investigators are trying to establish. 29:34 What investigators needed to determine was whether anything within the property could explain where he was or if something had happened to him. 29:44 By then, time itself had become an obstacle. 29:48 Other people had lived in the house since the Durnan family left. 29:51 Rooms may have been repainted or redecorated. Furniture may have been moved. Gardens may have been dug over, landscaped or altered through ordinary use. 30:04 The search continued for three days. 30:07 On October 24th, Gardie announced they had concluded the examination of the house and adjoining land. 30:14 They had found no evidence that could explain Chiron's whereabouts or tell them anything more to fill in the gaps in his story. 30:22 If the house held answers, they had not been uncovered. 30:28 Investigators increasingly turned their attention to a different question, whether somebody had deliberately created the impression that Kyron was still alive long after he had disappeared. 30:41 By late 2024, investigators were examining what they believed was false information provided to state agencies about Kyron's whereabouts. 30:50 Tusla officials had met a child they believed to be Kyron in July and August 2024. 30:57 When detectives investigated, they found that the boy who had been presented to authorities since Kyron's disappearance was around the same age but had different coloured hair and wore glasses. 31:08 He bore little resemblance to Kyron. 31:11 Once Gardie obtained the description, they established the boy's real identity. 31:17 As investigators examined who had accompanied the child to the Tusla meetings, a man named Anthony Maguire became a significant figure in the inquiry. 31:26 He was 36 years old, known to Cairon's mother, and lived in Drogheda. 31:33 He was not a relative of Kyron, but reporting based on Garda sources said investigators believed he had access to the boy around the time the trail went cold in 2022. 31:45 Garda also came to believe that Maguire and another person had been centrally involved in presenting the other boy as Kyron in 2024. 31:54 This was the investigative theory that emerged from extensive reporting on the case. 32:00 It has never been tested in court. 32:02 No person has ever been charged with, or appeared before a court in relation to, the disappearance or presumed death of Kyron Durnan. 32:13 Maguire denied having any role in killing or harming Kyron. 32:17 He also denied having any involvement in Kyron's disappearance. 32:22 On Tuesday, December 10th, 2024, Gardie made the first arrest in the murder investigation. 32:39 A woman in her twenties was arrested on suspicion of murder and detained under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act. 32:46 The arrest marked a significant development in an investigation that, until then, had produced no public breakthrough. 32:54 Detectives questioned the woman for hours about Kyron's disappearance, the events of 2022, and the people who had been around him during the period when the trail ended. 33:04 The following day she was released without charge. 33:09 According to reporting by the Irish Times, the woman told Gardaí that Anthony Maguire had been caring for Chiron, or had at least played a role in his care around the time the boy disappeared in 2022. 33:24 Less than 24 hours after her release, investigators moved again. 33:30 Anthony Maguire was detained overnight and questioned about Chiron's suspected murder. 33:35 He made no admission and was released without charge on December 13th. 33:41 At the same time, Gardaí were searching two properties in Drogheda. 33:46 One search concluded quickly. 33:48 The second, a search of Anthony Maguire's home, became a major forensic operation. 33:56 Garda search specialists were joined by members of the Garda National Technical Bureau, local scenes of crime personnel and experts from Forensic Science Ireland. 34:06 A JCB and other heavy equipment was on site. 34:10 A specialist cadaver dog was also deployed to investigate the property. 34:14 Such dogs are trained to indicate the possible presence of human remains. 34:20 The house was examined, the garden was excavated. 34:24 Gardie later confirmed that the search had concluded, but said the results would not be released for operational reasons. 34:31 Four days later, the investigation took another dramatic turn. 34:37 Shortly before midday on December 17th, Gardie and emergency services were called to Antony Maguire's home in Drogheda. 34:46 There, they found Maguire, dead. 34:50 Gardie announced they were not seeking anyone else in connection with his death and described it as a personal tragedy. 34:58 Maguire had denied any involvement in Chiron's disappearance. He had been released without charge. 35:05 investigators examined whether he had left behind any information that could assist the inquiry. 35:11 Reports at the time said notes recovered after his death contained no information relating to Chiron and provided no indication of where the child might be. 35:21 His death nevertheless had practical consequences for the investigation. 35:26 Gardaí could no longer question him about matters they believed he might have been able to explain, including the circumstances in which another child was allegedly presented as Chiron. 35:37 But his death did not end that line of inquiry. 35:41 Investigators could still examine digital evidence, phone records, messages, CCTV, accommodation records and the accounts of other witnesses. 35:54 Investigators had secured more than 29,500 hours of CCTV from numerous locations. 36:01 That amounted to more than three years of footage if played continuously from beginning to end. 36:07 They also began to examine the online and telephone activity of several people close to Cairo. 36:14 For years he had appeared in photographs, messages and social media posts. 36:19 Then, during the summer of 2022, those references appeared to stop abruptly. 36:26 Gardie also examined purchases. 36:29 According to reporting by the Irish Times, investigators found no evidence of presents being bought for Chiron's birthdays, Christmases or other milestone occasions after the summer of 2022. 36:42 Then there were the chipper and takeaway orders. 36:45 Gardie established a regular pattern of food deliveries to the address connected with the investigation across 2022. 36:53 But by June of that year, the orders changed in a way that suggested one fewer person was being fed. 37:00 From that point on, there was one less meal on the order. 37:05 Garda sources cautioned that there could be innocent explanations. 37:10 One child might have been staying elsewhere. A family might have separated or changed how it bought food. 37:17 The change in the orders did not prove that Chiron had died. 37:21 But it did not stand alone. 37:24 That date when the food orders changed, in June of 2022, fit into a wider pattern. 37:31 The photographs stopped. Public references to Chiron stopped. The messages and purchases appeared to stop. 37:39 When those separate strands were examined together, they strengthened the Garda belief that Chiron had died sometime around the summer of 2022. 37:48 Detectives were not relying on one takeaway order in isolation or a missing photograph. 37:54 They were comparing hundreds of small records looking for a pattern, the point at which Chiron stopped being part of the ordinary activity of the household. 38:03 That remains the prevailing investigative theory. 38:07 The records do not establish where or how Chiron died, but Gardie believed they can confidently narrow down the when. 38:16 On December 19, 2024, Gardie released two new photographs of Kyron. 38:23 The photographs were described as the last known images of him. 38:27 Both had been taken in June of 2022. 38:31 In one photograph, Chiron stands for the camera in a bright blue Sonic the Hedgehog jumper, clutching to his chest a teddy of Chase from Paw Patrol. 38:41 He is smiling, completely at ease. 38:44 Just a young boy posing proudly with one of his favourite toys held close to his heart. 38:50 In the other, the camera is closer to his face. 38:54 He looks directly into the lens. 38:57 Gardee now believed that sometime around this period, he was killed. 39:03 By the time the final photos of Chiron were released to the public, Gardie had arrested two people on suspicion of murder and searched three houses and adjoining land. 39:14 They had examined homes in Dundalk and Drogheda and there was still no trace of Chiron. 39:21 The December appeal asked the public not to assume detectives already knew all the information, even the minor details. 39:29 Gardie told the public that a photograph, a conversation or a detail that had appeared unimportant in 2022 could now help establish the last point at which Chiron was alive. 39:42 By now, the investigation was moving along two connected timelines. The first concerned what had happened to Chiron after the final photographs were taken. 39:51 The second concerned what may have been done afterwards to explain his absence. 39:57 On Wednesday, February 26, 2025, Gardie returned to a familiar address. 40:03 The search was centred on a property on Hand Street in Drogheda. 40:08 Six months earlier, this was the house from which Kyron Durnan and his mother had supposedly vanished together. 40:15 It was also where Rhonda Byrne Tyson had sat for a public interview, appealing for them to come home. 40:22 Now the house was sealed behind Garda tape. 40:25 Investigators announced that it would be subjected to technical and forensic examination. 40:30 They said the purpose of the search was simple, to find any evidence that might reveal where Chiron was or what had happened to him. 40:39 The location carried obvious significance. When Chiron was reported missing in August 2024, the account given to authorities placed them inside this house on Han Street. 40:50 By early 2025, detectives had found no independent evidence capable of proving that claim. 40:57 They were now searching the very property at the centre of the mystery. 41:02 Behind the Garda cordon, the operation quickly expanded. 41:06 The focus was the back garden. A large shed was dismantled. 41:11 A mini-digger excavated sections of ground. Shrubs were cut back and removed. Guarded Technical Bureau personnel moved in and out of the scene carrying evidence bags. 41:22 Investigators also deployed a drone above the property, capturing images that could be used to examine the garden's edges and identify any signs that soil or surfaces had been disturbed. 41:34 On the second day of the search, another figure arrived at Hand Street. 41:39 Chiron's father, Stephen, accompanied by friends, stood outside the cordon and watched the work continue. 41:46 He has never been treated as a suspect in his son's disappearance. 41:50 After several minutes he became visibly distressed. 41:54 He left a short time later. 41:59 Before this search, Stephen had spent months speaking with detectives about his son. 42:05 Media reports said he had previously raised concerns for Kyron's welfare and had struggled to gain access to him. 42:13 Behind the cordon, the work continued. 42:16 For three days investigators examined the house and garden. 42:20 Excavation equipment remained on site. 42:23 The shed was taken apart. 42:25 Garda also examined the garden of a neighbouring vacant property. 42:30 Then, shortly after 5pm on Friday, February 28, Garda vehicles began leaving Hand Street. 42:37 The search was over. 42:40 Just over two hours later, Garda headquarters issued a brief statement. 42:45 The operation had concluded. The findings would not be released for operational reasons. 42:52 As with previous searches connected to the investigation, the public was told little more. 42:58 RTE later reported that investigators had discovered nothing of major significance. 43:04 Whatever answers Gardaí had hoped to find beneath the soil of Hand Street, they had not found enough to bring the mystery of what happened to Kyron Durnan any closer to a resolution. 43:20 Bye. Bye. Bye. 43:41 It's easy to store, simple to serve and backed by a 96% digestibility rate. Treat your dog to food that actually makes them feel great. Visit butternutbox.com forward slash lines of inquiry and use the code lines of inquiry to grab 50% off your first two boxes. 44:00 Thanks again to our partners, Butternut Box for coming on board. Now back to the podcast. 44:08 The criminal investigation continued, but by then a second examination of Kyron's case was also underway. 44:17 This one was not concerned with identifying who may have killed him or concealed his remains. 44:22 It was looking at the agencies that had known Kyron, the information they held and how a six-year-old child could disappear without his absence being recognised by the state. 44:33 That process had begun months earlier. 44:37 In November 2024, shortly after the murder investigation was announced, Toosla submitted two internal reports to the Irish government. 44:47 One examined the agency's engagement with Cairan and his family. 44:51 The other examined the involvement of Toosla's education support service and Cairan's interactions with the school system. 44:59 Neither report was published. 45:01 Tusla said the decision had been made in consultation with Gardaí because releasing the contents could prejudice the murder investigation. 45:10 The reports were instead provided to the National Review Panel. 45:14 The panel is independent of Tusla. 45:17 It examines the deaths of children and other serious incidents where the child or family had contact with state care or child welfare services. 45:27 Its purpose is not to determine criminal responsibility. They were asking what the state knew, when it knew it, and whether anything should have been done differently. 45:37 The state had also begun changing how children who disappeared from education were tracked. 45:42 A small team was established within Tusla to examine cases involving children missing from school. 45:49 Where a principal reported that a child had accumulated more than 20 days of absence, and there was concern about that absence, educational welfare officers could try to establish where the child was. 46:03 If they could not locate the child, the case could be referred to Gardie. 46:08 The purpose was simple. 46:10 A child should not disappear from a school register without somebody establishing where they had gone. 46:18 But the larger review of Kyron's case was still taking place behind closed doors. 46:24 On October 29, 2025, the National Review Panel delivered its completed report to the Department of Children. 46:32 The report was then sent to the Attorney General for legal advice on whether it could be brought to the government and released publicly. 46:40 The Attorney General advised that the report could not be published at the time. 46:45 Its contents had the potential to prejudice any future criminal prosecution. 46:50 The report existed, but the public would not be allowed to read the evidence it contained, the detailed chronology it had reconstructed, or its complete assessment of the decisions made in Kyron's case. 47:03 Only its recommendations and overarching conclusion could be released. 47:08 Those were published on December 3rd, 2025. 47:14 The head of the National Review Panel, Dr Helen Buckley, said the disappearance and suspected killing of Kyron Dornan could not have been anticipated from the information available to Tusla at the time. 47:25 The review concluded that the agencies responsible for protecting children did not possess information that should have alerted them to the danger he was in. 47:34 Yet the panel also found weaknesses in how information moved through the system. 47:40 Many of its recommendations focused on a single problem. What should happen when a child slips out of view? 47:48 The review called for new arrangements to track pupils moving between schools, including across the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland. 47:57 It recommended clearer procedures for schools when a pupil failed to return after the summer holidays, and a greater role for TUSLA's Education Support Service in tracing children whose whereabouts could not be confirmed. 48:11 The recommendations reflected a gap exposed by Kyren's case. 48:15 His school had been told he was moving to Northern Ireland. 48:19 No school in Northern Ireland has ever been publicly identified as having enrolled him. 48:24 The panel also found that social workers did not always have access to the full picture when assessing concerns about a child. 48:33 It recommended improved information sharing between agencies, greater clarity around what inquiries could be made without parental consent, and stronger responses when a child or family could not be located. 48:46 Cases that remained unresolved for extended periods, it said, should trigger a multi-agency response involving both child protection and law enforcement services. 48:57 Dr. Buckley also said she felt Tusla would benefit from a lot more support. 49:03 Adding that, workers in Tusla have to deal with all the ills of society. Everything is thrown at them. 49:13 None of the recommendations claimed that any single change would have prevented Chiron's presumed death. 49:19 Instead, they described the safeguards the panel believed were necessary after his disappearance exposed weaknesses in the system. 49:27 The government quickly committed to implementing these suggestions. 49:31 But because the full report was withheld on legal advice, important questions remained unanswered. 49:37 The public could see the changes the panel wanted to make. 49:41 It could not see the detailed chronology that led to those conclusions, nor the full account of how state agencies had responded during Chiron's life. 49:53 not everybody was satisfied with how much had been revealed. 49:57 Tanya Ward, Chief Executive of the Children's Rights Alliance, said it was really unsatisfactory that the National Review Panel report remained unpublished. 50:07 She acknowledged that protecting the Garda investigation had to come first, but argued that transparency would eventually be necessary because a child had disappeared for two years before anyone realised he was gone. 50:21 Ten days after what would have been Chiron's tenth birthday, Gardie knocked on another door. 50:28 On the morning of the 25th of May, 2026, officers arrested a woman in her fifties who was known to Cairn and conducted a search of a property in Drogheda. 50:38 She was detained and questioned before being released the following day without charge. 50:43 Gardie later confirmed that a file would be prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions. 50:49 Newspaper reports at the time said that Gardie did not suspect the woman of having killed Cairn. 50:56 It was the third arrest in the investigation. 50:59 Once again, no charges followed. 51:04 As this episode is being recorded in September 2026, nobody has been charged with killing Kyron Dornan or concealing his remains. 51:14 Gardaí have not publicly established when he died. 51:18 They have not publicly established where he died. 51:22 They have not publicly established how he died. 51:26 His body has never been found. 51:30 The criminal investigation remains active. The state's own review concluded that what happened to Kyron could not have been anticipated from the information available to social workers at the time, while also recommending significant changes to the systems designed to protect vulnerable children. 51:48 Those changes may make it harder for another child to disappear between schools, agencies and jurisdictions. 51:56 They cannot tell us what happened to Kyron. 52:00 That answer remains with the people who were with him after the last confirmed sighting in 2022. 52:06 Today, Chiron should be 10 years old. 52:10 There should be newer photographs, school reports, birthdays. 52:14 The ordinary evidence of a child growing up. 52:18 Instead, Ireland still knows Chiron through the same photographs taken when he was six. 52:24 Four years later, they remain frozen in time. 52:28 The investigation continues. 52:30 The questions remain. 52:33 And somewhere behind those unanswered questions is a little boy who was failed by the state, and by those who should have kept him safe. 52:50 Thank you. 53:11 Thank you for listening to this episode of Lines of Inquiry. If this episode affected you or if you have thoughts you would like to share, you can leave a comment below the episode on Spotify. We read every message and comment we receive about the series and we are grateful to everyone who takes the time to listen, reflect and respond. 53:30 If you have a matter you'd like us to reply to, email is the best way to reach us. 53:39 Please make sure to like and follow the podcast. Press that bell button and never miss a new episode. 53:46 Lines of Inquiry is presented by me, John Sweetman. The podcast is created by Darren Cleary. 53:52 Our executive producer is Owen Brennan. Senior producer is Siobhan Walsh. Producer is Sam Hobson. 53:59 This episode was written by Darren Cleary and edited by Owen Brennan, Siobhan Walsh and Sam Hobson. 54:05 Sound design and editing by Neil Kavanagh, with editing support from Ed Smith. 54:10 Legal, marketing and social media support comes from the team at Golout. 54:16 If you would like to support the podcast, we'd really appreciate it. Please share it with a friend on WhatsApp or Facebook, post it to your social media, or simply recommend it to a friend. It makes a real difference. 54:28 Our official page is on Instagram. I'd appreciate it if you could follow at lines of inquiry podcast. 54:35 If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a five star rating or review on Apple, Spotify or wherever you're listening. 54:42 We have now passed 5000 five star ratings on Spotify. Thank you. These reviews help new people discover the podcast. 54:51 Join me next time as we open another case and follow the evidence wherever it leads. 54:57 Because, in the end, everything done in the dark comes to light.