GARDAÍ INVESTIGATING the disappearance and death of a 43-year-old man have exhumed remains from a cemetery in Co Westmeath and begun a forensic examination of his former home.
The Garda Serious Crime Review Team is investigating the disappearence and death of Brian McGrath, who lived in the small village of Coole, near Castlepollard, 21 years ago.
The last confirmed sighting of Mr McGrath was in March 1987 but gardaí were only made aware of his disappearance when a family member approached them in 1993.
The follow-up investigation resulted in a Garda search team uncovering unidentified human remains in the overgrown garden attached to the cottage which had been the McGrath family home.
Detectives believed the body had been set alight before it was secretly buried.
A comprehensive investigation was carried out at the time and a file was submitted to the Director of Public Prosecutions but no prosecutions were taken.
Yesterday the cottage and the three-quarter acre site on which it stands, including the area where the body was found, were subjects of a forensic examination by Garda technical units.
The area was sealed off and specialist equipment used to search the soil.
The remains exhumed at Whitehall Cemetery have been taken to Dublin city morgue in Marino for new tests.
A Garda spokesperson confirmed that part of these tests would be to confirm that the remains are indeed those of Mr McGrath.
Gardaí believe that by using new technologies and investigative techniques that were not available to the original investigative team, they will uncover evidence at the scene in Coole and help to advance the investigation into Mr McGrath’s disappearance and death.
The investigation now involves more than 25 gardaí assisted by a crime scene investigation team from the Garda Technical Bureau, the Forensic Science Laboratory, an external soil surveying company and an anthropologist.
The case is being treated as a murder investigation.