ONLY at the end of last week did gardai finally discount what appeared to be a report by two eyewitnesses that Marilyn Rynn had been waiting for a bus into Dublin on the morning of Friday, December 22rd.
This was one of the strongest eyewitness accounts available, until last week, about her thereabouts.
It suggested that she had returned home safely after attending a staff party in the Shieling Hotel, Raheny, and had set but for the city the next day.
The well meant eyewitnesses' account of her waiting for a number 38 bus for Dublin the next day distracted the Garda and directed inquiries towards the possibility that she had been alive on the Friday morning, had gone into Dublin and disappeared from the city centre.
They had also to discount another eyewitness account of a woman in a disorientated state alighting from a taxi on the Blackrock by pass in the early hours of Christmas Day.
Only at the end of last week, when the bus stop account was reevaluated and discounted, did the Garda decide to concentrate the search on the area around her home.
They decided to search the wooded parkland around the Tolka river between her home in Brookhaven Drive and Blanchardstown village, where the Nitelink bus from the city centre stops.
Yesterday's search confirmed their suspicions, and gardai uncovered the body in parkland between Blanchardstown and her home. It is now believed that she was waylaid and killed as she made her way home.
Gardai are now trying to accurately place Ms Rynn's last known movements, so they can appeal to people who may have seen her late on the night of Thursday, December 21st, and in the early hours of Friday 22nd, particularly around Eddie Rocket's late night diner in O'Connell Street and then on one of the three Niteline buses from O'Connell Street to Blanchardstown between 3 and 3.30 a.m.
Ms Rynn's disappearance during the week before Christmas coincided with the disappearance of another Dublin woman, Ms Denise Boyers, prompting initial fears that both women might have been abducted or murdered.
Foul play has been ruled out in Ms Boyers' case.
Her body was found washed up on Dollymount Strand the day before New Year's Eve. The wreckage of her car was found at the foot of the cliff at the Baily, in Howth, and it is believed that she may have driven off the road there on December 18th. It is understood she was prone to black outs.
Ms Rynn's family consistently maintained that her disappearance was totally out of character and that she was not depressed or in any way suicidal. This prompted Garda concerns that she might have been murdered.
Gardai, with the help of a German shepherd dog, began searching the undergrowth and wooded banks in the Tolka valley.
Yesterday's search began just after daylight, and the gardai came across Ms Rynn's naked body at about 9 a.m.
They preserved the muddy area around the body for examination by Garda technical officers. The Chief State Pathologist, Dr John Harbison, attended the scene and examined the body in situ before it was removed to James Connolly Memorial Hospital at 2.30 p.m. for post mortem.