Disappearance of Mary Boyle

Mary Boyle was born on 14 June 1970 and was six years old when she disappeared on 18 March 1977 near her grandparents' farm in Cashelard, near Ballyshannon, County Donegal, Ireland, on the Fermanagh border. She was last seen at about 3:30 pm that day. Her mother, Ann, her father, Charlie, her older brother, Paddy, and her twin sister, Ann, had traveled from the family's home in Kincasslagh to spend Saint Patrick's Day with her maternal grandparents. While Boyle played outside with her siblings and two cousins, an uncle left to return a ladder to a neighboring farm about 400 yards away. Boyle followed him partway, then turned back at a pool of water too deep for her to cross. Her walk back should have taken about five minutes; her uncle stayed at the neighboring farm for about thirty, and by the time he returned, Boyle was gone.

Boyle's family searched the local area and questioned passers-by. One fisherman initially said he saw Boyle put into a red car and driven away, though he later said in a BBC podcast he had seen only a suspicious red car, not Boyle herself. Her twin sister noted Boyle had been eating a packet of crisps when she vanished, reasoning it would have surfaced had she fallen into a bog. Gardaí searched the surrounding countryside, drained a lake behind the grandparents' house, and produced a filmed reconstruction of Boyle's movements using her twin sister as a stand-in. No evidence of what happened to Boyle has ever been found, despite further Garda searches over the following decades, including one in 2016, and searches funded by the singer Margo, a friend of the family.

The case has drawn attention because of its length and allegations that political interference — centered on a claim that a politician phoned Gardaí in 1977 and told them not to question or detain their main suspect — hampered the investigation. Margo later asked the politician publicly accused of making the call whether he had; he denied it and, she said, called her "a bare-faced liar." Citing the case's duration and the interference allegations, The Guardian described it as "Ireland's Madeleine McCann." The disappearance has never been debated in the Dáil, Ireland's parliament, though it was raised in the European Parliament by MEP Lynn Boylan, criticizing the investigation's lack of direction.

An initial suspect was questioned soon after Boyle's disappearance and released without charge. In October 2014, a man was taken into Garda custody for further questioning and released without charge the next day; he later denied any involvement. In 2016, Gemma O'Doherty produced a documentary, Mary Boyle: The Untold Story, in which Boyle's twin sister said she believed Boyle had been sexually abused and killed. Two retired Garda sergeants interviewed for the film denied political pressure had been applied, though one recalled a senior officer telling him to "ease off" while questioning a suspect.

Boyle's father died in a fishing accident off Donegal in 2005. In 2011, Margo released a single, "The Missing Mary Boyle," to fund a new search. In 2018, relatives and supporters held a silent protest outside the coroner's office in Stranorlar and submitted a petition with more than 10,000 signatures calling for an inquest into Boyle's disappearance; her twin sister took part. That same month, Gardaí issued a public request for information and said the investigation remained live. No inquest has been held, no one has been charged, and Mary Boyle has never been found; her family remains divided, in part because of her twin sister's public statements about who she believes is responsible.