Body found in search for Disappeared
A body has been found on a bog in Co. Meath where a man abducted and murdered was believed to have been secretly buried by the IRA.
The human remains were found in a drainage ditch on Oristown bog, near Kells, Co Meath by contractors called in to prepare the site for forensic excavations.
Newly-wed Brendan Megraw from Twinbrook, was looking forward to the birth of his first child and was due to start a new job on a ship when he went missing in April 1978 aged 23.
Investigators from the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains (ICLVR) – set up by the British and Irish Governments to liaise with former paramilitaries to find the Disappeared – confirmed a body was being recovered.
“The State Pathologist will begin the process of a post mortem and formal identification,” a spokesman said.
Mr Megraw was one of 17 people abducted, killed and clandestinely buried by republicans during the Troubles – the Disappeared.
The recovery of the body is now under way.
It is understood the excavations proper had not begun and clearance and preparation works were taking place when the discovery was made.
Forensic archaeologists surveyed the remote bogland one month ago and have spent the last few weeks analysing radar surveys, searching for anomalies in the ground.
Separate searches have also taken place on bogland a few miles from the Oristown site, near Wilkinstown, for Kevin McKee and Seamus Wright, both of whom were taken by the IRA in October 1972.
It is also suspected Joseph Lynskey, a former Cistercian monk taken from the Beechmount area of west Belfast in the summer of 1972, was also buried somewhere in the region.
Investigators believe one person living locally may hold vital clues to several families’ decades-long quest to find the bodies of loved ones.
The IRA claimed Mr Megraw had confessed to being a British provocateur and Military Reaction Force undercover agent in 1978.
The ICLVR was established in 1999 after the Good Friday peace agreement and is acknowledged as a world leader in the search and recovery of human remains from bogland.
The remains of 10 of the Disappeared have been recovered.
