At the time of her disappearance Fiona Sinnott was living in the rural village of Ballyhitt, Broadway, County Wexford, Ireland, some 120 kilometres south of Dublin City. Fiona was a young single mother, and her daughter Emma was eleven months old at the time of her mother’s disappearance.
19 year old Fiona Sinnott spent the night of Sunday February the 8th 1998 socialising with a group a friends in Butler’s Pub in Broadway Co. Wexford not far from her rented home. Fiona’s friends described Fiona as being happy that night, and in good spirits. However, her friends would later tell Gardai that Fiona was also complaining of pain in one of her arms. Fiona had been the victim of domestic violence in the past and the report of pain in her arm raised the suspicions of Gardai when examining the case.
Also in Butler’s Pub that Sunday night was Fiona’s ex-boyfriend and the father of her child, he did not join Fiona and her friends and spent the night drinking at the bar alone. At roughly midnight, Fiona left Butler’s Pub with her ex-boyfriend and nobody else. Her ex-boyfriend would later tell Gardai that he and Fiona walked the short distance to her home, where he, too, spent the night, but on Fiona’s sofa whilst she slept upstairs in her bedroom.
He would also tell Gardai that on the following morning, Monday the 9th of February, Fiona was still complaining of a pain in her arm and wanted to visit a doctor and that she would hitch a lift to the doctor’s office. Fiona’s ex-boyfriend then gave her five pounds and he was picked up by his mother at 9:30am. His mother drove him back to their home, in nearby Coddstown, where their child Emma had spent the previous night.
Fiona never arrived at the doctor’s office, no sightings of her hitch hiking have ever been reported, nor has anyone ever come forward to Gardai stating that they gave Fiona a lift that morning.
In the days after Fiona’s disappearance, neighbours reported seeing numerous black bin bags outside of her home in Ballyhitt. When the Gardai searched Fiona’s home and forensically examined it, they discovered no evidence of foul play.
However, the investigators were struck by how clean the house was considering the fact that a single mother lived there with her eleven month old daughter. Fiona’s landlord would later tell Gardai that whenever he visited Fiona’s home there would be bits and pieces everywhere, as would be expected in any house with such a young baby.
Fiona’s family would also report the ‘odd’ clean and organised nature of her rented home after her disappearance.
A few weeks after Fiona vanished, a local farmer approached Gardai with information that was relevant to the case. The farmer told them that whilst attending to his cattle, he found numerous black bin bags on his property. He opened some of the bags and found some letters addressed to Fiona Sinnott. Unfortunately, when the farmer found this evidence, he was unaware of Fiona’s disappearance. He presumed it to be just another case of illegal dumping, which is a wide spread problem in Ireland, and burnt the black bags.
Tragically, no trace or evidence relating to Fiona Sinnott has been found since.
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