Philip Cairns: The boy who never came home

Philip Cairns: The boy who never came home

Last Saturday was the 35th anniversary of the disappearance of 13-year-old Rathfarnham schoolboy Philip Cairns, and a journalist is hoping to shed more light on the case in her new book.

Philip vanished when he was walking back to his school, Coláiste Éanna in Ballyroan, after lunch on October 23, 1986, and there have been no confirmed sightings of him since.

Six days after his disappearance, the first year student’s school bag was found in a laneway near his house but it yielded no further clues about what had happened to him.

In May 2016, a woman came forward and told gardai that she suspected that convicted paedophile and former DJ Eamonn Cooke had killed Philip, however Cooke died the following month.

Gardai had taken DNA samples from Philip’s school bag, and while the samples didn’t match Cooke’s DNA, he has not been ruled out as a suspect.

Emma McMenamy, an Irish Sunday Mirror journalist, extensively covered the developments in the case in 2016, and last year set about writing a book on the case called ‘The Boy Who Never Came Home’.

Emma, who grew up in Kingswood, Tallaght, and is a past pupil of Coláiste Bríde, Clondalkin, told The Echo about what she uncovered when she was writing the book, and her hope that Philip’s family will finally get closure.

Why did the Philip Cairns case pique your interest?

I’ve been a journalist for 20 years now, and as any journalist will know, there’s certain cases and stories you cover that stick with you.

I would’ve covered the Philip Cairns case extensively in 2016 when a woman came forward about Eamonn Cooke, the prolific paedophile and former DJ, and said she had seen him hitting Philip in his radio station in Inchicore.

Ever since, it’s baffled me and I wanted to find out more and look into it.

Emma McMenamy Irish Sunday Mirror journalist

What was the key thing you learned when you were writing ‘The Boy Who Never Came Home’?

As a journalist and as a member of the public, you tend to look at missing people as cases and statistics.

But when I researched the book, it became more real.

Philip isn’t a statistic, he’s a person behind all of this, and you can feel the hurt and the pain of his family.

That hit me really hard and gave me a push to find out more about the case.

What did you find out about Philip as a person?

I spoke to his family and the person who sat beside him in school, and he was described as a very quiet, well-behaved boy.

He loved to go fishing with his father, Philip Snr, and he played football and was getting into music.

The resounding response I got was that he was very much a family person.

He loved spending time with his family, and he was enjoying school. He was at that age where he was discovering himself, with things like his style and his clothes.

Former Detective Sergeant Tom Doyle in the laneway where Philip’s schoolbag was found

How did you approach the Eamonn Cooke aspect of the book?

I went in with an open mind and a blank canvas. I spoke to former colleagues of his, his victims and guards who had interacted with him.

I found that there was a lot of circumstantial evidence that started to stack up.

But the part for me, which I believe might merit further investigation from the guards, is the names of certain juveniles at the time, who are adults now, who could have further information about Eamonn Cooke’s activities at the time of Philip’s disappearance.

What do you think happened to Philip?

I do believe that he was abducted, I don’t believe that he ran away. I believe he was most likely abducted on the day he disappeared, and I think Eamonn Cooke merits further investigation to either rule him in or rule him out.

He’s still deemed the number one suspect but, even if he’s ruled out, then the guards can concentrate their energy elsewhere.

There’s also the potential that the person who did it has gone under the garda radar over the last 35 years and thinks they’ve gotten away with it.

Somebody out there knows what happened to Philip – there’s no doubt about that.

Were you in contact with Philip’s family when you were writing the book?

I was in touch with them and passed on my findings to them. You couldn’t meet a more loving family who, despite the long passage of time, have never given up looking for Philip.

Despite all the negative things they’ve been through – they’ve had people calling them and claiming to be Philip, or pretending that he’s in the background calling out for them – they’ve kept their heads up and are determined to find him.

They still suffer the devastation and heartache of his disappearance to this day – they still see Philip, in their eyes, as a 13-year-old boy and all they want is answers.

They don’t want revenge or reprisals.

They want to bring Philip home and bury him in a place where his mother can go to pay her respects to her son.

‘The Boy Who Never Came Home: Philip Cairns’ by Emma McMenamy is out now in bookshops and online.

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