Instead, the search for answers over his disturbing and perplexing disappearance goes on.
It’s a case that has shocked and baffled the country ever since a garda press release was issued on September 4 last year seeking knowledge on the whereabouts of a young schoolboy and his mother.
That missing persons report was filed by a person known to Kyran and his mother.
In an interview with local paper Drogheda Life published on September 24, Kyran’s grandmother Rhonda Byrne Tyson pleaded with the public to help find the boy and his mother, Dayla Durnin, and for Dayla to get in touch.
She told the paper that Dayla, Kyran and his two sisters had been staying at her home in Hand Street for some time and she last saw her daughter on Wednesday night, August 28, when she went to bed at about 11pm.
She said that when she got up early the next morning both Dayla and Kyran, who had been sleeping on the couch, had gone from the house and that Dayla had left a note on the table saying that she needed to get away for a few days.
Dayla was subsequently located safe in the UK, but there was no sign of Kyran, and it would soon be discovered that Kyran had actually not been seen for a long time.
Stranger and more worryingly, it would also be discovered that at previous meetings with State agencies, a different child was presented as being Kyran.
Details of a ‘Kyran Durnin’ with a birth date that matches the missing boy were also given at check-in at a Dundalk B&B in late May last year.
Detectives investigating Kyran’s disappearance have been trying to establish who the boy at the Dundalk B&B was, or if there was any child fitting Kyran’s description in the B&B at all.
Kyran Durnin has not been seen since 2022
The owners of the B&B have co-operated fully with the authorities and there is no suggestion of any wrongdoing on their part.
Investigation
The first part of the investigation was to establish when was Kyran last officially seen alive in a verifiable way – authorities discovered it was early in the summer of 2022 when his school term in a Co Louth school finished.
He was recorded on a school register as attending school up to the last day of June 2022 but the last confirmed eyewitness sighting of him at school was in May that year.
The school management was told Kyran would be moving to a different school in the Autumn of 2022, so when he didn’t turn up again there were no red flags raised. Kyran was seven years old at that time.
Gardaí subsequently found a new photograph of Kyran on a mobile phone volunteered to them for analysis. That picture was timestamped with a date in early June 2022, providing gardaí with a new time and date for when Kyran was last seen alive.
Childhood
Kyran arrived into the world at 1.13am in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda on Sunday, May 15, 2016.
From his birth, and growing up as a toddler and young boy, his mother Dayla recorded snapshots of his life and that of her other two children born after him and posted them on a Facebook account. Every post was of her children, with messages like “my reasons to live” and “blessed with my babies”.
In the photographs he is a smiling and a happy looking boy.
At the time of Kyran’s first birthday, Dayla posted a photograph of Kyran and herself with the message: “My number one, he couldn’t make me prouder than he does every day.
“Completed my happiness the day I brought him into this world. He makes the perfect son any woman could ask for. My baby forever more. Gonna make the best big brother to his little sister. All the love in the world.”
On April 17, 2022, she posted a photo of the three children with the message: “The 3 who mean the most” and two affectionate emojis.
On October 16 last year, gardaí announced the missing person case was now considered a murder investigation, despite no remains being located.
On October 22, the first search and dig took place at the last known address in Drogheda where Kyran lived. The house, on Emer Terrace in the town, was extensively searched and its garden excavated.
Then a piece of waste ground to the rear of the Emer Terrace address was partially excavated as part of the same operation.
Kyran had lived at the property but its current owners are not connected in any way with the investigation. Nothing of evidential value was uncovered during the search.
The next development was when on December 10 last year when a woman was arrested on suspicion of murder. She was released the following day without charge. Then on December 12, a man was arrested on suspicion of murder and searches began at two properties in Drogheda.
Detectives suspected the man of covering up Kyran’s disappearance after social workers began asking questions about the missing boy.
The search of one of the houses was completed on the same day, but the arrested man was detained overnight and the invasive search at the second property continued, supported by a specialist Cadaver dog.
The following day, December 13, the man was released from garda custody without charge and the search at the second house concluded.
The day after he was released, the man who had been questioned was found dead at his home in Drogheda, the house that had been searched by gardaí. He was Anthony Maguire (36).
Gardaí are treating his death as a personal tragedy. He left a note behind, but did not say if he knew what had happened to Kyran.
While gardaí have no evidence to suggest that Kyran died at the hand of Maguire, they believe he had access to Kyran around the time he went missing.
They also believe Maguire was at the centre of an elaborate ruse in which another boy was passed off as Kyran twice in the last year. This included a meeting with staff from the family and child agency Tusla. Those elements of the inquiry can still be explored, even though Maguire is now dead.
However, the attempt to build an accurate picture of Kyran’s last movements, and the suspected cover-up after his death, is now missing a vital figure.
On the surface it looked like the investigation had stalled, but gardaí examined devices and phone records belonging to two suspects, with a particular focus on the time around May and June 2022 when the last established positive sighting of Kyran was recorded.
It is understood investigators were also able to establish regular patterns of food orders and deliveries at certain times in the summer of 2022.
Gardaí discovered that after a certain date there was one less meal contained in the almost daily food order made to a number of takeaways in the Co Louth towns of Drogheda and Dundalk.
The death of Maguire has made the challenge of solving a complex case even more difficult, but a search and dig at a house on Hand Street in Drogheda on February 26 was the latest in the investigation.
But there is still no sign of Kyran, and no answers as to where he is.
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