The monster who snatched and murdered Jastine Valdez was infatuated with her and had rehearsed the abduction beforehand, the detective who hunted him believes.
Speaking publicly for the first time about the frantic search for Jastine, retired detective superintendent Frank Keenaghan also says he believes Mark Hennessy sexually assaulted the student before murdering her – and dumping her lifeless corpse in heavy gorse in south County Dublin.
And, in an exclusive interview with the Irish Mirror for our special podcast Shattered Lives which is available this morning, Mr Keenaghan also reveals how emergency workers begged Hennessy to tell them where he had hidden Jastine – as they fought to save his life after a Garda detective shot him at the end of a 24-hour manhunt.
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“Mark was on the ground being treated and I know that one or two of the ambulance people were there imploring him to tell us where she was. But there was no response,” Mr Keenaghan says.
Mr Keenaghan, who retired in late 2021 as a detective superintendent after 40 years’ service, was tasked with leading the hunt for Filipina Jastine, 24, when she disappeared close to her home in Enniskerry, Co Wicklow on Saturday, May 19, 2018.
The case horrified the nation and ended with Mr Keenaghan – who was then a detective inspector – finding Jastine’s remains dumped in heavy undergrowth at Puck’s Castle in Rathmichael, south Dublin the following Monday.
But in between, Mark Hennessy, 40, was at the centre of a major manhunt – as gardai identified him as her abductor.
Officers searched for him for more than 24 hours in the desperate hope that Jastine was alive – but the pursuit ended when he was cornered at Cherrywood Business Park in south Dublin.
A Garda detective shot him as he feared Hennessy was stabbing Jastine as officers approached his Nissan Qashqai and the kidnapper died from his wounds – but there was no sign of Jastine in the vehicle.
Now, speaking for the first time, Mr Keenaghan reveals how he raced to the scene of the shooting – frantically hoping to find Jastine in the vehicle.
He tells us: “I arrived on scene. Mark Hennessy was receiving first aid by the ambulance crew and he was conscious. He had been shot by a detective.
“When I arrived Mark was on the ground being treated and I know that one or two of the ambulance people were there imploring him to tell us where she was. But there was no response.”
He said that was gut-wrenching when Hennessy did not answer the pleas.
“It was so disappointing. We had not stopped all day long, we just kept going. I was hoping to look in the boot of the car and Jastine would have been there,” he said.
But when the car was searched there was no sign of the accountancy student – and Mr Keenaghan knew immediately she was dead.
“Everybody gave 100 per cent and it is difficult. We were not to know then that within a very small space of hours from when she was abducted that Jastine was murdered,” he said.
Mr Keenaghan also reveals new details of the search for Hennessy before he was cornered in his Qashqai.
He was unmasked as the abductor after CCTV from the bus Jastine was taking home showed a car following it and then overtaking it as it went from Bray to Enniskerry.
The CCTV showed that it was a Nissan Qashqai and gardai tracked every matching vehicle in the Dublin and Wicklow areas in the hours after her disappearance.
Hennessy became the main suspect after gardai went to his home – and were told that neither he nor the car had been there since the previous night.
“By 10am I think we have our man all right,” Mr Keenaghan said. "We are there trying to send messages to him and at this stage we are talking to his family. I am very conscious of Mark’s family – his parents and brother are absolutely salt of the earth, lovely people, really decent and hard working.
“We were ringing him, we were calling to where he worked last and we were looking for all the haunts that he might hang out in. We knew there was a family gathering later on on Sunday and we were watching that.
“We were circulating the (registration) number at that stage. While we had other avenues to deploy teams on, that was one of the leads we were following up.
“I was hoping, because I am an optimist, that I wasn’t right but at the same time that time was not our friend. But it was a race against time. I knew we were up against the clock.
“The race was to find Mark Hennessy, to find that Qashqai. His phone was on and off from time to time. We had the wherewithal to ping the phone and at one stage he was on Killiney beach.
“Some friends or family of his met him and they tried to talk him into giving himself up and that and he drove off. He did not entertain them.”
Gardai later released details of Hennessy’s Qashqai and its reg plate - but did not name him.
However, that decision had quick consequences when a woman rang gardai to say she was in the Cherrywood area of south Dublin – and Hennessy’s car was in front of her.
Mr Keenaghan said: “Releasing the registration number of the Qashqai was something that we would not normally do, but because the race was against time and because there was a life dependent on it, I took the decision that this registration be released.
“It was someone who had picked it up from one of the social media feeds, either Facebook or Twitter, and suddenly found themselves behind the Qashqai and rang it in.
“We had the mobile resources out and about all the time so we were quickly on the scene. The Qashqai was followed into the car park.
“I was in the incident room in Bray. I got straight out into the car and as quick as I could I got to Cherrywood. The way he drove into the car park and tried to conceal the Qashqai, there was a reason to believe that Jastine was in the car at that stage.
“You could be forgiven for thinking she was in the car because of the way he was trying to conceal the car. He went into the car park and turned right and was behind some trees and shading. He could have been offside for his own protection, but it was if he was taking evasive action.
“I think he copped the woman following him and when the guys came in they were looking around and copped him on the right hand side, so I was hopeful she was still in the car.
“I believed that she was in the car. I believed that she was after collecting her. I did not speculate as to what condition she was in but maybe he had gone back to get her and now he was just going to dispose of the body.
“It was hard to know. There may have been a suggestion that Jastine was on the floor and he was going to stab her before he gave himself up.
“He had been given plenty of opportunity to get out of the car – he could see what was in front of him.”
A detective then fired. Single shot at Hennessy fearing he was about to kill Jastine, That detective was later investigated and cleared by GSOC, the independent policing body.
Mr Keenaghan says he knew Jastine was dead as soon as there was no sign of her in the car.
He also revealed that a note Hennessy left in the car was covered in blood and could not be red – so he had to call in forensics scientists to decipher it.
He said: “There was a note found in the car. But it was blood-soaked. We had to figure a way of deciphering that and it was a trip up to our good friends and colleagues in the Forensics Bureau – another big ask of them.
“In fairness to them they came up with the miracle as usual and they found some way of dissolving the blood and came up with the note.”
That note said Jastine’s body was in the nearby Puck’s Castle site -and he and other officers raced to the scene to search for her.
An officer quickly found Jastine’s purse – and Mr Keenaghan knew she was nearby.
“When we saw that we realised we were very close, so we went back down we briefed our own search team and the army.
“It was just uncanny how it happened. The army set off on the left and the gardai on the right. One of the guards for some strange reason zeroed in on a particular spot, walked down through the gorse and he found the body.
“If we had to do a methodical search and start on the briar cutting machines and all the knives and tools we use to cut away gorse it probably would have taken us a couple of days, but he noticed something out of the way. He walked down and turned right and there was the body.”
Mr Keenaghan said he was relieved for Jastine’s parents that her body had finally been found.
And he also told us that he believed Hennessy had seen Jastine before – and became infatuated with her.
Up to now it had been thought it was a spur of the moment killing – but Mr Keenaghan thinks otherwise.
He said: “It would appear that he had seen her at the bus stop and had seen her there before.
“And then to see the car following the bus and passing out the bus and waiting for her in Enniskerry, then following her, he obviously had seen her before – was he infatuated with her? Quite possible.
Mr Keenaghan said he believes Hennessy saw Jastine at a bus stop in Bray and decided there and then to abduct her.
“Maybe he was infatuated with her. Why did he follow the bus? It’s the guts of seven or eight miles.
“I believe he saw her before. My impression is that he had seen her before. I think maybe he had followed her once before. I get a sense that he knew her movements. I would not be surprised if that’s the case. It’s very hard to put an explanation to it or a rationale to it.”
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