Fiona Pender's apartment

This is the apartment where Fiona Pender was last seen.

It is located at 11 Church Street in Tullamore, County Offaly.

Pender lived in flat #1 with her boyfriend, John Thompson.

The 25-year-old was seven months pregnant when she went missing.

Thompson said that he last saw his girlfriend when he was leaving for work at around 6 a.m. on Friday, August 23rd, 1996.

The Irish police do not believe that Pender left on her own accord. Consequently, they are treating her disappearance as a murder investigation.

The hairdresser had gone shopping for her unborn child the day before she vanished. She had also made plans to meet up with her mother the following day.

By all accounts, she was looking forward to giving birth.

Pender and Thompson had moved to London in November 1995. However, they returned to Offaly after Thompson reportedly became homesick.

They started renting the tiny bedsit on Church Street in February 1996. Neighbors would later recall how the young couple had a number of heated arguments.

On the day of Pender's disappearance, her mother called to the apartment and saw that the curtains were still closed. Believing that her daughter was sleeping, she decided to leave without knocking.

The following day, Pender's parents knocked on her apartment door. However, they received no response.

When they contacted Thompson, he said that he didn't know where she was because he had spent the previous night sleeping at his parents' farm.

That Saturday, Pender's parents, her younger brother, and Thompson drove around Tullamore looking for her.

When the clock struck 10 p.m. and there was still no sign of Pender, her mother went to the local police station and reported her missing.

The police reacted slowly and did not visit Pender's apartment until the following Monday. By that point, the mother-to-be had been missing for nearly three days.

An examination of the apartment did not find any signs of foul play. Searches of nearby rivers and canals also failed to turn up anything of note.

Following a public appeal, one man came forward and said that he had been walking home from a local pub in the early hours of August 23rd when he saw two men lifting a bulky rug or carpet into the back of a vehicle on Church Street.

In 1997, the police arrested Thompson, his father, Archie, and his three sisters. However, they were all eventually released without charge. Two searches of the family's farm in Killeigh, County Laois, also led to nothing.

Photos

Photos of the apartment and other related images.

11 Church Street

This Google Street View image of 11 Church Street, Tullamore, was taken in July 2022. The terraced, three-story house was built in the early 1800s.

At the time of Pender's disappearance, the property contained ten separate apartments.

Pender's apartment

This is a photograph of Fiona Pender's former apartment.

Note that the version at the bottom was enhanced using an AI tool.

Before the "Celtic Tiger" ushered in a new era of rapid economic growth in Ireland, it was relatively common for young people to live in cramped bedsits.

Pender lived in this tiny apartment with her boyfriend, John Thompson. The couple moved into the flat at the start of 1996.

Thompson said that he last saw his girlfriend at 6 a.m. on August 23rd, 1996. At the time, she was reportedly asleep.

Fiona Pender

Pender was 5'5" in height and had long blonde hair. The 25-year-old was seven months pregnant when she went missing.

Her disappearance was devastating to her family. In 2000, her father, Sean, committed suicide. Her mother, Josephine, passed away in 2017.

Please note that the photographs above were digitally enhanced using an AI tool.

Cross

In May 2008, a makeshift wooden cross was discovered in the Monicknew woods, near the Slieve Bloom mountains.

The site in question is roughly 27 kilometers (17 miles) south of Tullamore.

The person who erected the cross wrote the following words on it with a marker:

"Fiona Pender. Buried here, August 22nd, 1996."

Sadly, despite a thorough search of the area, no trace of Pender was found. To this day, it is still unknown who erected the cross.

It is possible that it was placed there as a prank. It is also plausible that her killer purposely erected it in the wrong area in an effort to mislead the authorities.

Memorial

A memorial for Pender was erected at the entrance to the walkway beside the canal in Tullamore. It is situated at the eastern end of Convent View.

The sculpture was designed by her brother, John. The two circles represent Pender and her unborn child.

In 2014, the local council decided to name the trail beside the canal "Fiona's Way."

Coordinates: 53.278403, -7.486665

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