Files of evidence are being prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP ) in the cases of three people arrested earlier this week in relation to the 15-year-old unsolved murder of Ballinasloe mother of one, Marie Kilmartin.
A man in his sixties was detained in Portlaoise Garda Station on Tuesday (September 23 ) under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act but was released the next day.
A man in his 40s and a woman in her 60s were held at the same time in Tullamore Garda Station under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act but were both also released without charge.
These arrests have been the first substantial breakthrough in this 15-year-old investigation.
Marie Kilmartin was 35 years old and had been working in an old people’s home in Portlaoise when she disappeared on December 17, 1993.
Her body was found six months later in a bog drain outside Mountmellick, Co. Laois by a prison officer who had gone to cut turf.
Gardai at the time said it was a fortuitous discovery as her body had been weighed down with concrete weights and only been discovered because of a recent drop in the water levels of the bog drainage.
In the original investigation neighbours reported she had been very upset after getting a phonecall the day before she disappeared.
Gardai believe she knew her assailant as her number was ex-directory.
The call was traced to a public phone box and witnesses reported seeing a man making a call from it at the time.
This man never came forward despite numerous calls to do so.
A post mortem carried out in Tullamore by the then State Pathologist Dr John Harbison concluded she was most likely strangled. There was no evidence of a sexual assault.
Two men were questioned over the weekend of 23-24 June, 1994 but were released without charge.
Gardai would not confirm whether either of the two men held earlier this week were in any way related to these two.
Marie Kilmartin was the daughter of Rose and the late Fred Kilmartin, owners of the Ford dealership in Ballinasloe.
