Disappearance of Kyran Durnin

Kyran Durnin
The last known photo of Kyran
Disappeared	June 1, 2022 (aged 6) Drogheda
Status	Missing for 2 years, 7 months and 8 days
Nationality	Irish

Kyran Durnin is an Irish child who was reported missing to Gardaí at the end of August 2024, with the last confirmed sighting of him being in June 2022 when he was 6-years-old. A murder investigation was launched in October 2024, after Irish authorities received information suggesting that Kyran had died at some point in the previous two years. Despite the chief suspects in his disappearance being questioned by Gardaí and several properties being searched by forensic teams, no trace of Kyran was found and Garda investigations continued into 2025.

Background

In late May 2022, Kyran's mother, Dayla Durnin, contacted her son's primary school in Dundalk to report that he was in hospital with COVID-19 and would be absent from school for the next few weeks. In June 2022, Kyran's family then informed the school that they were relocating to Newry in Northern Ireland and that Kyran would therefore not be returning after the summer holidays. Despite Kyran supposedly having moved out of the jurisdiction, it is believed that social welfare and child benefits continued to be paid to his mother by the Department of Social Protection.In May 2024, the Durnin family moved out of their house at Emer Terrace in Dundalk.

In early 2024, child welfare officials working for Tusla became concerned about the Durnin family, and requested a face-to-face meeting. During their engagement with the wider Durnin family, new information came to light that caused concern to Tusla in relation to Kyran’s whereabouts specifically. A meeting took place in mid-July 2024 with the family and a child that Tusla officials understood to be Kyran, with another face-to-face meeting taking place in early August 2024.

Missing person investigation

On 29 August 2024, Kyran's maternal grandmother Rhonda Byrne Tyson contacted Tusla with concerns over her daughter Dayla and Kyran, as they both had gone missing from the house they shared. Tyson was advised to notify Gardaí, while Tusla also separately reported the matter to Garda officials. The next day, Tyson filed a missing person report at Drogheda garda station, stating that she had last seen her 24-year-old daughter Dayla Durnin and her 8-year-old grandson Kyran Durnin around 11pm two days prior and was concerned about their well-being. In early September 2024, Gardaí launched a public appeal for information regarding the whereabouts of Dayla and Kyran Durnin, which included physical descriptions and the items of clothing the were both believed to be wearing.

On 24 September 2024, Tyson gave an interview to the Drogheda Life newspaper regarding the sudden disappearance of Dayla and Kyran from her house in Hand Street the previous month. Dayla's other children, daughters 7-year-old Laseigh and 3-year-old Isla, were sleeping upstairs in a bedroom while Dayla and Kyran had been sleeping on a downstairs sofa, and Tyson last seen them when she went to bed around 11pm. When Tyson got up the next morning, Dayla and Kyran were missing from the house, however Dayla had left a note on a table that said she needed to "get away for a few days". Tyson claimed to have been attempting to call Dayla's mobile phone several times a day since, but her calls were being diverted straight to voicemail, and made a public plea for Dayla to get in touch to let her know she and Kyran were safe.

While subsequent Garda inquiries confirmed that Dayla had traveled to England via Northern Ireland, investigations into Kyran's whereabouts uncovered no documentary evidence to prove he was admitted to hospital in 2022 with COVID-19, nor did he ever attend any school in Northern Ireland. Gardaí also established that the boy who attended the Tusla social workers meetings with Dayla Durnin was not Kyran.

Murder investigation

On 17 October 2024, Gardaí upgraded Kyran's disappearance to a murder investigation, having failed to uncover any evidence that he was currently alive and after receiving "specific information" that he was dead. Investigations also failed to to discover any proof of Christmas or birthday presents being bought for Kyran over the previous two years. Analysis of online food ordering data from orders made to a number of fast food takeaways in Dundalk and Drogheda by a person of interest in the summer of 2022 showed a pattern of individual meals being bought on a daily basis, however after a certain date there was one less meal in the regular order, which implied that Kyran was no longer present after that time. Inquiries also revealed that Tusla records regarding Kyran were lost in the 2021 HSE ransomware attack. The last confirmed sighting of Kyran was around late May 2022, when he was a senior infants pupil at St Nicholas Monastery national school in Dundalk.

On 22 October 2024, Garda forensic teams searched a house on Emer Terrace in Dundalk previously occupied by the Durnin family, as well as excavating a section of wasteland behind the same house, in an effort to recover evidence relating to the disappearance of Kyran, but nothing of evidential value was discovered. Garda inquiries also established that a boy with the same name and date of birth as Kyran was booked into emergency accommodation at a bed and breakfast in Dundalk for 4 weeks in the summer of 2024. However this was later believed to be a deliberate attempt to deceive Irish authorities into believing that he was still alive, as the management of the guesthouse did not recognise Kyran when presented with his photo by investigating Gardaí. In an effort to preserve evidence, and after being made aware that a number of persons of interest had deleted their social media accounts, Gardaí obtained a court order to preserve and download the individual account data and examined the posts on each timeline for clues about Kyran's whereabouts. Subsequent analysis of the online activity of persons of interest showed that social media content about Kyran, such as photographs in timeline posts, appeared to suddenly cease in the summer of 2022. In addition, telephone-based activity between these persons of interest regarding Kyran, such as his name being mentioned in private messages, also abruptly stopped around the same time.

In early October 2024, Dayla Durnin was tracked down in East Anglia after Gardaí requested the UK authorities to check on her welfare, however Kyran was not in her company. Durnin reportedly informed UK police that she did not know the current whereabouts of her son Kyran nor anything about the circumstances of his disappearance. Subsequent media reports stated that Durnin claimed to have fled Ireland over fears for her own personal safety, and she had no plans to return, having settled in Ipswich.

On 10 December 2024, a woman in her 20s, who some in the Irish media described as the chief suspect in the death of Kyran, was arrested by Gardaí on suspicion of his murder after she arrived by ferry from overseas. The woman, who was described as being well known to Kyran, was released without charge after 24 hours of interrogation by Garda detectives and subsequently returned to her current home in the United Kingdom. On the same day, BBC Spotlight broadcast a documentary regarding the disappearance of Kyran Durnin and subsequent investigations by Gardaí, which highlighted discrepancies between the September 2024 public appeal by Kyran's grandmother Rhonda Byrne Tyson and Gardaí statements regarding the last confirmed sighting of him. The documentary also contained footage of a BBC journalist door-stepping Tyson at her house with questions related to Kyran's disappearance, however she refused to answer any questions and asked the journalist to leave without opening the door.

On 12 December 2024, Gardaí arrested 36-year-old Anthony Maguire on suspicion of the murder of Kyran Durnin. Garda forensic teams also searched Maguire's house in the Beechwood Drive area of Drogheda with the aid of a cadaver dog and excavated its back garden to look for evidence relating to Kyran. According to reports in the Irish media, Maguire was previously in a relationship with the chief suspect in the case, and was suspected of having facilitated a "decoy" child being brought to meetings with Tusla in an effort to deceive the authorities into believing he was Kyran. Maguire was released without charge after 24 hours, and on 17 December 2024 he was found dead at his home in Beechwood Drive after apparently committing suicide.

On 19 December 2024, Gardaí released the last known photograph of Kyran, which was recovered by technical officers from a mobile phone seized during investigations into his disappearance. Data from the phone indicated the photo was taken in early June 2022, while also geotagging it to the Drogheda area. A few days later, Dayla Durnin was approached by reporters while on her way to watch a Ipswich Town F.C. home match, however she refused to answer any questions regarding the disappearance of her son Kyran and quickly entered the turnstiles into Portman Road stadium.

External links

• Kyran: The Lost Boy - documentary by BBC Spotlight investigating the disappearance of Kyran Durnin and subsequent investigations by Gardaí (BBC iPlayer)
• YouTube version of the "Kyran: The Lost Boy" documentary by BBC Spotlight