Missing Amy Fitzpatrick’s aunt calls for murder probe after burial site tip-off

This week, it emerged the aunt of missing teenager Amy Fitzpatrick will petition the Government to have the probe into her disappearance upgraded to a full murder investigation.

Christine Kenny says the missing person’s probe needs to be upgraded in order to pressure Spanish police to follow up leads that, 15 years after Amy vanished, still haven’t been investigated.

“We’re going to hand a letter in this week formally calling on the government to pressurise the Spanish authorities to upgrade the investigation,” Christine said.

“As long as Amy’s case remains a missing person’s probe, the file on her disappearance will continue to sit on a shelf in a Guardia Civil station in Spain.

“That’s not good enough and we need the Irish Government to stand with us, Amy’s family members, who have had to fight this on our own for the last 15 years. Amy was an Irish citizen … she deserved so much better than this.”

One of the leads Christine is eager to have investigated concerns stables near the now disused Hippodrome racetrack in Mijas, Spain where she received an anonymous tip-off that her niece remains may have been buried.

The stables are located ten-minutes-drive from the location where 15-year-old Amy disappeared as she walked home on the Costa Del Sol on New Year’s Day 2008, while in Spain with her mother, Audrey and Audrey’s parter Dave Mahon.

When the Sunday World visited the site of the stables this week, our photographer spoke with a veterinary officer who retained an office on site after the Hippodrome was shut down due to corruption.

He told our man that he had been working on the site for the last 10 years and had never seen a search carried out there.

Similarly, two members of the Police Nacional who spoke with our photographer during his visit to the site said they were unaware of the site’s links to the investigation into Amy’s disappearance.

According to the veterinary officer, the racecourse closed in 2012 after running into severe financial difficulties.

Three years later, Mijas City Council announced an audit of the management company and a €3 million hole was discovered in the racecourse’s finances.

Mijas City Council subsequently took possession of the land and in the interim many of the buildings on the site have fallen into disuse.

Christine says that she received an anonymous phone-call a number of years ago, claiming that Amy had been murdered and her body buried in the fifth stable.

“I received a phone call years ago, I couldn’t put a precise date on it, but a long time after Amy disappeared, saying she had been buried in one of the stables there,” she said.

“It was an anonymous call to my mobile here in Ireland. I still don’t know who the woman was who rang me.

“She just said Amy’s body was in the fifth stable where the fifth water tank in the stable would have been.

“I’ve never been up to those stables but I believe they need to be checked,” Christine told the Sunday World.

During the Sunday World’s visit to the stables this week, we counted 11 stables – labelled alphabetically from A to K at the site.

Christine said that she fully accepts that it would be a big ask for the Spanish authorities to request that all 11 stables be dug up on the strength of one anonymous call.

“There is machinery out there that can you tell you if there are disturbances underneath the soil. That’s not a big thing to ask to have done.

“But that’s why we need the Government to pressurise the Spanish to upgrade the probe to a murder investigation.

“There are things that haven’t been done that need to be done. I don’t know if Amy is there or not … but it’s what we’ve been told so surely it deserves to be checked.