Family still searches for answers 19 years after brutal murder

The family of murdered city taxi driver Eileen Costello O’Shaughnessy, who was brutally killed 19 years ago, do not believe there is any hope of finding those responsible.

They haven’t heard from the Gardaí in recent years and do not even know if there is still an investigation ongoing into her killing. Her body was found in a laneway off the N17 on November 30, 1997.

The mother-of-two collected her last fare at around 8pm that evening to Claregalway – and two hours later she was dead. A local farmer found her body the following morning.

Eileen was originally from Corofin and her brutal murder shocked the whole community. Several hundred people were interviewed in the aftermath of her death but there were no arrests.

Her brother Martin Costello, who owns a bus hire firm in Corofin, said that he does not believe that anyone will be found at this stage.

“I haven’t heard anything and I don’t know if there is still an investigation,” he told the Galway City Tribune.

Around this time next year on the 20th anniversary of her death her family and taxi driver colleagues are planning to make another appeal for information about her murder in the hope of bringing the perpetrator to justice.

There were sightings of the taxi being stopped on the hard shoulder three miles outside the city on the N17 and it was then spotted turning right down Tinker’s Lane at Knockdoemore where the body was discovered by the local farmer the following day.

Subsequently, a taxi driving erratically towards Galway city was witnessed by other motorists that evening. Eileen’s blood-stained taxi was abandoned at the Lydon House bakery on the Tuam Road.

A number of people who were seen in the vicinity of where the body was dumped were asked to come forward, but they failed to do so despite repeated appeals.

Even a woman who approached another taxi driver in Eyre Square some weeks after the murder saying that she had vital information did not make contact with the Gardaí.

Eileen was savagely beaten to death and it is obvious that the perpetrator, whom she apparently picked up close to Galway City, drove her blood-stained taxi back in the N17 towards town and then abandoned the vehicle.

There have been TV, radio and newspaper appeals for information about the murder of the 47 year old mother of two and despite a number of lines of inquiry, investigating officers are no closer to finding her murderer.

“At this stage we do not believe that anyone will be arrested. The guards seem to have drawn a complete blank and we don’t hold out any hope of anyone being prosecuted,” Martin Costello added.

The murder had a terrible effect on Eileen’s mother who died eleven years after the tragedy – not knowing who was responsible for her daughter’s death.