WHEN memories fade quicker than newspaper ink, it can be hard to keep the momentum of an open case going. But it doesn’t matter how many years have passed, for the victims and their families, justice always deserves to be done.
Allegiances change and information that may have seemed irrelevant before can sometimes be all that’s needed for the pieces of the puzzle to click into place.
For the past 13 years, Amy Fitzpatrick’s loved ones have searched for answers and a fresh probe in a British man allegedly linked to a mafia drugs gang could well be the breakthrough they need.
Aged just 15-years-old at the time she went missing, Amy was last seen when she went out at 10pm on New Year’s Day 2008.
She had been babysitting at a friend’s house just a few hundred yards from her home in Riviera del Sol (Mijas) but never made it back.
Police sources told the Irish Sun that they now believe there may have been several people involved in the teen’s murder.
A British gangster, allegedly linked to the Irish Kinahan gang, is being investigated in connection with her disappearance.
Spanish detectives have been to the UK over the festive period to follow up a lead from a woman who says she overheard the man – who has not been named – discussing burying Amy’s body.
The woman told police that she overheard a conversation between the suspect and her boyfriend in which the suspect was asked if he ‘had got rid of the mattress’.
At the time she believed that this was in reference to a mattress at their home. But the suspect went on to admit that he had become ‘infatuated’ with Amy.
He left Spain and is now said to be serving time in a British jail on an unrelated offence.
Spanish officers allegedly travelled to the UK to interview him, but he refused to talk to them. They also interviewed the woman in the UK, saying she appears to be terrified of reprisals from her ex-boyfriend.
Investigators also remain unable to find the burial site despite intensive investigations.
It comes after Amy’s brother Dean was killed by their step-father Dave Mahon in 2013, for which he was jailed.
Amy and Dean’s biological father, Christopher Fitzpatrick, said just before Christmas that they had also received other new leads in the case.
These are not related to the new witnesses’s evidence.
He said: “We have received new information recently and hopefully it can help our case. Every piece of information has to be analysed so we can see how credible it is. My hope for 2021 is that we find her.”
He also said: “Amy had a lot of friends at the time and they might have information that could lead us to her. They were very young at the time and were probably afraid to come forward but they’re young women now and it would never be too late for them to tell the authorities what they know.
“I’m appealing to her friends who might be parents themselves now to think back to that time and tell us what they know. My precious daughter has been missing from our lives for 12 years now and we just want this nightmare to end.”