The family of a Dublin woman who disappeared while returning home from Holyhead just over 21 years ago has asked the courts to help in a final bid to contact her.
Ellen Coss Brown, who would now be 72, is a significant beneficiary in a €372,000 estate and her brother, James Brown, who is administering the final will of a family member, asked the court for directions.
Judge John O'Connor directed that an advertisement be placed in a leading Manchester newspaper asking her to contact her family and seeking any possible information that may remain with regard to her possible whereabouts.
In 1999, Ms Coss Brown, then aged 51 and from Ballyfermot, had been staying with her sister Bertha Lee in Langley, Middleton.
Ms Lee waved goodbye to her sister on 3 November at Piccadilly Rail Station in Manchester as she left for Holyhead to catch the ferry back home to Dublin, a trip she had made many times.
It was the last time Ms Lee or the rest of the family would see Ms Coss Brown again, despite searches by police in Wales and England and gardaí in Dublin.
Her brother Thomas Brown at one time slept rough among Dublin's homeless in a bid to find her.
Her son Peter was living in Penge, south London, at the time she disappeared and spoke to his mother the night before she went missing. He remembered her telling him at the end of the phone call that she loved him, although this was something she would often say to him.
About a year after she went missing Peter and his aunt Bertha had to view a body in Bournemouth that had been in the water for some time. The family gave DNA samples and after an anxious wait it turned out not to be his mother.
Ms Coss Brown had two brothers, James and Thomas, and her sister Bertha, who has since died.
James Brown, the administrator of the bachelor estate of a family member, is seeking the court's assistance in finally wrapping up distribution of the estate.
Judge O’Connor told barrister Karl Dowling in the Circuit Civil Court that he would adjourn the matter until July when further directions would be considered by the court in the event of no further trace of Ms Coss Brown being found.
