There seemed little cause for worry when Lisa Dorrian told her family she was going on holidays to a caravan park in Ballyhalbert, County Down late in February of last year.
Like many 25-year-olds, Lisa loved to party. She was planning a fun-packed weekend in Ballyhalbert, a pretty seaside village not far from her home town of Bangor.
Lisa was travelling to Ballyhabert with some new acquaintances. This did not really bother her family. Outgoing and likeable, Lisa had a talent for making friends.
Then, Lisa vanished. She would never return home again. Shortly afterwards, rumours began to circulate that her new friends were linked to Loyalist paramilitaries.
Her disappearance on February 28th remains shrouded in mystery. Though she is still officially listed as missing, her case is being treated as murder.
However, her body has yet to be recovered. It seems increasingly unlikely that it ever will be.
Piecing together what happened in her final hours has also proved a frustrating process.
Those who were with Lisa in Ballyhalbert say they have no idea what happened to her. If they know anything, they are staying silent.
Tragically, Lisa seems to have joined the ranks of those ‘disappeared’ in Northern Ireland – the hundreds of innocents abducted, murdered and buried by paramilitaries.
While Lisa’s case has not received the same publicity, there are parallels with the murder, only a month earlier, of Robert McCartney in Belfast. Like the McCartney family, attempts by Lisa’s parents to uncover the truth have run up against a wall of silence.
“We just want Lisa back. As a family we need her back,” says her 22 year old sister Joanne, who has temporarily left an English course at university to help locate her sister.
“You wouldn’t wish this on your worst enemy. You wouldn’t even nearly wish this on the people that did it. It just wrecks your life. It just takes over your life. This is your life.”
From the moment she wakes each morning, Lisa’s disappearance is the only thing on her sister’s mind.
“We’re never ever going to get over this, but if we could just have somewhere to go and remember he,” Joanne says. “It’s not a lot to ask that if someone in your family dies, you should be able to go to a grave and talk to them. Just to try and be able to move on. That’s what Lisa would have wanted.”
Although the Dorrians were Catholics living in a predominantly Protestant town, the troubles never touched Lisa as a child and teenager. In the months before she went missing, Lisa seemed to have taken up with new friends, some of them, it later emerged, linked to loyalist terror groups.
What exactly happened at Ballyhalbert remains unknown. On a weekend fuelled by drink and drugs, Lisa is said, by witnesses, to have “got lost in the dark” after leaving the caravan park at 5 am on Monday morning.
Some say a noise outside frightened the group and they all ran from the caravan. Others suggest Lisa received a phone call and went out to meet someone. In truth, anything could have happened.
“My mom will say she doesn’t believe Lisa died at that caravan park,” says Joanne. “She might have been there over the weekend, and maybe taken from there, but she did not die at that caravan site. That has been my mom’s instinct since day one.”
Rumours that the Loyalist Volunteer Force had a hand in the disappearance gained momentum after graffiti slogans such as “ask the LVF where Lisa is” started to appear around Bangor.
Should LVF members have been involved, it is likely they acted independently. If Lisa was murdered, the killing probably wasn’t “sanctioned”.
“I’d imagine that there are people Lisa was with that night who know more because I think that they may be responsible,” says Joanne. “I don’t know. They haven’t come near us. We haven’t even had a card or anything from any one of them. Not even a phone call.”
As the anniversary of Lisa’s disappearance approaches, the family will continue their campaign to bring her home. A blue Dorrian family ribbon of hope is being sold to raise funds for the campaign, whilst a website was also set up before Christmas, receiving in excess of eight million hits.
“We just want to keep people talking about it, and hopefully keep the people responsible to keep seeing Lisa’s face,” says Joanne. “Everything we do is aimed towards these people. It’s great to raise awareness of Lisa’s disappearance and have the general public involved in it, but that’s not going to get Lisa back. Her story affects normal people in the way you’d expect it too. It’s just trying to get it to affect the people responsible. All it will take is one email or one phone call to get her back. Somebody, somewhere knows something, and we’re never going to give up hope. This will be our life until Lisa is returned. We just want our sister back.”