Eamonn Cooke

So this is the sad and harrowing fact, that you never know who you're living near or amongst, and there are abusers everywhere.

But in 2016, convicted pedophile Eamon Cooke was entered into consideration as a suspect.

Yeah.

We now know that the Pirate Predator podcast series on RTE, the Doc On One podcast, has very recently got fresh information.

Uh, but the information will, I think, very much push Eamon Cooke back into consideration, and put the focus there, and, and really ask if certain searches should now take place.

Yeah.

Uh, and down the years, Gardai would follow leads in Austria, Canada, Argentina, England, Scotland, uh, where different reported sightings of somebody matching Philip's description-

Now nearly 40 years after the disappearance of 13-year-old Philip Kearns, new evidence has emerged that appears to support a witness account previously discounted by investigators.

The new evidence links the disappearance of Philip Kearns with the paedophile DJ Eamon Cook.

The information was uncovered by Peter Mulrine from the Pirate Predator podcast team and is revealed in a new episode of RTE's Unsolved podcast series.

which is hosted by Barry Cummins and Katya Mia.

One extra element in this inquiry is that a week later his school bag that he had with him when he left for school that afternoon the school bag was found in a laneway close enough to his home uh but we do know many people have been through that laneway the bag was not there earlier in the day on which it was found somebody put that bag there a week after philip disappeared it's still as of now a missing persons investigation all these years later.

Quite early on, and Philip's family themselves came to know and believe that Philip had been abducted, but it's still officially not a murder investigation, a missing persons investigation.

And now, Barry, new evidence has come to light, which appears to show that Philip Kearns was in the company of the paedophile DJ Eamon Cook on the day that he went missing in October 1986.

What can you tell us about that?