KATHLEEN Arkinson says her family will never give up hope of ever finding their missing sister Arlene.
Searches will continue this weekend at Killen in Castlderg where a local farmer believes he has found a “shallow grave” on land he is renting.
As a specialist search team flown in from England to help assist the PSNI, Kathleen said: “”It has been very difficult. But I am trying not to raise my hopes up.
“It has been so long and there have been so many let-downs.
“The difference this time is it’s so close to where Arlene was last seen. We just don’t know what to think, to be honest.
“The timing is also unbelievable, in the middle of the inquest.
“We’ll never get justice for Arlene, justice has evaded her in every way, but I hope they can find her and we can get some closure.”
She asked for the public to “say a prayer for us” in the hope this search would finally bring closure.
The discovery by a farmer of an area of disturbed earth sparked this latest search.
The 15-year-old from Castlederg, disappeared after a school disco in 1994.
Police have cordoned off an area near Killen outside Castlederg close to where she was last was last seen alive.
Farmer Noel Doherty said clay had been dug up and refilled with stones.
The field is on the same road where Arlene Arkinson was seen in a car with the convicted child killer and rapist Robert Howard, the main suspect in her disappearance.
Robert Howard, who died in prison in England last year, was found not guilty in 2005 of murdering Arlene.
The farmer, who rents the land where the search is ongoing, said he discovered what appeared to be a grave in the overgrown garden of an old building on the land earlier this week.
“Somebody had dug out the clay and then refilled it with stones and that’s what got my attention to it,” he said.
“It’s about six feet long and about three-to-four feet wide with stones.”
Mr Doherty, who has lived in the area for more than 20 years, said that when he first came across the disturbed earth, he “didn’t thing a great deal about it” but went home and told his wife.
“I went back down the next day and viewed it again and we decided then to contact the landowner,” he said.
“I asked him if anything was ever buried in that garden and he checked it out with his sisters who were the last to live there and they said definitely not.”
The landowner then phoned the police.
Mr Doherty said he was keeping an open mind until police completed their examinations but said he would like the Arkinson family to “get back their daughter”.
He said: “Everybody has it in the back of their minds, is this the Arkinson girl?”
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