Arlene Arkinson: From disappearance to inquest

An inquest into the death of Tyrone teenager Arlene Arkinson has found that she was murdered by convicted child killer and rapist Robert Howard.

Howard, who was the only suspect in the murder of the Castlederg teenager, died aged 71 in 2015.

BBC News NI examines the events that followed Arlene's disappearance in 1994.

Arlene Arkinson was 15 when she went missing in 1994

14 August 1994: Fifteen-year-old Arlene Arkinson goes missing after attending a disco at Bundoran in County Donegal. The Castlederg teenager was last seen in a car driven by convicted sex offender Robert Howard. Howard is arrested, but released without charge.

21 April 2001: South London teenager Hannah Williams goes missing during a shopping trip.

London teenager Hannah Williams was murdered by Robert Howard in 2001

15 March 2002: Williams' badly decomposed body is discovered in an industrial area of Northfleet, Kent, beside the Thames estuary.

Robert Howard was a suspect in the murder of the County Tyrone teenager Arlene Arkinson but was found not guilty after a trial in 2005

23 March 2002: Robert Howard is arrested and charged.

October 2003: Howard is found guilty of raping and murdering the 14-year-old before dumping her body. He is sentenced to life imprisonment although the details of his conviction cannot be reported because he faces separate sex charges in Northern Ireland. He is jailed in County Durham, England.

27 June 2005: Howard, then 61, is found not guilty of murdering Arlene Arkinson at Belfast Crown Court. The prosecution had accused him of trying to conceal his movements on the night Arlene went missing and getting others to lie for him. The jury did not know that by then he was already serving life for raping and killing Hannah Williams.

20 September 2005: As reporting restrictions are lifted at Belfast Crown Court, it emerges that Howard's criminal record dates back 40 years.

20 September 2011: Howard wins permission to challenge the holding of an inquest into Arlene's death. His legal team claim the move involves an attempt to undermine the not guilty verdict returned against him.

6 February 2013: Senior Coroner John Leckey rules out holding a full inquest into the murder of Arlene Arkinson within the calendar year because of a strain on resources.

Detectives investigating the murder of missing teenager Arlene Arkinson searched a flat on Main Street in Castlederg, County Tyrone in 2012

24 June 2015: The long-delayed inquest into Arlene's disappearance is again postponed until November 2015.

2 October 2015: Howard dies in prison aged 71. He remains the only suspect in the murder of Arlene Arkinson. Despite 92 searches and a long-running missing persons investigation, Arlene's body has never been recovered.

12 February 2016: The Northern Ireland Office signs off on a bid to stop secret files from being accessed during the inquest. Northern Ireland Office Minister Ben Wallace approves a Public Interest Immunity application to withhold documents linked to the case. The details are revealed at a preliminary hearing into the inquest.

16 September 2016: Police bring in specialist teams to examine a new site in a field near Killen, outside Castlederg, but Arlene's body is not found.

Police searched an area in Killen, close to where Arlene Arkinson disappeared, in 2016

28 April 2017: Arlene Arkinson's sister Kathleen begins a civil action against the PSNI chief constable for the way she was treated by officers who investigated Arlene's disappearance.

22 June 2017: The Arkinson family call on the Garda Commissioner to intervene after Irish police fail to hand over files it had pertaining to the case. There had been delays to the inquest as a result.

8 September 2017: The inquest hears that substantive information about Arlene's disappearance has been discovered. The material was understood to relate to lines of inquiry and searches conducted in the Republic of Ireland.

2 March 2018: Kathleen Arkinson loses her compensation bid over how she was treated by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). She had claimed that her detention in 1996 was illegal. Kathleen's then-partner Stephen Walsh also lost his claim for unlawful detention.

18 June 2018: The inquest is told that in March 2018 a body was exhumed in County Sligo as part of the investigation. There had been reports that grave diggers discovered a woman's body wrapped in plastic at the cemetery near Grange two years after Arlene's disappearance. However, the coroner's court in Belfast learned the body which was examined was that of a man.

An exhumation was carried out at Ahamlish cemetery in County Sligo in March 2018

14 August 2018: The Arkinson family ask for more information about other bodies which were reportedly found at the same site in County Sligo.

3 September 2018: Fr Christy McHugh, a priest who was present when two bodies were exhumed at the cemetery in County Sligo, said he hoped it would help "nail rumours" about a possible link to Arlene Arkinson.

1 October 2018: The inquest is again delayed as the coroner's office seeks answers from Irish police.

2 April 2019: The inquest concludes and the coroner said the findings will be revealed at a later date.

21 July 2021: The inquest releases its findings. Coroner Brian Sherrard concluded that Arlene was murdered by convicted child killer and rapist Robert Howard.