‘Mr Ryan,’ Delia shouts, arching her eyebrows over her glasses and putting an end to the chatter.
Ryan stands and straightens his tie.
‘Your Honour, I call Ray De Brun to the stand.’
A rotund, bald man with an overgrown grey moustache, rises from the middle of the gallery, apologising with whispers as he brushes past attendees in his row, before pounding his heavy frame down the aisle and up into the witness box.
Instead of paying attention to the witness being sworn in, Delia reshuffles the paperwork in front of her, then gives up looking for the sheet she needed when Ryan takes to the middle of the courtroom floor.
‘Thank you for your time, Detective De Brun.’
‘Ex detective.’
‘Yes; ex detective. You retired in…’
‘2016.’
‘After how many years on the force?’
‘Forty, exactly.’
‘Impressive. And how many years as a detective?’
‘Thirty-two.’
‘You were one of longest serving detectives in the history of the state when you retired, correct?’
‘So they tell me.’
‘Well, thank you for your service, Detective De Brun. Let me ask you this… in those thirty-two years you led the investigation on some of Ireland’s most notorious cases… But, of course, the reason you are here today is because you were lead detective on the Stapleton case, correct?’
‘Yes. I certainly was.’
‘From day one, right? When Reese and Oscar Stapleton were reported missing, who was the first detective assigned to the case?’
‘I was.’
He fingers the blunt-edges of his moustache, then scratches at the aging freckles that are forming a map on his scalp.
‘You worked on the case for over two years; two as a missing person’s case and then a further two months after that when it turned officially into a murder investigation, right?’
‘Yes. And I stayed with this case all the way through to conviction.’
‘So, it would be fair to suggest you know this case better than anybody?’
‘I’ve certainly poured more hours into it than anybody. And I can also say that I’ve poured more hours into the Stapleton case than I did any other case in my entire career.’
‘Impressive. And you say you saw the case all the way through to conviction. It was you who literally arrested Joy Stapleton for the murder of her two sons in January of 2011, correct?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘And can you tell us why you arrested her?’
‘Why I arrested her?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Well… because she murdered her two sons.’
Ray De Brun
‘So, it would be fair to suggest you know this case better than anybody?’
‘I’ve certainly poured more hours into it than anybody,’ I say. ‘And I can also say that I’ve poured more hours into the Stapleton case than I did any other case in my entire career.’
It’s true. This case was a nightmare for me right from day one. And it’s a nightmare that never seems to want to end. Not with half the country believing she’s innocent – judging the entire case on tabloid headlines. They don’t know the case like I do. Nobody does.
‘Impressive. And you say you saw the case all the way through to conviction. It was you who literally arrested Joy Stapleton for the murder of her two sons in January of 2011, correct?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘And can you tell us why you arrested her?’
‘Why I arrested her?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Well… because she murdered her two sons.’
Ryan pauses for a gasp from the gallery after I say that. And it arrives right on cue. Only because he set it up. He told me, when we rehearsed what I was gonna say up here, that there’d be a gasp when I bluntly delivered the line “She murdered her two sons”. I think it’s a guy who works in his law firm who produced it. But it seems to work. The courtroom has fallen silent, and the judge is scribbling away on her notes.
‘So, you investigated this case from day one, Detective De Brun, and worked on it for over two years – put more work into this than any other case, you say?’
‘It was more than two years. It was two years between the case opening as a missing person’s case and the eventual arrest for double homicide. But I worked on it a lot more after that. The original trial took almost a further two years to come around… and I worked hard on the case all the way up to that. Heck, I’m still working on it today…. sitting here.’
‘Yes… much more than two years, that is correct. And the state thanks you for your dedication to true justice. But just to go back a bit… past the second year you worked on this case, you arrested Joy Stapleton because, as you have just said, she murdered her two sons. Why were you and the police force so convinced of Joy Stapleton’s guilt?’
I blow through the bristles of my ’tache.
‘In missing children’s cases, in particular, it is always key to look closest to home. In eighty-four percent of child abduction cases the culprit is found to be a family member or somebody closely associated with a family member.’ Jonathan Ryan told me the statistic last week, told me it would fit in nicely with my testimony; certainly after Sandra Gleeson tried to throw me under the bus when she was sitting up here last week. ‘I know an ex-colleague of mine testified here to say that we were focused on Joy Stapleton from the get-go, and that’s because the statistics inform us that is the right approach to take. We rule out who we can with a matter of urgency. And we managed to rule everybody associated with Oscar and Reese out – all except for Joy. In fact, we only got more and more suspicious of her involvement as time went on.’
That’s all totally true. We ruled out Shay straight away because he had been in Roscommon, lounging about in the Grand Hotel on a work trip. Shay’s parents had alibis, as did Joy’s father. Their closest friends and associates all accounted for. Lavinia Kirwan was on a date; Shay’s best mate Steve Wood was at home with his then-girlfriend. One by one we found we could strike all family and friends from the list. Yet Joy’s name remained there. In capital letters. Highlighted.
‘Can you tell me when you, personally, first became suspicious of Joy Stapleton?’
‘Personally? At the end of day one of the investigation… when I heard the phone call for the first time.’
‘You mean the phone call Mrs Stapleton made to 999, to report that her boys had been abducted?’
‘Yes. I listened to it at about eight p.m. on the first evening, and I was shaking my head listening to it. Especially as I’d just spent much of the day with Joy, consoling her.’
‘Well, I think now is a good time, Your Honour, for the court to listen to the tape.’
The judge nods her head and then Jonathan Ryan holds a finger to the ceiling as if he’s the conductor of some invisible orchestra up there. There’s a small clicking sound, then a pause, before a crackling ringing blasts through the speakers.
‘Hello’
‘Somebody took my boys. They are gone. They are gone.’
‘Your children are missing, ma’am, is that what you said?’
‘Yes. They were on the green in front of my house. And somebody took them. My boys have been taken. They’re gone.’
‘Give me your address, ma’am.’
‘Yes… yes… It’s ninety-three St Mary’s Avenue, Rathfarnham… please get here as quick as you can. My boys! My boys!’
Seventeen seconds long that call is, before Joy hangs up. It must be the thousandth time I’ve heard those seventeen seconds. And I am under no doubt that I have heard a guilty mother every single time.
‘Can you tell us why you fell suspicious of Mrs Stapleton as soon as you heard that call, Detective De Brun?’
‘The whole country has heard that call by now… it was all over the news for many a year. There’s still people arguing about it online today. And I see people argu
ing that Joy sounded too over the top when she was screaming down the line; that she was being too dramatic an actress… but her screaming is not what was suspicious about the call for me.’
‘Well, what was suspicious?’
‘Her words. “Somebody took my boys”.’
‘And that was suspicious because?’
‘It sounded to me as if she had already decided what her narrative was going to be – that her sons were abducted. She said it right from the off. She didn’t say they were missing. She said they were taken. That somebody took them.’
‘Interesting. But that only raised your initial suspicion, correct? It wasn’t a smoking gun for you. You couldn’t have been certain she was guilty because of the phone call alone?’
I shake my head and mouth a ‘nope’ – popping the ‘p’ sound into the microphone.
My thoughts on the phone call were, in truth, just instinctual suspicion, but detectives live and die by the art of using their instinct, and it always pisses me right off that so many people are keen to play that skill down. My instinct… my gut… it never let me down in forty years on the force. Certainly didn’t in this case. I believed Joy Stapleton murdered her two boys from day one of this investigation. And I was dead right. We didn’t take our eyes off her during the process of the missing person’s case, but we had nothing to go on for such a long time. The dog evidence was never a clincher for us. In fact, there was no clincher for two years – not until the bodies were found. Then we turned the heat up on her. Nobody else seemed to suspect a thing. I remember Shay, God love him, storming up his garden path one day when he saw me coming to his house and asking me out straight if I was genuinely considering Joy as a suspect. He had tears running down his face. I’m not sure Shay has ever been fully convinced of Joy’s guilt, and he certainly let that be known at his testimony yesterday – but his mind has been clouded by too much emotional attachment. It’s been really sad watching him go downhill over the years. The poor man is living in a warped universe. I’m surprised he hasn’t gone mad. Though I did notice when I saw him at the courts yesterday that he has aged terribly. Such a shame. He didn’t deserve this life.
‘Even though you brought in the cadaver dog who indicated a body or bodies may have decomposed in the Stapleton household, you still didn’t arrest Joy Stapleton, did you?’
‘We had so little to go on. No bodies, no evidence whatsoever. It seemed to the naked eye as if the boys had just vanished into thin air. Only we had spoken to Joy’s best friend Lavinia Kirwan who I know also testified at this trial and she had told us Joy had been acting strange for a couple of months leading to the boys’ disappearance. We also observed changes in Joy as the case was on-going ourselves. The psychologists who spoke to her during the course of the investigation very often reported that Joy would speak like a fantasist; saying she always felt Oscar and Reese would grow up to be superstars or superheroes or something like that. And she was also observed as having a natural ability to emotionally manipulate… we saw her manipulate those out searching for Oscar and Reese, she tried to manipulate some of our police officers, too. She even manipulated her own husband, Shay. It was just a subtle personality trait she had. But we zoned in on it. She was a strong voyeur, too. She would stand back and watch everybody; watch the investigation unfold… She knew everybody’s business. She also had a history of abuse, albeit small. Her father used to smack her when she was younger. And I have to tell you, Mr Ryan, that all these traits I have just mentioned; a fantasist, emotionally manipulative, a voyeur, a history of abuse… they are all the traits associate with killers. It’s just that Joy Stapleton doesn’t look like your everyday killer. Even though she is one of the most cold and calculated killers I have ever come across.’
Everything I’m saying is true, apart from the history of abuse thing. That was minimal. One time at the start of the investigation, during what he thought was routine questioning, her father, Noel, admitted he used to smack her as a toddler – only if she was naughty, mind. It was no big deal. But it helped with our argument of listing traits Joy has in common with other murderers. The other traits I’ve listed – a fantasist, emotionally manipulative, a voyeur – they are all traits Joy genuinely possesses. In abundance. She killed those boys and tried to hide it from us as we investigated. But she wasn’t doing quite as good a job of it as she thought she was. We were on to her all the time. We just couldn’t find the bloody evidence to nick her. Which is a great shame. I’m aware more than anyone that the evidence is light-weight in this case. But I always felt when we got that CCTV footage of the pink hoodie, even though her face wasn’t shown in it, that we had enough to put her away – certainly enough for a jury made up of everyday people to put her away. But a judge, somebody who knows law inside out, well… now that is a different type of persuasion. And I’m worried… I’m worried Joy might get out. She doesn’t deserve her freedom. That’s why I’m testifying again here today. And why I rehearsed with Jonathan Ryan what I needed to say. We have to get this right. We need to convince the judge she has to uphold the original verdict.
‘And then two years later, a member of the public happened upon the bodies and the investigation dramatically changed from there, isn’t that correct?’
‘Yes. A dog walker.’
‘But the scene or the bodies didn’t give you as much evidence to go on as you would have liked…’
‘Nope,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘All that was left of Oscar and Reese was bone. And the scene itself had long since weathered away any indication that might have led us to a suspect. I mean studies on the bones suggest there was no sign of a struggle and therefore it is likely Oscar and Reese knew and trusted their killer, but there was no direct forensic evidence at the scene by the time we got to it, no.’
‘But then, a few days later you came across the CCTV footage.’
‘Then we found the CCTV footage, yes. And everything changed.’
‘Everything changed?’
‘We knew we had her. That is Joy in that CCTV footage, just yards from where the bodies were found. She is walking back down the mountain on the night we believe her sons were murdered and dumped in that wasteland. It was the night before she reported them missing with the phone call you just played to the court.’
‘You have no doubt she is responsible for killing her two sons, do you, Detective De Brun?’
‘None whatsoever,’ I say, leaning closer to the microphone. ‘Listen, Joy Stapleton had no alibi for the night we believe the boys were killed. She says she was at home alone with them, but she has no witness to back that up. There are also no witnesses whatsoever to the crime Joy claimed; that they were snatched from the green area in front of their garden. Then she makes a mistake by telling 999 when she made the emergency call exactly what she wanted her narrative to be. Then she acted with all these strange behaviours over the course of our investigation, right in front of us. And then, low and behold, she was spotted on CCTV footage not far from where the bodies were buried. She is as guilty as they come. It just took us a couple of years to be able to provide proof of her guilt. Which we did, of course. This case went to court, let’s not forget that. And that court found her guilty. And the court found her guilty because she is guilty.’
‘Detective Ray De Brun, thank you for your time.’
I release a sigh of relief as Jonathan sits back down beside his legal team, but I know I’m only half-way through this – with the worst half yet to come. I can’t stand Gerd Bracken. I mean, his cause should be so worthy – trying to get innocent folk out of prison. But this guy isn’t interested in the justice of it at all. He’s only interested in making a name for himself. He’s a narcissist – there’s no doubt about that. As soon as that cadaver dog, Bunny, was outted as having made a mistake in a case in England a few years ago, he jumped all over Joy Stapleton because he thought if he could overturn the most infamous case in Ireland’s judicial history then he’d make an even bigger name for himself. He’s a disgrace.
There’s no way even he can believe Joy Stapleton is innocent. The smarmy prick literally lies to himself for a living.
‘Ex Detective,’ he says appearing in front of me, his legs standing slightly wide apart, his hands clasped against his stomach, ‘correct me if I’m wrong, but you have just testified here today that you felt Joy was guilty for two whole years but you couldn’t arrest her because you couldn’t prove it in a court of law, correct?’
‘Correct.’
‘Correct? So, the cadaver dog. The voyeurism you accuse my client of having, the personality traits you have testified here today suggesting she proved to you, without providing us any proof whatsoever, the phone call that in your opinion she is acting in… all these pieces of evidence you were building up against my client… they weren’t enough for an arrest?’
‘No. They weren’t.’
‘Good,’ he says, ‘then I can throw most of my questions away. Because, ex Detective, I was going to ask you about all these nuances and redundant pieces of evidences, or opinions as I would label most of them. But you have just admitted to us all under oath that these are pretty much redundant because they weren’t enough to warrant arrest.’
‘They weren’t enough to warrant arrest, but I wouldn’t call them redund—’
‘Now, ex Detective,’ he says, talking over me and looking all smug, ‘that only leads us to the CCTV footage then, doesn’t it? The only reason you arrested Joy Stapleton is down to that CCTV footage, correct?’
‘It’s not only down to the CCTV. We built a case around her….’
‘Yes, but a case that wouldn’t, in your words, have led to a conviction without the CCTV, right?’
I cough and fidget in the chair.
‘I guess so.’
‘Well, not “I guess so”. I know so. Sure, you just said that yourself on the stand.’
‘Okay. Then, yes. We would not have got a conviction without the CCTV.’
‘And yet we’ve all seen the CCTV footage. And nobody can see a face in that CCTV footage. All we see is a figure walking past a garden wall in a pink hooded top, isn’t that correct?’
The Coincidence (The Trial Trilogy) Page 22