The Cold Case Files

by Barry Cummins

  Twenty-one-year-old Cecilia McEvoy was on her way to the pictures when somebody strangled her to death in Co. Laois on the evening of Monday 5 November 1962. Cecilia had left her home at Grange, near Stradbally, to head to Port Laoise. She never made it to the cinema. It was the following morning that two men found Cecilia’s body while they were driving through an open expanse of land known as The Heath, three miles north of Port Laoise. It was clear from the marks on Cecilia’s neck that she had been strangled. She was still wearing her red-and-white dress and fawn cardigan. Her green overcoat was covering most of her body—it had apparently been draped sideways over Cecilia by her killer. Cecilia’s brown shoes were missing as was her brown handbag and her scarf. Those items would never be found and Cecilia’s murderer would never be identified.

  While the murders of Tommy Powell, Harry Cahill and Cecilia McEvoy were three crimes from the early 1960s which would never be solved, in subsequent decades there would be hundreds more cases of innocent people murdered and their killers never brought to justice. Less than ten years after Tommy Powell was beaten to death in Dublin, another child was murdered and the killer was never caught. Ten-year-old Bernadette Connolly had gone cycling on a quick errand for her mother when she was abducted and murdered in Co. Sligo on 17 April 1970. It was the middle of a Friday afternoon when a killer abducted Bernadette from a country road and put her bike up on an embankment above the road. The bike was found later that evening during a search for Bernadette, but there was no sign of the little girl.

  The investigation into Bernadette’s disappearance took place as a major investigation was continuing in Dublin after Garda Dick Fallon was shot dead on 3 April. The unarmed Garda was murdered by bank raiders at Arran Quay. His murder would also not be solved and in recent years his family has been in contact with the Cold Case Unit as part of efforts to seek justice for a man who gave his life for the State.

  On Thursday 6 August, three and a half months after Bernadette Connolly disappeared, her body was found by a woman loading turf at Limnagh on the Roscommon/Sligo border. Where Bernadette’s body was found was fifteen miles from the quiet lane where she had been abducted. She was still wearing her white vest with three religious medals pinned to it. She was also wearing her brown anorak, blue blouse and pinafore dress.

  In recent years Bernadette’s family has repeatedly asked Gardaí to do everything they can to try and solve this most distressing case. A fresh investigation has now been undertaken under the direction of an Assistant Commissioner. The family has asked Gardaí to locate the three medals which Bernadette was wearing when her body was found. Those medals were taken by Gardaí for forensic examination in 1970. Some years ago the family was told that the medals could not be found, nor could Bernadette’s bike, which Gardaí had also taken to Dublin for forensic examination over forty years ago.

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  In the early hours of 12 March 1972 the body of 52-year-old cinema cashier Kathleen Farrell was found at Blackmillershill at Little Curragh in Co. Kildare. Ms Farrell was single and had worked as a cashier at the Tower Cinema in Kildare town. Her body was found lying in furze and she was fully dressed. Pathologist Dr Francis Martin later carried out a post-mortem examination at Naas Hospital and found that Kathleen Farrell had died as a result of asphyxia. There was also evidence to suggest she had been manually strangled. Gardaí began a major murder investigation but eventually no-one would be brought to justice.

  Indeed in many of the unsolved murders dating back over many decades, it is clear that Gardaí conducted very thorough investigations. Officers did their absolute best with the resources they had, but still killers evaded justice. In January 1974 a 72-year-old widow was strangled to death in an horrific attack at her home at Killincarrig Road in Greystones, Co. Wicklow. Before being strangled Ann Meldon had also been hit a number of times on the head with a steel-tipped walking stick. There was a steel circular disc attached towards one end of the stick and this had left a number of visible injuries to Ann’s head. Ann’s body was found in her home by friends and neighbours who were concerned that they hadn’t seen her. She was found lying on her back in the bedroom of her ground-floor flat. A highly regarded lady, Ann and her husband had previously run The Southern Lake Hotel in Waterville in Co. Kerry before retiring to Greystones.

  Local Garda Sergeant Matt Shanley was on duty at Greystones station when the emergency call was received early in the afternoon of 24 January 1974. Sergeant Shanley raced to Killincarrig Road, close to Greystones train station, arriving at 1.20 p.m. He saw Ann Meldon’s body lying in her bedroom and immediately sealed off the area. He saw a walking stick lying across Ann’s body and it was clear she had been the victim of a sustained attack.

  When detectives studied the crime scene they saw there was no sign of forced entry. Based on a last known sighting of Mrs Meldon it would later be determined that she had been murdered sometime between 9.30 p.m. on Wednesday 23 January and 12.30 p.m.the following day. Detectives would later form a view that the murder most likely happened on the Thursday morning rather than the previous night. One very good clue to the killer’s identity emerged when two small triangular cast iron segments were found underneath Ann’s body. The iron pieces did not belong in Ann’s flat. Ann’s own steel-tipped walking stick, which had been used to beat her, was lying across her body. As well as being subjected to a severe beating with implements, Ann Meldon had been strangled.

  The crime scene was suggestive of a woman being the culprit. The use of a walking stick to commit an attack showed a sustained amount of violence. The two-foot-long steel-tipped walking stick could in itself have caused fatal injuries if considerable force had been used. Ann had suffered 24 injuries including 17 wounds to her head from the 2-inch steel circular disc which was at one end of the walking stick, but none of those injuries had been fatal. The crime scene bore the appearance of someone who had tried to use the stick to murder Ann in a frenzy, but when they didn’t have the apparent physical strength to commit murder that way, they had then strangled Ann to death.

  But there was also another weapon used to attack Mrs Meldon. The two iron pieces which were alien to her apartment were the clue to the other implement used in the murder. Gardaí studied the pieces closely; they didn’t match anything in Ann Meldon’s apartment, yet had been found under her body. It seemed like they were part of a bigger implement, but that object wasn’t in Ann’s apartment. As investigations continued detectives discovered that the pieces were part of a fireside companion set.

  It was on 6 February, two weeks after the murder, that Gardaí, led by Detective Inspector Hubert Reynolds, found more pieces of the companion set. Using a magnet attached to a rope Detective Garda Michael Keating retrieved other metal pieces from a shore in the back garden of the building where Ann had lived. These metal pieces were then given to Sergeant Matt Shanley and it was found that all the pieces matched together to fit a fireside companion set. Ann didn’t own such a set, and Gardaí formed the view that the murderer had brought such an object with them to Ann’s home to use as a murder weapon. It is believed that Ann was struck on the head with a cast-iron balancer which is found in the bottom of fireside sets. During the attack pieces of the set broke away and the killer had later picked up all the pieces they could see and had dumped them in a shore out the back. But the killer didn’t realise that two of the metal pieces were lying under Ann’s body and they had left the crime scene leaving a strong lead for detectives to follow.

  A pair of small-sized yellow gloves which may have been used by the killer were later found in another part of Greystones and these gloves were sent for analysis. This was an era before the establishment of Ireland’s own Forensic State Laboratory, and a number of items from the Ann Meldon murder investigation were sent to England to be analysed by Scotland Yard. Detectives came to the view that Ann’s killer had called to her door and had overcome the 72-year-old before she had time to react. They had struck her with the base of a fireside set which they had b
rought with them. When this didn’t kill Ann, the attacker had grabbed a steel-tipped walking stick which they saw in the apartment. Despite being beaten a number of times with this implement, the victim was still alive, and it was then that the killer strangled Ann to death. They then fled the scene, dumping metal pieces from the now broken fireside set in the shore in the back garden.

  Less than a month after the murder of Ann Meldon a woman in her twenties was arrested on suspicion of murder. The woman was later released and ultimately no-one was ever brought to justice for the murder. The investigation had moved from an initial flurry of activity and excellent police work to eventually hitting a brick wall. Ann Meldon’s murder would ultimately become a cold case and four decades later her killer has never been caught and convicted.

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  When the Garda Cold Case Unit was set up in 2007 it announced that it was examining 207 unsolved murders, the earliest of which had occurred in 1980. The team chose the year 1980 simply because they had to start somewhere. That particular year bore witness to the murder of a man who was shot dead while watching a football match in a pub in Dublin’s south inner city. In more recent decades there have been many gun murders which have occurred in pubs, but in 1980 the murder of John ‘Jackie’ Kelly was the only such killing that year. A suspect was identified and arrested but was never charged with the murder.

  It was on the evening of Wednesday 17 September 1980 that Jackie Kelly went to Grace’s Pub on Townsend Street to watch Manchester United contest a UEFA Cup match. Jackie had earlier gone with two friends to Lansdowne Road to watch Limerick FC narrowly lose 1-2 to Real Madrid in another European game. Jackie was from St Andrew’s Court near Macken Street and had previously worked as a postal worker and in a taxi firm. When the match at Lansdowne Road was over, Jackie and his friends decided to walk back to Grace’s Pub to catch the Manchester United game on television. It was also a chance to properly toast Jackie becoming the newest member of a local football team.

  Jackie Kelly was sitting in the pub watching the television when a dark figure came in the door. The gunman was wearing a balaclava and a helmet and jacket. Everyone’s first reaction was to think it was a joke, but then the shots rang out. The killer pointed the revolver at Jackie Kelly and fired three times. The gunman then turned as if to leave the pub but paused and turned back to Jackie and fired three more times before calmly walking out the door. Jackie Kelly slumped to the floor and all of a sudden everyone realised what they had just witnessed was all too real. Jackie was rushed to St Vincent’s Hospital in a critical condition. Doctors did all they could but ultimately his wounds proved fatal and Jackie died ten days after being shot.

  A team of Gardaí led by Detective Inspector Con Hearty investigated the fatal pub shooting. They got a very good lead within hours when a helmet, balaclava and jacket were found dumped in a rubbish chute at nearby flats at Countess Markievicz House. They also found a sawn-off shotgun and shotgun cartridges. The finds at Markievicz House led detectives to a dump in south Co. Dublin. Some waste had already been collected by the council in the south inner city and taken to the dump before the alarm was raised. Detectives got to the dump in time and they supervised the unloading of waste into the dump. Detectives soon found a revolver; it was later confirmed as the murder weapon.

  Jackie Kelly’s murder occurred at a time that Gardaí were investigating the murder of a young Belfast woman, Deborah Robinson, who was killed while on a day trip to Dublin in early September. Deborah’s body was found hidden in a ditch in Clane in Co. Kildare and detectives had been working flat out to try and catch the killer. Eventually the murderer would be caught through the emerging forensic science of fibre analysis. While Deborah’s killer was later given a life sentence for murder, the other murder to occur in Ireland that September would not be solved and Jackie Kelly’s killer would remain free.

  Just over two weeks after Jackie was shot, two men were arrested and questioned at Pearse Street Garda station about the shooting. Detectives had the murder weapon, they had clothing possibly worn by the killer. The two men who were arrested were later released without charge. No clear motive was ever established for the murder of a popular young man. Although this murder is over thirty years old, there is a feeling that people may still talk and give information that they didn’t give in 1980. It is possible that someone who was instilling fear in the area is no longer in a position to do so. A lot can happen in thirty years and perhaps Jackie Kelly may one day get justice.

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  At the offices of the Serious Crime Review Team, or the Cold Case Unit as it is known, Detective Superintendent Christy Mangan leads a team of a dozen detectives. What he and his colleagues have done since they were established in 2007 is immerse themselves in the hundreds of unsolved murder files from 1980.

  Each case is subject to a preliminary assessment, and if there is anything to merit a case being given a full review we will conduct it. That can involve a forensic review of all materials from a case, we look at what witnesses may now be available and we look at any other fresh investigative options. We use forensic profilers and crime scene interpreters. We are looking at what might have happened at a particular crime scene and why a suspect may have behaved in a particular fashion.

  While the Cold Case Unit has caught the interest of the general public, it has more importantly seen a number of families of murder victims making direct contact with officers.

  People have called directly here to the front gate at Harcourt Square looking to speak with us about the murder of a loved one which happened ten, twenty, thirty years ago. We often find that families are aggrieved about the lack of interaction with the Gardaí down the years. A case may have been unresolved and no-one brought to justice and then contact was minimal between Gardaí and a victim’s family. In the Serious Crime Review Team we offer to establish ongoing contact through family liaison officers. Families obviously want answers and want somebody brought to justice. Sometimes you mighn’t have the evidence to bring someone to court but you might still be able to fill in the story for a family, to tell them things about what happened at a particular time which led to an unsolved murder. We can clear up a huge amount of matters for families, but naturally what families ultimately want is their loved one’s killer or killers brought to justice.

  One thing which the Cold Case Unit quickly found was that not all evidence from decades-old murder investigations had been kept. As murder files have gathered dust over twenty, thirty, forty years, items are now unavailable due to the passage of time. “It can happen that evidence is not available, it has happened in many jurisdictions,” agrees Christy Mangan. “But not having certain exhibits will not stop us going forward with a case, it’s the result of the original forensic examination that is important.”

  Long before the Cold Case Unit was set up, the possibility of solving many historic murders was well known. Some excellent police work and a healthy dose of good luck had united when married father-of-five John Crerar was finally arrested in July 1999 for the abduction and murder of Phyllis Murphy in Co. Kildare twenty years previously. The good police work was shown in the intelligence of Gardaí Finbarr McPaul and Christy Sheridan who for two decades kept safe the blood samples given voluntarily by men in 1980. Similar good work was shown in the tenacity of Detective Inspector Brendan McArdle from the Garda Technical Bureau who re-investigated the unsolved murder and brought those bloodstain cards to a laboratory in England. The good luck which emerged in the case was shown in the fact that John Crerar was one of those people who had been asked to give his blood sample back in 1980, and there was also good luck in that he was still alive when Gardaí came looking for him in 1999 once the laboratory identified his DNA as being a match for the semen found on Phyllis’s body. Crerar was finally unmasked as a predatory abductor and killer who had lived a lie for twenty years. He is now serving a life sentence and Phyllis’s family, who still feel her loss, have some measure of comfort.

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  There have been a number of criminal trials down the years which have occurred decades after the crimes were actually committed. In the year 2000 a Belfast man stood trial at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin for the murder of Garda Patrick Reynolds, who was shot dead at a flats complex in Tallaght in February 1982. The accused’s fingerprints and his glasses were found in the flat where the proceeds of an earlier bank robbery carried out by the INLA were being divided when Gardaí arrived to investigate reports of suspicious activity. The court also heard identification evidence, where a Garda identified the accused as having been at the scene in Tallaght eighteen years before. For almost two decades the man had been wanted by Gardaí; it was known he had moved to France but he eventually surfaced back in Ireland when he was arrested following an armed bank robbery. However, the three judges of the non-jury court acquitted the accused, saying it was possible the glasses and their owner had been in the flat some time prior to the killing rather than on that night, and the court said it couldn’t then rely solely on identification evidence from so long ago. The accused returned to prison to serve out the remainder of a sentence for an armed robbery committed in Co. Mayo.