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At the offices of the Cold Case Unit at Harcourt Square, Detective Superintendent Christy Mangan says the detectives in his unit make hundreds of recommendations in every case they review. “If we then give a case back to local detectives for those recommendations to be followed, resources from the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation can be deployed to assist with that. There is no point in making a large number of recommendations if they are not going to be acted upon, you have to act upon them and act quickly. When we provide a report on a case, that doesn’t mean our input is finished; we are there to assist to ensure the recommendations are brought to a finality.” Those recommendations might be that a witness be re-interviewed, or a fresh search be undertaken for a murder weapon, or fresh forensic tests be carried out.
Christy Mangan stresses that reviewing an unsolved murder enquiry can often take longer than the original enquiry lasted.
It can be a slow process, it depends on the particular case. You are endeavouring to locate witnesses, to locate exhibits, to re-interview the original Garda teams. You can find that some of the people involved are deceased and that can cause problems in that part of the picture is not there for you, and that can be difficult. And sometimes suspects may have passed away, but in the majority of cases we are looking at, we believe the suspects are alive. They are out there and we are going to be knocking on their doors. We have got a massive response from the general public and we are very thankful for that. We rely very much on the public to assist us. And the families of victims have been very receptive to us. They have given us a huge amount of assistance.
While there are some cases which the Cold Case Unit are investigating away from the media glare, there are others which they have publicly confirmed they are actively re-investigating. These are cases where members of the Unit have carried out a preliminary review and found that there is merit to going further and committing to carrying out a full review of all case material in an effort to see if a killer or killers can finally be brought to justice. On the Serious Crime Review Team page on the Garda website there are a number of cases in which the Cold Case Unit are appealing to the public to give assistance. Two of the most recent such cases are the separate murders of Irene White and Emer O’Loughlin, which both occurred in 2005.
Forty-three-year-old mother-of-three Irene White was washing dishes in her home when she was attacked by an intruder and stabbed to death in Dundalk on 6 April 2005. She suffered multiple injuries to her chest and back. Irene’s body was found by her 79-year-old mother at 12.30 p.m. when she made her daily walk from her mobile home in the back garden into her daughter’s house to share a meal with her. Irene’s mother died six months later, on what would have been Irene’s 44th birthday.
Detectives have been seeking to identify a man seen running from the vicinity of Irene’s house at 10.15 a.m. on the day of the murder. He was described as being aged between 30 and 40, and he was wearing jeans, a dark jacket and a peaked cap. He ran through Ice House Hill Park, adjoining Irene’s house, into O’Hanlon Park and left the area in a dark-coloured car which had been parked nearby. A number of arrests were made by detectives investigating Irene’s murder but the crime remains unsolved.
Two days after Irene White was murdered another shocking murder occurred, this time in the west of the country. There is no link between the two cases. It was on the morning of 8 April 2005 that the body of 23-year-old Emer O’Loughlin was found in a burnt-out caravan at Ballybornagh, Tubber, in Co. Clare. The Garda Cold Case Unit have been examining this case and as part of their enquiries Emer’s body was exhumed in 2010. Detectives believe Emer suffered a violent attack which caused her death and that her killer then set fire to the caravan in an attempt to make the death look like an accident. Gardaí wish to speak with a man who it’s thought may have faked his own death and may in fact have fled the country. The man’s clothing and personal belongings were found abandoned on one of the Aran Islands, and it was initially thought he might have jumped into the sea, but it’s now believed the clothing may have been deliberately placed there as part of an elaborate scheme to attempt to throw detectives off the scent. Gardaí are liaising closely with other police forces through Interpol in an effort to track this man.
While the work of the Cold Case Unit is by its nature quite slow, results are beginning to show. The successful prosecution of the two killers of Brian McGrath (murdered at his Westmeath home in 1987) was the first major achievement of the Serious Crime Review Team. The Unit is working on a number of other cases where it is felt criminal charges may be brought. More and more families of murder victims are making contact, asking for their loved one’s unsolved murder to be reviewed. In 2011 the Unit lost two of its most experienced detectives when Alan Bailey and Noel Mooney both retired after more than 30 years’ service each. As the work of the Cold Case Unit evolves, perhaps not only will two new Gardaí come into the Unit to fill those shoes, but the Unit’s manpower may also increase. “In relation to what we do in the Serious Crime Review Team, we do bring some sense of justice to families of victims,” reflects Christy Mangan.
That may be with the successful resolution of a case, or even that a family know we are looking at a case and they know that we haven’t forgotten their loved one. And the whole concept of cold-case investigation is that it transfers the fear of a crime, which originally existed with the victim, it transfers it back to a suspect a long, long number of years later. In particular a person who feels they got away with a particular crime, now we are coming after them yet again. We are not going to cease in our efforts to solve the unsolved. We owe it to the victims and the victims’ families and we owe it to the public. We are bringing accountability to those who have murdered, they are not going to get away with murdering another human being.
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St Kevin’s Park is a well-maintained, small park a short distance from the Garda offices at Harcourt Square. It’s nestled behind DIT Kevin Street, close to Wexford Street and Camden Street. The old church ruin where Tommy Powell’s body was found on 20 June 1961 is still there within the park. It was the year after the five-year-old boy was found murdered here that Dublin Corporation took control of the church ruins and graveyard. The Corporation, and more recently Dublin City Council, have done a fine job in making this a peaceful and welcoming park. At the time of Tommy Powell’s murder, the old graveyard was overgrown and almost beyond repair. Today, mature trees and closely cropped grass, park benches and hedges provide a space to reflect. Some of the original headstones remain undisturbed while others have been placed along the outer walls of the church ruin and perimeter walls of the park.
There is nothing here to mark it as the location where Tommy Powell was found murdered. The file on his case has been kept safe all this time at the National Archives on Bishop Street, less than a five-minute walk away. In one sense Tommy’s murder was so long ago, yet in another it was only a half century ago. The Minister for Justice at the time was Charles Haughey. In a parliamentary question at the time about the number of unsolved murder cases, the Minister listed six unsolved murders as having occurred between 1952 and 1961. In his reply the Minister stated that “Garda investigations still continue in relation to all of them.”
It’s natural to speculate, it’s human nature. Was Tommy Powell killed by an older child or children? If so, they might only be in their sixties or seventies now. Even if he was killed by someone in their twenties or thirties they could quite possibly still be alive. There is nothing in the case file to suggest any particular line of enquiry. There was simply no motive for killing a little boy who was last seen walking alone on nearby Camden Street. His killer may have died long ago, but might they just possibly still be alive?
EPILOGUE
Brian McGrath was finally laid to rest on Saturday 18 September 2010. It was less than two months since his wife had been found guilty of his murder, a murder which had occurred more than 23 years previously. Vera McGrath was now serving a life
sentence, while Colin Pinder, who had been found guilty of manslaughter, was still awaiting sentence. He would later be jailed for nine years.
Local funeral director Michael Cassidy met Gardaí at Mullingar Hospital and received the body of Brian McGrath. Back in 1993, when forensic science of the time had failed to establish Brian’s identity to a mathematical certainty, it was Michael Cassidy who had taken care of the burial of the ‘unidentified’ man, who everyone believed was indeed Brian McGrath. Michael had been present at the exhumation of the body in May 2008, pointing out to detectives the precise plot where he had buried Brian fifteen years previously. Now he was helping to bring Brian on his final journey.
Michael brought Brian’s coffin to the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Coole, where Brian’s daughter Veronica and sons Andrew, Brian Jnr and Edward and other members of the family said a final farewell. Local people came to the church to pay their respects, people who had known Brian back in the 1980s and who knew his children. Also present were many of the Gardaí who had worked on the successful cold-case investigation. Detective Inspector Martin Cadden from Athlone was there, as were many of the cold-case detectives who had travelled from Dublin. The head of the Unit, Christy Mangan, was present, as was Detective Garda David O’Brien and Detective Garda Annelisa Hannigan. The new Detective Inspector in the Unit, Eamonn Henry, also attended the funeral, as did Detective Garda Maurice Downey, the man who had initiated the first enquiries when he received that phone call in 2007 from retired detective John Maunsell, who was urging the newly formed Unit to review the unsolved case.
Now the murder was indeed solved, and Brian McGrath’s killers were behind bars. In death Brian’s name had become well known throughout the country and indeed overseas as word had spread about the solving of a 23-year-old murder case in which the victim’s body had been secretly buried, dug up and burned, reburied, found and later buried in a cemetery, exhumed and analysed forensically, and was now being laid to rest for the final time. Brian McGrath had a life which was a mixture of happiness and pride in his four children, but he had faced much tragedy not only in death but in his early years. Brian had been abandoned as a baby when he was born in Monaghan in August 1944 and when he was found by a Garda he was brought to local nuns. He never discovered who his birth mother was and when he was ten years old Brian was placed in Artane Industrial School. When he became an adult he joined the Irish Army, but left soon afterwards. In the 1960s he met his future wife Vera, who was from Dublin. They lived in London for a time and Southampton and also in Dublin. In 1979 they bought a cottage near Coole in Westmeath and the family moved to the country. It was eight years later that Brian McGrath vanished.
Brian and Vera’s daughter Veronica McGrath bravely told the truth at the Central Criminal Court trial. She told of witnessing Colin Pinder and her own mother Vera beating her father to death and then secretly burying him in the field next to the family home. She outlined the extreme lengths to which the killers had then gone to try and hide evidence of the murder, by digging up and burning Brian’s body and then burying it again. Veronica had first come forward in 1993, meeting with detective John Maunsell and making a full statement about the crime she had witnessed. The failure to get justice back then had left Veronica and the Gardaí very frustrated. When the Cold Case Unit had first contacted Veronica all those years later she did not hesitate to say she was still prepared to give evidence. It was through her determination and strength that she and the Gardaí finally got justice for her father.
Parish priest Fr Michael Walsh celebrated the funeral mass at the church in Coole. Afterwards, members of the community who had come to pay their respects shook hands with the McGrath family and offered their condolences. Gardaí also extended their sympathies to Veronica, Andrew, Brian Jnr, and Edward. After the funeral mass Brian’s body was slowly driven from Coole through the town of Castlepollard and on to Whitehall Cemetery. There Brian’s coffin was placed back in the same plot from where he had been exhumed over two years beforehand. During that period Brian’s body had been cared for at the Dublin City Mortuary in Marino. It was only at the conclusion of the trial of his killers that Brian’s body could be reburied.
By the time Brian was laid to rest for the final time in September 2010 the Garda Cold Case Unit had assessed the files relating to hundreds of unsolved murders, and the Unit had selected dozens of those files to be actively reviewed. There was much work ahead, many families seeking answers and seeking justice.
Ultimately Brian McGrath got justice, ultimately the full story of his violent death was revealed. His murder was solved through a combination of brave witnesses, advances in forensic science and pathology, the good fortune that suspects were still alive, and a determination by detectives to pursue justice for a man who suffered a horrific death. As Brian McGrath was reburied at Whitehall Cemetery his family now had closure, and Brian could finally and forever more rest in peace.
Lorcan O’Byrne was 25 years old when he was shot dead by armed raiders in his family home above The Anglers Rest pub in Dublin in October 1981. (Courtesy O’Byrne family)
Behind the bar at ‘The Anglers’, Lorcan shares a joke with his mother Bernie. (Courtesy O’Byrne family)
The murder of Lorcan O’Byrne was one of the first to be reviewed by the Garda Cold Case Unit. (Courtesy O’Byrne family)
An image of The Anglers Rest from a news report within days of Lorcan’s murder. The bar and lounge were on the bottom floor and the O’Byrne home was on the top floor. The armed raiders had walked up the steps to the right of picture, and burst in the front door of the O’Byrne home towards the centre of picture. (Courtesy RTÉ News)
A Garda forensic expert dusts for fingerprints at the scene of the murder of Nancy Smyth in Kilkenny in September 1987. (Courtesy RTÉ News)
Eighteen-year-old Inga-Maria Hauser from Germany was on an InterRailing trip across Britain and Ireland when she was murdered in Co. Antrim in 1988. (Courtesy Hauser family)
Inga-Maria’s body was found in this part of Ballypatrick Forest. (Courtesy Police Service of Northern Ireland)
Inga-Maria was carrying a distinctive backpack. (Courtesy Police Service of Northern Ireland)
An image of Inga-Maria taken before she left Germany. (Courtesy Hauser family)
The unsolved murder of Inga-Maria Hauser is being re-examined by the PSNI. (Courtesy Hauser family)
Brooke Pickard working at his home near Castle Cove, Co. Kerry. Brooke was 42 years old when he was abducted by armed men at a beach car park in April 1991. He has not been seen since. (Courtesy Pickard family)
Brooke and his wife Penny at their Co. Kerry home. (Courtesy Pickard family)
Brooke pictured with his children, James, Crohan, Dan and Lisa. (Courtesy Pickard family)
An earlier image in Co. Kerry of Brooke and Crohan. (Courtesy Pickard family)
Fifty-six-year-old Grace Livingstone was shot dead at her home in Malahide, Co. Dublin, in December 1992. (Courtesy Livingstone family)
An earlier image of Grace on holiday. (Courtesy Livingstone family)
Grace had a love of the outdoors. (Courtesy Livingstone family)
Grace and her husband Jimmy on a visit to Co. Monaghan. (Courtesy Livingstone family)
Jimmy Livingstone has repeatedly called for his wife’s murder to be completely re-investigated. In 2011 the Garda Cold Case Unit confirmed it was to carry out a full review of the unsolved case. (Courtesy Livingstone family)
Stephen Hughes Connors was 12 years old when he was killed by an arsonist in Tallaght in September 2001. (Courtesy Hughes Connors family)
Stephen was always full of fun, full of adventure. (Courtesy Hughes Connors family)
Stephen shares a joke with his sister Kelly. (Courtesy Hughes Connors family)
This image of Stephen was taken shortly before he was killed. (Courtesy Hughes Connors family)
Captured on CCTV: In the early hours of 1 September 2001, a man walks towards the makeshift hut where Stephen Hughe
s Connors is sleeping. (Courtesy An Garda Síochána)
Less than a minute later the man walks quickly away, as the fire takes hold off camera. The reflection of the fire can be seen on the back of the killer’s jacket as he flees. (Courtesy An Garda Síochána)
For every murder victim still awaiting justice
For further information visit www.barrycummins.com
You may reach me in confidence at [email protected]
If you have any information about any of the cases featured in this book, or indeed any unsolved cases, you can contact:
The Cold Case Files Page 23