The Cold Case Files

  Contents

  Cover

  Title page

  Foreword

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: The Unsolved Murder of Lorcan O’Byrne

  Chapter 2: The Unsolved Murder of Nancy Smyth

  Chapter 3: The Unsolved Murder of Inga-Maria Hauser

  Chapter 4: The Unsolved Murder of Brooke Pickard

  Chapter 5: The Unsolved Murder of Grace Livingstone

  Chapter 6: The Unsolved Murder of Stephen Hughes Connors

  Chapter 7: Irish Cold Cases

  Epilogue

  Images

  Dedication

  For Further Information …

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  About the Author

  About Gill & Macmillan

  FOREWORD

  By retired Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy

  A Sunday night in October 1981, and an impromptu engagement party is being held in Dublin. As family and friends celebrate with the happy couple, two armed and masked raiders suddenly burst in, shooting the newly engaged man dead. In a matter of seconds a robbery had gone wrong, and an innocent life was taken. I was the Detective Inspector in the District. The phone in my home rang at 11.50 p.m. that night and I remember going out immediately to The Anglers Rest pub in Knockmaroon, the home of the murdered man, Lorcan O’Byrne. Along with a team of detectives, I met with Lorcan’s shock-stricken and devastated family and friends. The scene was preserved immediately. Amid their grief, Lorcan’s loved ones found the strength to answer all our questions, giving important witness statements. Two men wearing balaclavas, one of whom was armed with a shotgun, had burst in the door of the O’Byrne home, which was above their family-run pub. The raiders were looking for the pub takings, but just moments after entering the O’Byrne home the two-man gang had fled empty-handed, having fired one shotgun blast, fatally wounding Lorcan. The gunman had entered a room where close to twenty people were celebrating the engagement of Lorcan and his fiancée Olive. Witnesses described the gunman and his accomplice, and also their distinctive getaway car. In the following hours and days back at Cabra Garda station myself and fellow officers held many case conferences. Descriptions of the suspects were circulated and the suspect transport described—a green Hillman Hunter. Information gleaned from enquiries suggested the suspects were originally from Dublin West.

  Within the next few days the sawn-off shotgun used in the murder was recovered. It had been hidden in undergrowth approximately five miles from the scene of the crime. The burnt-out shell of the Hillman Hunter was recovered on the banks of the canal near Monasterevin and the engine found in the canal. One of the culprits was soon charged, and later served a sentence for Lorcan’s killing. However, the man who actually fired the shotgun was not brought to justice, despite our very best efforts. Thirty years later he is the reason that this particular cold case has now been re-opened.

  Barry Cummins has researched this case and many other cases of homicide and abduction spanning the past five decades, which he recounts in great detail in this superb book. He brings to the fore the suffering and pain of those left behind, the pain of parents, of siblings, of partners, children and friends of the victims. He highlights that cold-case reviews can bear fruit, particularly where readers of this book may have fragments of information and might now be willing to divulge this information to the right people.

  He begins the book with the case of Brian McGrath, aged 43, who disappeared from his home in Westmeath in 1987. After six and a half years a body was found in the garden of his home. Because of the limits of forensics at the time, the body was not identifiable then as that of Brian McGrath, but subsequently in 2008 this body was exhumed and a DNA profile of the body identified it to be that of the missing man. Charges of murder followed and justice was finally brought to bear. Through his description of this harrowing case, Barry Cummins shows us that cold cases re-visited can, and do, bring closure.

  Similarly, we remember the case of Kildare woman Phyllis Murphy, who disappeared in Newbridge in December 1979. Her body was found 23 days later in the Wicklow Mountains. Many suspects were interviewed then, including the person eventually charged in 1999 and who was finally convicted in 2002 of Phyllis’s murder. Again Barry shows a cold case revisited with success due to DNA profiling, which was not available in 1979. I personally believe a DNA database for our country to support investigations of this kind would be of enormous benefit.

  Barry Cummins includes in this book many unsolved murder cases in Northern Ireland. One chapter examines how a full DNA profile found at the scene of the murder of German student Inga-Maria Hauser is now available to police, which was not the case in 1988 when she was murdered. The PSNI is constantly encouraging anyone with any snippet of information regarding the case to phone, even with what may appear to the caller to be irrelevant information. A phone call could solve this case.

  Barry sensitively shows us in this book some of the cases solved and the many others unsolved north and south of the border. One solved case is that of the murder of Lily Smith, strangled in her apartment in Belfast in 1988. It was 23 years later that the culprit was identified due to DNA from bloodstains which had been retained from the time of the murder. Barry outlines the value of re-opening murder cases because of modern forensic science developments.

  Barry draws to our attention in this well-researched book the sadness encountered when children are murdered and when children are missing and not found or their bodies are not recovered.

  He remembers the missing and murdered in all of Ireland, north and south of the border, during the years of the Troubles. He includes detail of the murders of Gardaí, RUC, Prison and Army personnel in the book.

  Barry Cummins undertook an onerous task when he began the immense research which has resulted in this work. The aim of the book is to highlight the plight of many suffering people and also to highlight these heinous crimes. Among the cases which are profiled in detail, the victims include a man looking forward to being married, an elderly widow, a teenage backpacker, a mother of two, a father of four and a 12-year-old boy. Each unsolved murder has left a grieving family still seeking justice. Barry’s work may prompt people who have knowledge that could solve or help to solve these cases to come forward or it may indeed prick the consciences of those responsible to come forward. Some of these criminals are older and possibly wiser now, and may be ridden with guilt. This book may stir them to at least help families and the authorities get answers. Barry outlines the several ways in which this can be done.

  The recently revisited cold cases which Barry delves into disturb us. These cases whet our appetites for further information and he renews our interest in new developments. Barry shakes us. He stirs us. He believes that the dead, their living relatives, and the murderers, must not be forgotten. He ensures that these people and the cases connected with them will not be forgotten until their cases are solved. He shows us that nowadays, with new resources for investigation, there is hope that these cold cases will finally be put to rest.

  My congratulations and best wishes to Barry Cummins for this important work.

  Noel Conroy was a member of An Garda Síochána for 44 years, from 1963 until 2007. He was Garda Commissioner from 2003 until November 2007. One of his last acts as Commissioner was to oversee the establishment of the Garda Serious Crime Review Team, more commonly known as the Cold Case Unit.

  PROLOGUE

  The exhumation began at first light. Members of the Garda Cold Case Unit and local detectives from Westmeath stood silently as Brian McGrath’s body was removed from Whitehall Cemetery. It was just after 6 a.m. on Monday 19 May 2008. A small digger began the task of removing topsoil from the plot, which was sited close to a wall
. When the digger finished its work, Gardaí completed the task of removing the coffin from the ground. The exhumation was done in dignified silence; it was a momentous moment in terms of a fresh murder investigation, but it was also a time for reflection on what Brian McGrath had suffered all those years before. Those present knew that it couldn’t yet be said beyond all mathematical certainty that the body was indeed the father of four last seen alive 21 years ago. That was the whole point of the exhumation—to establish once and for all the identity of the man whose bones had been found hidden beneath the soil near Brian McGrath’s home at Coole in 1993. People might have long believed the body was Brian’s, but now as part of a cold-case investigation it had to be proven beyond all doubt that the body was Brian’s. The evidence had to stand up in court.

  By the time they came to stand at the graveside in Whitehall that morning, cold-case detectives had worked for months re-investigating the suspected murder of 42-year-old Brian McGrath. They had built up a picture of how it was believed Brian had been beaten to death, secretly buried, dug up and burned, and then secretly buried again. It was a most distressing crime, but one which seemed very solvable to the newly established Garda Serious Crime Review Team, or Cold Case Unit as it would become known.

  When Gardaí had initially found Brian’s remains near his home in 1993 the body had been secretly resting there since 1987. Forensic science in the early 1990s was nowhere near as advanced as it is today, and the bones recovered in 1993 could not be identified as Brian’s to a mathematical certainty. Gardaí in 1993 had a great deal of information to go on, in what was a major murder enquiry. They only found the body because they were specifically looking for Brian and believed he had been murdered and buried on his land. They had arrested the two suspects, but in the absence of an absolute identification of the human remains, the DDP would not permit charges to be brought. The suspects were released and the body was later buried in 1993 without being formally identified. It was a most complicated, bizarre and violent murder which seemed destined to remain unsolved. Over time the case began to gather dust. And then in late 2007 the Garda Cold Case Unit was formed.

  It was a retired detective who alerted cold-case detectives to the unsolved murder of Brian McGrath. John Maunsell had been a detective in the Dublin suburb of Tallaght, and in 1993 had received crucial information about the murder in Westmeath. Maunsell had been involved in a separate successful investigation into the murder of a woman in Dublin, and it was through publicity surrounding his role in that case which led someone to contact him about the murder of Brian McGrath. John Maunsell agreed to meet the person in a pub in Dublin, and they outlined how Brian McGrath had been missing from Westmeath since 1987, and that Brian’s daughter Veronica was very distressed and wanted to tell what she knew.

  Veronica met with John Maunsell and his colleague Kevin Tunney and outlined how she had seen her then fiancé Colin Pinder and her own mother beat her father to death. She had seen her mother Vera goad her future son-in-law into attacking Brian without warning sometime in March or April 1987. Veronica had seen her father being beaten with various implements and had seen him being struck by both Colin Pinder and Vera McGrath. Veronica had witnessed the subsequent secret burial of her father in the back garden, she had also seen the body being subsequently placed on a large fire after it had been dug up, and she knew her father’s body had been reburied on land just beside the family home. Detectives Maunsell and Tunney spoke with Gardaí in Westmeath, who carried out a search of the McGrath land and they soon found a body where Veronica said it would be. Colin Pinder had by now returned to his native Liverpool while Veronica’s mother Vera still lived at the family home in Westmeath. Both were interviewed by detectives and a file was sent to the DPP, but word eventually came back that it was impossible to positively identify the body and in those circumstances the DPP was unwilling to press charges.

  John Maunsell never forgot the case. While the murder hadn’t happened in his district, he was the Garda who had first received the crucial information, he was the person Veronica McGrath had trusted enough to come forward and make a statement to. Maunsell had been greatly frustrated when no charges had later been brought, and he often thought about Veronica and her late father, who had been denied justice. When he heard about the formation of the Garda Cold Case Unit he quickly picked up the phone and rang one of his former colleagues, Maurice Downey, who was one of the members of the newly formed cold case squad. Maunsell and Downey had known each other from their days in the Central Detective Unit, and Downey listened carefully as Maunsell outlined the history of the unsolved murder which was on his mind.

  John Maunsell was convinced that with the right amount of time and resources this was a case which could still be cracked. Soon after speaking with the retired detective, Maurice Downey went and got the full murder file from the Garda archives in Santry. He studied it thoroughly and spoke with his colleagues, including the head of the Cold Case Unit, Detective Superintendent Christy Mangan. They all agreed with John Maunsell’s belief that this was a case that was indeed ‘solvable’. There were prime suspects, there was a crucial witness, a body had been recovered, and advances in forensics might now prove the unlocking of the mystery. The unsolved murder of Brian McGrath became one of the top priorities for the Cold Case Unit. First and foremost they would have to see that the body in Whitehall Cemetery was formally identified.

  As plans were made for the exhumation, members of the Cold Case Unit met with Brian McGrath’s three sons, Brian Jnr, Andrew and Edward. In January 2008 the three men permitted Gardaí to take swabs known as buccal swabs from the inside of their mouths. Those swabs gave full DNA profiles of all three men and would allow for a direct comparison with the body at Whitehall Cemetery. It was only the DNA of Brian Snr’s children which would be able to be compared to the as yet unidentified body. Brian had been brought up in State care after being abandoned as a newborn baby in Monaghan in 1944. He never knew his birth parents or whether he had any brothers or sisters.

  Now Brian’s own three sons were to provide the DNA which would help to identify their father. The three men had been young children when their father had mysteriously vanished in 1987. In early 2008 they were told that their father’s disappearance and suspected murder was being looked at anew and a major re-investigation was underway.

  Detectives knew that once the exhumation began on 19 May the media would soon find out and the whole country would know about the cold-case review. Sometimes Gardaí choose to publicise cases they are re-investigating and other times they like to work away quietly. In Brian McGrath’s case, Gardaí were working behind the scenes on the case for a number of months before it hit the headlines on 19 May.

  On 8 May 2008 Inspector Brendan Burke and Sergeant Michael Buckley of the Cold Case Unit met Forensic Anthropologist Laureen Buckley and State Pathologist Marie Cassidy to discuss the plans for the exhumation at the cemetery in Westmeath, and also for a major fresh search of the McGrath family home at Coole nearby. Arrangements were made for a company called Earthsound Associates to carry out a geophysical survey of the field beside the McGrath home to detect any evidence of soil disturbance. The following day Detective Inspector Martin Cadden from Athlone requested an order for the exhumation of the bones of a man from Whitehall Cemetery which had been discovered at Coole in 1993. The request was granted and preparations were made for the operation to begin at first light on Monday 19 May. Within two hours of the exhumation taking place, news of the operation broke on the 8 a.m. RTÉ radio news. Gardaí issued a lengthy press release confirming that detectives were indeed re-investigating the disappearance of Brian McGrath, who was last seen alive in early 1987.

  Dr Stephen Clifford of the Forensic Science Laboratory and Dr Marie Cassidy provided crucial work in what would be the first major success for the Garda Cold Case Unit. It was Dr Clifford who positively identified the exhumed bones as being those of Brian McGrath. In order to make a positive match he had first ground down some
bone material from the remains to allow DNA to be extracted and captured with a special DNA kit. He had then compared the profile he generated with the samples from the three sons of Brian McGrath. His result was as clear as could be—the probability of the bones being those of Brian McGrath was greater than 99.5%. It was a phenomenal success—DNA technology had advanced to such a degree that bones which had been burned and buried in a field for six years before being buried in a coffin for fifteen years had still been successfully analysed to give a clear match. Forensic science was unveiling the truth about this cold case. Brian McGrath’s wife had consistently claimed he had gone off and abandoned the family and was living in another country. And all that time he was actually lying buried in the field beside his home.

  Dr Marie Cassidy studied Brian McGrath’s lower jaw, or mandible. Despite the extensive degradation which Brian’s body had suffered at the hands of his killers, the lower jaw was still almost complete. Dr Cassidy found evidence of a fracture between two right teeth, which separated the bone into two parts. The right half of the jaw bone was unburned and it was clear to the State Pathologist that the fracture to the jaw had happened before the body had been put on a fire by the killers. Marie Cassidy said such significant blunt force to the jaw was consistent with a blow from a blunt object. Such violent trauma could cause death from blood inhalation as a result of a mouth injury, or bleeding into the skull cavity, or a brain injury. Ultimately it would prove impossible to establish what exact form of death Brian McGrath had suffered, but the exhumation allowed not only for his identity to be established, but also for the post-mortem examination to be carried out, which found clear evidence of violence. It all tied in with the account given by his daughter Veronica, who said she had seen her father being beaten to death in a sustained attack. This was no longer an investigation into the discovery of an unidentified male body. This was now very much an investigation into the murder of Brian McGrath.