‘Cable ties and woman's hair clip found with body’
No clothes on remains, murder trial is told
‘I wasn’t surprised’
A WOMAN’S hair clip and several cable ties were among items in the underground tank where Bobby Ryan’s remains were found, the Central Criminal Court has heard.
Patrick Quirke, 50, of Breanshamore, Co. Tipperary, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Bobby Ryan, 52, a DJ known as Mr Moonlight, on a date between June 3, 2011, and April 2013.
Mr Ryan’s body was found by Mr Quirke in an underground tank on Mary Lowry’s farm almost two years after he went missing. The prosecution claims he murdered Mr Ryan so he could rekindle an affair with Ms Lowry 52, the deceased’s girlfriend, from whom Mr Quirke had rented the farm.
Yesterday Garda Gerry Canty, a crime scene examiner, told the court that he visited the scene at Fawnagowan, Co. Tipperary, the day after Mr Ryan’s remains were found and photographed a number of items that were taken from the tank.
These included, he said, bone fragments, a woman’s hair clip, cable ties, tubing, buttons and pipe covers.
The items were placed in an evidence bag and marked as exhibits in the case.
Garda Canty told Lorcan Staines SC, defending, there was no discussion about those items when they were found and he said he did not have any thoughts about them.
When Mr Staines asked if he or any gardaí present were surprised that a woman’s hair clip was found in the tank where Mr Ryan’s body lay, the witness replied: ‘I wasn’t surprised and no-one else expressed surprise to me.’
Garda Canty agreed that he made his first statement in relation to what he saw at Fawnagowan in November 2018, five-and-a-half years after he visited the farm. He said he made the statement using notes he had written at the time. He accepted he did not mention the hair clip in his statement or his written notes.
The witness also accepted that the Garda exhibits chart stated that the evidence bag contained cable ties, a hair clip, tubing and pipe cover while the chart disclosed to the defence stated only that there were cable ties and pipe covers in the bag.
Earlier Detective Garda Sharon Langan of the ballistics section of the Garda Technical Bureau told the court that she visited the farm on April 30, 2013. When she looked into the tank she saw what she thought was a body lying face down in water or effluent. She watched as it was removed from the tank by firefighters wearing bio-hazard suits. Once the body had been removed it was laid on a sheet of plastic and wrapped up. It was ‘fairly decomposed’, she said, and she noted a gold watch but no clothes.
The following day she attended a postmortem carried out by Dr Khalid Jaber who handed her samples including muscle tissue, the watch, bone marrow, head hair, a maggot and a tooth. She bagged each of these so they could be delivered to forensic scientists for examination.
She also examined the deceased’s Citroën van and
agreed with Mr Staines that since Mr Ryan’s disappearance the van had been used in an RTÉ Crimecall programme and was also returned to the deceased’s son Robert Ryan Jr. As a result, she said she was ‘not optimistic’ about finding relevant evidence from it.
She further told Mr Staines that she could remember a large concrete lid being removed by a JCB digger from the tank where Mr Ryan’s remains were found and she remembered seeing the lid crack.
She didn’t make a note of the crack, she said, and didn’t mention it in her statement.
Mr Staines asked her if the removal of the lid was a significant event on the day and the witness replied: ‘No.’
Mr Staines said that everyone present knew that a body had been found in the tank and the decision was made to take the lid off in the hope that it would be done as efficiently as possible and with the least amount of destruction possible. ‘So when it shattered it would have been to the forefront of the minds of those watching,’ he said.
Garda Langan agreed with Mr Staines that it was best practice to leave a body in situ until all experts are on site.
She said this was an ‘ideal scenario’ when all experts would be available which was not always the case.
Garda Langan said there was no urgency and nobody had said they had to get the body out of the tank quickly.
The trial continues.