Traces of an old note... a horrific list of injuries, and a case that ‘everyone is talking about’
Mr Moonlight trial hears wounds would have required ‘great degree of force’
GIVEN the scale of the media coverage of this case, it’s unsurprising that Judge Eileen Creedon found herself telling the six men and six women yesterday morning, that the murder trial of farmer Patrick Quirke was ‘being discussed by just about everyone in the country’.
In advising the jury that they would not hear evidence yesterday and that they would not be required again until next Wednesday, she warned them not to talk to anybody about the evidence.
Judge Creedon reminded the jurors that they should decide the case based only on what they hear in court and said she was ‘very conscious’ the pressure brought to them from the level of the media coverage.
It had been a busy week for the jury in Court 13 of the Criminal Courts of Justice. Earlier, they heard evidence from May 17, 2013.
Patrick Quirke, 50, the man accused of murdering DJ Bobby Ryan, aka Mr Moonlight, was at his home in Breanshamore, Co. Tipperary, having spent over four hours the previous evening answering questions from gardaí in the local Garda station. He had gone voluntarily and declined to have a solicitor present.
Mr Ryan went missing on June 3, 2011 after leaving his girlfriend Mary Lowry’s home at about 6.30am. Mr Quirke had previously also been in a relationship with Ms Lowry.
As gardaí descended on his home that Friday morning in 2013, Mr Quirke was cautioned and handed a warrant by Detective Sergeant John Keane. The document, issued earlier by a judge, listed the items being searched for as Mr Ryan’s clothing, footwear, jewellery, keys and a weapon. ‘The media were wrong when they said clothes and a wallet were found in the tank with the body,’ said Mr Quirke after reading it.
A search of the house and lands began, with focus quickly turning to an office on the property.
It was here, in a small room, that Detective John Walsh came across a series of notes on a lined A4 sheet of paper. The note began: ‘Mary last one to see him? Body naked either murdered and clothes taken off or never left house?’ The words ‘never left house’ were underlined.
The note also contained the question, ‘why did she find his van so quickly, why did she look for him in a place where she knew he would not have needed to go?’ The note went on to say: ‘V strange, token search?’
Other questions included: ‘Why wouldn’t she act on leads by traveling salesman? Why did she give varying accounts of how long he was in yard before he left for work? Two mins? 10 mins? Why was she so adamant of no activity took place in yard eg second? How would she hear? Wasn’t always possible. Why did she rip down photos of bobby after Ryan family put them up? Why was she relieved after Crime Call, it was a rubbish programme and no help to jog anyone’s memory?’
On Wednesday, the court heard that the same A4 page contained more than what was visible to the naked eye. After an initial inspection, it was sent to Detective Garda Jeremiah Moloney from the Document and Handwriting section of the Technical Bureau.
He explained that when a person is writing, the pages below can develop indentations that may not be visible to the naked eye. Using an Electrostatic Detection Device, known as an ESDA machine, he said it is possible to develop those indentations. Det. Garda Moloney explained to the court that he could not decipher all the words and so left a blank where he could not make the word out.
When he carried out the procedure on the document, he said he was able to record on one side of the page that someone had written: ‘What the guards will know.’
Two lines below that he found the words: ‘Murdered poss in house.’ Four lines below that was the word ‘location’ and a question mark.
Further down the page he found ‘Mary \ walk \ kids to school?’ and the word ‘yes’ with a ring around it.
On line 16 of the page he found the words: ‘dispose of clothes\phone\any other evidence.’
Between lines 20 and 21 were the words ‘phone pinged’.
On line 25 it read: ‘Mary had to see him, be with him.’
Line 29 read: ‘Mary’ followed by something illegible and then: ‘Needle in haystack.’
Line 36 read: ‘Did not act on leads ie travelling salesman.’
Line 37 read: ‘Bobby stayed in yard ie 2 mins\10 mins.’
On the other side of the page were a series of indentations which the garda said included the following words: ‘pallet chains,’ ‘Gary... empty tank two loads’, ‘agitate need water’, ‘get load of... following’, ‘Tuesday’.
Michael Bowman, SC for the prosecution, put it to him that it appeared more words could be observed but that he was not confident enough to transcribe them and Det. Garda Moloney agreed, saying: ‘Anything I couldn’t interpret or read I didn’t transfer into handwritten form.’
Words might be less legible because the pressure on the page might not be so high, he agreed.
Under cross-examination by Lorcan Staines, SC for the defence, he agreed that there were much more indentations on the page. Mr Staines put it to him that there was ‘at some point so much cross writing you can’t make out anything’ and he agreed.
Later in the week, the focus moved to the mobile phone data examined as part of the investigation.
Telecommunications expert Garda Tony O’Brien took the jury through phone records he had retrieved concerning the phones of Bobby Ryan,
Too harrowing for the Ryan family
Pat Quirke, Mary Lowry and other family members.
Garda O’Brien revealed that a text was retrieved from Ms Lowry’s phone in September 2011. It read: ‘U tink u r so col out partyn lik Bobby nevr existd. We no u hidn somethn nd wer gonta watch u till u crak.’ Written properly this would read: ‘You think you are so cool out partying like Bobby never existed. We know you are hiding something and we are going to watch you until you crack.’
Garda O’Brien told Eddie Doocey, BL for the defence, that gardaí investigated the source of the text but were unsuccessful.
Under cross examination, Garda O’Brien said no messages were recovered from a Nokia phone that was taken from Mary Lowry in June 2011. He had gone through the handset and he said that if anything was relevant he would have transcribed that. In September of that year, an examination was carried out on a different Nokia device belonging to Ms Lowry, with Garda O’Brien saying that ‘perhaps’ she had upgraded it. That phone was downloaded on September 19, 2011 and the anonymous text was retrieved from it. Gardaí were alerted to the text because Ms Lowry reported it to them and made a statement.
Further data retrieved from Mary Lowry’s phone showed she made at least six attempts to call Bobby on June 5, 2011, two days after his disappearance. She made two attempts to call him in September 2011. A series of other calls to and from Bobby Ryan’s number in the days before and after his disappearance were outlined in court.
On June 3, 2011, his son Robert sent a text message to a number saved on his phone as ‘Daddy’ at 10.44am asking, ‘Da are you not working today?’ Garda O’Brien confirmed the text message never reached Bobby Ryan’s phone because it appeared it had stopped receiving data by that time on the day he disappeared.
Garda O’Brien also told Mr Humphries that records showed that on the day Mr Ryan’s body was recovered, Mr Quirke’s phone called his wife Imelda’s phone at 12.33pm, a call that lasted eight seconds. His phone then called a vet some seconds later. Within a minute of that the phone called voicemail and a minute later called Mr Quirke’s wife two more times. On the last occasion the call lasted for 36 seconds. Mr Doocey also asked the witness to bring the jury through CCTV footage taken from Ms Lowry’s home on the day Bobby Ryan’s body was found.
The footage showed Mr Quirke arriving shortly after midday in a truck, followed about 40 minutes later by his wife Imelda. Ms Lowry arrived a few minutes after that and the first Garda van arrived at 1.20pm, following a phone call from Ms Quirke to alert gardaí to the presence of the body in the tank.
As the trial, now in its ninth week, went on, the medical evidence of radiologist Dr Anthony Ryan proved too harrowing for Bobby Ryan’s family. As Dr Ryan detailed the catalogue of injuries suffered by the victim, several family members became upset and left court.
Dr Ryan noted that the victim suffered ‘multiple fractures’ to his head and face caused by several impacts with a blunt force.
The ‘constellation’ of injuries included a broken cheek bone that had fractured into two pieces and a nasal bridge fracture that resulted in the bone being pushed into the face.
CT scans of Mr Ryan’s body revealed multiple fractures to the head, face and ribs and a fracture to the femur – a bone in the upper leg. Mr Ryan said the skull and facial fractures would have required a minimum of four different ‘blunt force impacts’.
He said the injuries could have been caused by being struck and thrown by a vehicle, but he could not rule out an assault.
Several injuries to the skull were most likely from impact that came from ‘behind and above’ or ‘directly behind’. The injuries to the face were most likely from a direct frontal impact.
He said that when he sees such injuries from a hammer he expects the face to be ‘depressed’ but this injury was not like that, leading him to believe the injury resulted from an object larger than a hammer. He added that the face could have impacted with a wall, the ground or a vehicle and that it was hit with ‘considerable force’.
The witness agreed with defence counsel Lorcan Staines SC that the fracture to the femur, the strongest bone in the human body surrounded by tough muscle, would have required a ‘great degree of force’. He said such fractures are usually caused by falls from a significant height or when a pedestrian is struck by a vehicle.
The combination or pattern of fractures to the head, face, ribs and leg was always caused by either a fall from a height or a road accident.
While the witness said a bat could be used to fracture the femur, the u-shaped nature of the fracture
‘Da are you not working today?’
‘Injuries like car going ‘up to 50kph’
raised a doubt about that possibility. He further explained that when a pedestrian is struck by a vehicle they suffer injuries from the impact with the car and then suffer further injuries when they hit the ground or anything else in the environment.
He also agreed with defence counsel Lorcan Staines that some of the rib fractures could have been caused by small pieces of concrete falling into the tank during the operation to recover Mr Ryan’s remains. However, he did not believe falling concrete caused the fractures to the face and skull or the femur. Under re-examination, the witness told Mr Bowman that if the injuries were caused by a vehicle it would have to be travelling at a minimum of 30kph but closer to 50kph.
catherine.fegan@dailymail.ie