Murder was ‘calculated and callous’
‘When you weave these strands together’
THERE was an ‘uncanny resemblance’ between evidence of words written on a page found in Patrick Quirke’s home and the narrative he was trying to communicate to gardaí, the Mr Moonlight trial has heard.
Concluding his closing argument yesterday, senior counsel Michael Bowman said Bobby Ryan’s death was a ‘callous, calculated, controlled murder’ and the only verdict available was to find Patrick Quirke guilty of murder.
He told the jury that in his voluntary interviews with gardaí, Mr Quirke had ‘engaged in a narrative’ about Ms Lowry.
He said an A4 sheet of paper later found at his home showed indentations of sentences including ‘what the guards will know’ and ‘dispose of clothes/phone/any other evidence’.
It also appeared to contain a series of questions including ‘why did she find the van so quickly? Why did she look for him in a place she knew he wouldn’t need to go?’
Mr Bowman asked the jury if it was a coincidence that Mr Quirke had ‘a template’ for what he was saying in his Garda interviews and that he had answers in relation to matters he wanted to communicate to gardaí.
He said there was an uncanny resemblance to the document and what he wanted to communicate. He also said Mr Quirke had given precise measurements of the tank in which Mr Ryan’s body was found and the depth of the sludge found in the bottom. He told the jury it was either ‘pure coincidence or very bad luck’ that he had identified with precision the depth of the sludge. He said this could only have been done by someone who had been in the tank.
Mr Bowman added that he was suggesting Quirke had deliberately discovered the body himself so that it wouldn’t be found by somebody else, which, he said, would have been ‘a whole different kettle of fish’. ‘That is the position he found himself in and why I suggest he discovered it himself,’ Mr Bowman said.
Ruling out suicide, he said Mr Ryan met with a ‘violent and brutal death’. This body, he said, had been stripped naked for forensic reasons and his death was ‘callous, calculated, controlled murder’. The prosecution can’t identify a specific weapon or time of death but, he said, it is clear that he died after leaving Mary Lowry’s home at 6.30am on June 3, 2011. The evidence, he said, clearly communicates motive. The recovery of the body, he added, is ‘anything but fortuitous but planned and designed’.
Finishing his speech, he concluded that Bobby Ryan was murdered by ‘somebody possessed of information and knowledge possessed only by Patrick Quirke.’
He added: ‘Patrick Quirke is guilty of the murder of Bobby Ryan on June 3, 2011. There is no other rational hypothesis consistent with innocence. The evidence has been laid painstakingly before you over the last 13 weeks.
‘When you weave those strands together it is of sufficient strength to bear the burden and weight placed upon it. There is no room left to doubt and the only verdict available to you is one of guilty of murder.’