Quirke team says Mary Lowry is ‘unreliable’
Mary Lowry had engaged ‘in striking revisionism’, says Pat Quirke’s defence counsel in closing speech
MARY Lowry is an unreliable witness whose ‘selfreported’ suggestion that she was vulnerable when she began an affair with Pat Quirke was ‘endorsed, adapted and repeated ad nauseam’ by gardaí, the defence has told the jury in the Mr Moonlight trial.
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 discovered by Mr Quirke in an underground run-off tank on Mary Lowry’s farm almost two years after he went missing.
As Mr Quirke’s defence team began its closing speech yesterday, Bernard Condon SC told the jury that Mary Lowry is a ‘witness of high unreliability’ who had engaged in ‘striking revisionism’ during her testimony.
He said a large part of the prosecution’s case was based on her evidence and that many of the allegations she ‘threw across the courtroom’ at Patrick Quirke would not last five minutes if made on their own in a court.
Mr Condon said that the jury would ‘not be surprised whose side the guards were on’ when they came to interview Pat Quirke.
He said gardaí ‘wholeheartedly’ adopted propositions made by Ms Lowry. In particular, the ‘selfreported’ suggestion that she was vulnerable when she began an affair with Mr Quirke was ‘endorsed, adopted and repeated ad nauseam’.
He said the jury must not allow itself to be dictated to or influenced by the views of the gardaí.
Mr Condon reminded the jury that Mary Lowry came to court and told them she wants to ‘solve this case’. He said: ‘That’s a very dangerous witness, engaged in a process they should not be engaged in.’ He said her evidence is ‘highly questionable’ because it is given, ‘through the prism of trying to solve the case’. He said the jury should be careful of her evidence and suggested that she had, from the start, put a spin on her evidence by saying that her late husband was not great friends with Mr Quirke.
He said there was nothing to support her claim that Mr Quirke was
‘Don’t be influenced by views of gardaí’
in her porch when she came home one afternoon or that he took her passport. She also alleged he assaulted her but there is ‘nothing to support that, nothing’, he said.
Mr Condon said that Mr Bowman’s attempts to offer opinions in his own closing speech the previous day was a ‘trespass into their sovereignty’ as jurors.
He said this was a case ‘based on a theory’ and that there was ‘no hard evidence’.
Mr Condon said he would offer the jury a list of the ‘unanswered questions’ in the case. He asked them to apply their ‘greatest skill: scepticism’ to the evidence that had been put before them.
He told the jury members they could not come back in six months and ask if they had made the right decision, that there was ‘no second chance’ and this was ‘too serious’ and profound.
This trial is about people’s lives, he said, principally Pat Quirke’s. He said they must approach the trial coldly and dispassionately, like a scientist, and must start from the point that Pat Quirke is innocent. Mr Condon said the jury was about to go on a train journey with the prosecution and that the fuel they needed to travel uphill was evidence.
He said they were parked at the ‘station of innocence’ and needed ‘grade A fuel’ in the form of evidence to get them to the station at the top marked guilty.
He said the evidence is ‘incredibly thin’ and the defence was there to test it.
He said there were some things about the evidence that ‘grabbed’ him, such as former Deputy State Pathologist Dr Khalid not being present when the body was removed from the tank. But, he said, the prosecution had adopted the approach of ‘so what, nothing to be seen here, don’t worry about that.’
He pointed out that photographs had been lost by gardaí, that a pathologist had described the pathology evidence as ‘suboptimal’, gardaí had made fresh statements during the trial and fingerprints found in Bobby Ryan’s van were not tested until week ten of the trial.
He said the trial is ‘forensically barren’ on what happened to the ‘unfortunate Bobby Ryan. His last movements, interactions, events, we know nothing about’.
The pathologist, he reminded them, said there would have been a lot of blood but there’s no evidence of it and there’s no evidence of a clean-up. He asked: ‘When were his clothes taken off, when, where, by whom? Throughout that area of the case, the centre of the case, you have nothing, absolutely nothing.’
He described the relationship between Mary Lowry and Pat Quirke as ‘dysfunctional’. They had an affair, he said, but, ‘this is not a court of morality.’ He also pointed out that the case had received ‘enormous press coverage’, adding: ‘I don’t know why. I think there’s a prurience to it.’
Addressing Mr Quirke being seen on CCTV taking underwear from Ms Lowry’s line, he said none of us are ‘whiter than white’ when we conduct ourselves in private. He added: ‘It doesn’t look great but what does it really establish?’
He cautioned the jury against establishing anything profound from it, adding: ‘They were in a sexual relationship and people have all sorts of sexual interests and so what. There may be less to it than meets the eye as opposed to more to it than meets the eye.’
At the heart of much of what went on between Mary Lowry and Mr Quirke, he said, is a broken relationship.
He added: ‘Attached to that can be bitterness and anger and unhappiness and they get mushed up together and people who loved each other deeply can find themselves in the family law courts roaring abuse at each other.’