Accused ‘had clean hands when he showed garda the body in slurry tank’
Body found in underground tank covered by concrete court is told
THE first garda on the scene when Bobby Ryan’s body was found noticed the accused man’s hands were “extremely clean” considering he had been working with slurry, a jury heard yesterday
Farmer Patrick Quirke, 50, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of the part-time DJ on a date between June 3, 2011 and April 2013.
Mr Ryan’s body was found in a run-off tank on the farm leased by the accused at Fawnagown, Co Tipperary, in 2013.
The prosecution claims Quirke murdered the victim so he could get back with the deceased’s girlfriend Mary Lowry, with whom the accused had previously had an affair.
Insp Padraic Powell told the Central Criminal Court he was the first at the scene. When he arrived Quirke and his wife were sitting on a wall. He said the accused brought him to the tank where he said he had located a body.
The tank was underground, covered by a concrete slab and there was a pipe from a slurry tank going down into it. Insp Powell couldn’t see anything from a standing position so he knelt down and could see what appeared to be the “outline of human remains”.
He said visibility wasn’t great and the body was covered in what appeared to be a transparent algae.
Insp Powell added he observed Quirke was “extremely clean” considering he had been working with slurry.
Under cross-examination he told Lorcan Staines for the defence he accepted he did not make a statement about what he saw that day, including about the cleanliness of the accused’s hands, until more than two years later and he made no notes at the time.
The jury also heard from Garda statements given by the accused after Mr Ryan went missing and following the discovery of his remains.
Det Gda Martin Steed told the court he took a statement from Quirke in June 2011 at the accused man’s home.
On the day Mr Ryan went missing Quirke said he saw Ms Lowry that morning but didn’t stop to talk to her.
In November Padraic Powell that year Det Gda Kieran Keane took another statement from Quirke in which he said he wished to add to his previous statement that he began seeing Ms Lowry in early 2008 after her husband died.
ANGRY
They were “off and on for a while”, he said, and they both knew there was no future in it.
The break-up, he said, was not amicable. She had met Mr Ryan a few months before and Quirke was, he said, “very angry with her” when he found out. On one occasion he said he saw texts from Mr Ryan on her phone and took the phone and replied that
Ms Lowry was with him now. In March 2013 Quirke gave a cautioned voluntary statement to gardai after he was seen on CCTV around Ms Lowry’s home on December 3, 2012.
Det Gda Steed said the accused told gardai he went into Rita Lowry’s home – Mary Lowry’s mother-in-law who lives in an adjoining property.
While in the shed area he noticed there were women’s underwear on the clothes line and looked at the label because, he said, he was “curious”.
Quirke took the underwear off the line and then put them back.
He said he then tried a key he had previously found in the yard in the lock of her front door and when he pushed the handle it opened.
Quirke heard the beep of the alarm and “panicked, having realised what I had done was wrong”. He got in his jeep and drove away.
The following day he explained to Mary Lowry what had happened and gave her the key.
The trial continues. PROBE