PHILIP CAIRNS
FRESH CLUES IN CASE AGAINST EAMON COOKE
Eamon Cooke was a vicious and cunning paedophile who preyed on boys as well as girls, writes Maeve Sheehan
IN THE late 1990s, a young man walked into a police station in England to report that he had been sexually abused as a child. He named the man who abused him as Eamon Cooke, operator of the pirate radio station Radio Dublin.
Cooke used to take him up the Dublin Mountains in his car. Years later, following his move to the UK, he decided to report Cooke. He agreed to make a formal statement to the police in England. The UK police sent the details of the young man’s complaint to An Garda Siochana. The complaint ended up being forwarded to detectives at Tallaght Garda Station who, as it happened, had already begun their own investigation into Cooke.
At the time, Cooke’s radio operation had moved from his house on Sarsfield Road in Inchicore to a shed in his back garden in Clondalkin, west Dublin. Disc jockeys had to walk through his house to go to work. One DJ came in from the back garden and caught Cooke molesting a child. He reported Cooke to gardai, according to sources, sparking the first criminal investigation into one of the city’s most rampant paedophiles. Frighteningly, he was then aged in his 60s and over previous decades, had left a long trail of destroyed childhoods in his wake.
News soon circulated that Cooke was under investigation and some of his victims began to come forward to gardai.
According to sources close to that investigation, one woman contacted the garda station to “offer a list of names” of people who had been abused by Cooke, including herself. Detectives interviewed “14 or 15” young men and women in Dublin who they suspected were abused by the DJ, according to the source. Four or five of them were boys.
None of the boys were willing to make formal witness statements. Detectives believed they were too afraid to do so. The young man who reported Cooke to the police in England later withdrew his complaint, according to the source. Gardai suspected Cooke “got” to him.
Although gardai suspected many more had been abused, Cooke went on trial in 2002 for sexual assaults on four women. Two of them were sisters that he abused in the mid-1980s. He abused the two others between 1974 and 1978. Cooke was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years. His conviction was later overturned on appeal and a retrial ordered.
When the retrial came around in 2007, the two sisters he had abused in the 1980s decided not to continue with their complaint against Cooke, according to sources close to the investigation. Cooke was tried on 42 counts of sexual assault against the two girls he had abused in the 1970s. Cooke was handed down another 10 year jail sentence in March of 2007. He was finally put away at 70 years of age.
The evidence against Cooke at both trials was harrowing. The courts heard how children played amongst the television sets, telephones and gadgets in his garage before he gradually lured them into the house and upstairs where he abused them and afterwards offered them money and sweets. He ensured their silence with threats that he would tell their parents or circulate the photographs
Cooke operated in the same paedophile playgrounds of Ballyfermot, Crumlin and Tallaght as Fr Bill Carney and Fr Tony Walsh, and with similar apparent immunity, even though several people tried to intervene.
One of them was James Dillon, a station manager and DJ in Radio Dublin. In 1978, an older girl at the station told him about her fears for what Cooke was doing to one of the younger girls. Dillon was disgusted. He set the girl up with a tape and told her to record what the younger girl had said, so they would have proof. Dillon gave the taped evidence to a local priest, who in turn broke the news to the girl’s family. The abused girl was Siobhan Kennedy McGuinness, who many years later wrote a book about her abuse at the hands of Cooke. Her family decided not to go to the police at that time (although years later, he was convicted of abusing her). Dillon informed staff and organised a walk-out from the station. Cooke staged his own broadcast to deny allegations that he brought girls into his studio to molest them.
Scores more children went on to play among the television sets and gadgets in Cooke’s garage.
He was at the height of his paedophile rampage in the mid-1980s when Philip Cairns disappeared. Philip was last seen on Ballyroan Road in Rathfarnham on Thursday, October 23, 1986. He had left Colaiste Eanna secondary school at 12.45pm and returned to his home for lunch. At 1.30pm, he left his home to return to the school, but never arrived.
His schoolbag was found the following week in a laneway near the school that had already been searched. Although it had been raining, the bag was dry, leading detectives to suspect it had been deliberately placed there after Philip disappeared.
When detectives finally came to investigate Cooke for child abuse in the late 1990s, they had no reason to link him to the disappearance of Philip. It was a high-profile, unsolved case that featured regularly in the media, in newspapers and on television, generally accompanied by prominent images of his smiling schoolboy face.
Around five or six people interviewed by detectives were abused by Cooke in the mid-1980s, when visiting his radio station, according to the source. None of them mentioned Philip Cairns, according to an informed source.
Publicly at least, the first time Philip’s disappearance was linked to Cooke was last Friday week, when dramatic new information leaked from the garda investigation room to RTE news that a woman had come forward to claim that Cooke may have killed Philip Cairns at the Radio Dublin studio.
But it appears that gardai have been aware of a possible link between the paedophile and Philip since 2011, when the woman first came forward.
She made contact with gardai following a 25th anniversary appeal for information on Philip Cairns in 2011, but was unable to make a statement. Exactly what she told garda at that time and how much detail she offered is not clear.
Gardai kept in touch with her, said sources.
In May, the woman agreed to make a formal, detailed statement on what she saw as a nine-year-old. One garda source said she had “very good reasons” not to come forward until now, but declined to elaborate on what those reasons were. Another source said she was terrified of Cooke and decided to make a statement when she learned he was dying.
The broad details of what she told gardai have since been widely reported. She was in the car with Cooke on the day he picked up Philip in October 1986. She said he took both of them to Radio Dublin studios in Inchicore. She said Cooke had promised him a visit to the radio station. There, Cooke (above) hit Philip Cairns with a blunt implement after a row broke out. When she went back into the room, she saw the boy on the floor, saw the blood and fainted. When she awoke, she was sitting in the back of Cooke’s car.
After her statement, detectives called to St Francis Hospice in Raheny to interview Cooke shortly before his death there on June 4, aged 79. He was receiving palliative care and was weak.
According to one source, Cooke confirmed that he knew Philip and he also confirmed Philip was in his car. Other reports have said that he confirmed that Philip was in his radio studio. His responses, although limited, were taken to have corroborated aspects of the woman’s statement.
As gardai followed up the dramatic new lead on Philip’s disappearance last month, Angela Copley — unaware of the developments — had been speaking to one of Cooke’s victims on the phone. Copley is a veteran community ac-activist from Ballyfermot. Over the years, she has supported victims of various paedophiles and abusers, including Cooke’s. She kept in touch with one of Cooke’s victims and they spoke periodically.
During this particular conversation, the woman told Copley that she had been told that another woman — also a victim of Cooke’s — had dropped Philip’s bag in the laneway, on Cooke’s instruction. She also offered a name to Copley. Copley resolved to tell the gardai and after a number of attempts, got through to a detective in Rathfarnham Garda Station on May 25, the next day.
Copley said she told the detective what her friend had told her. Last Thursday, the same detective called her to re-interview her about the information she passed on over the phone. Once again, she gave the detective the name she’d been given by her friend on the phone.
Copley said she does not know if this woman is the same woman who signed a statement last May to say that
‘One victim contacted gardai and offered a list of people who had been abused by Cooke... detectives interviewed up to 14 or 15 young men and women — four or five were boys’