Got away with murder
children sued the State over the investigation and his alleged wrongful arrest in 2008. Gardai denied the allegations but the case was settled out of court after five days. A statement said he was entitled to the “full and unreserved presumption of innocence”.
Before the settlement, the court heard how the day after they buried Grace, the Livingstone family were having a meal in Malahide when gardai asked them to give blood samples. They agreed. Tara, who was pregnant, was reduced to tears after being questioned about her parents’ marriage: was her father violent or unfaithful? She claimed a garda told her they were “sure it was her father” who had murdered her mother.
Three months later, on March 3, James Livingstone was arrested at his home for possession of a firearm on the day of his wife’s murder. The High Court heard that while in custody, he was shown photographs of his wife’s dead body and told that his daughter was a whore and his son was on drugs. Mr Livingstone was released without charge.
In August 1993, gardai completed their investigation file on Grace Livingstone’s murder. It effectively maintained that James Livingstone was the chief suspect but could not prove that he had done it. Later that month, deputy commissioner Tom O’Reilly drafted in Tom Connolly,
then a highly experienced detective superintendent, to review the file.
In his book Detective: A Life
Upholding the Law, published last year, Connolly included a chapter on Grace Livingstone’s murder, outlining how he and a small team set themselves up at Malahide Garda Station to review the files.
He questioned the suspicion that James Livingstone had shot his wife when he came home from work before 6pm. He questioned why no one — not the nurse, the doctor, nor the two gardai first at the crime scene — detected the distinctive odour left by a discharged firearm. He questioned why no one reported hearing a noise at 6pm. He set up elaborate tests to show that the gunshot odour should have lingered for up to an hour-and-a-half.
He spoke to Dr Moodley, who said his professional opinion remained that Grace Livingstone was dead for about two hours when he saw her at 6.35pm. When Connolly put this to Dr Harbison, he replied: “I could not argue with Dr Moodley’s opinion.”
A Crimeline reconstruction broadcast on RTE in 1994 shook out more witnesses. There were now three people who had noticed a motorist with collar-length hair driving erratically in a reddish car in the vicinity on the day of the murder — but this motorist was never traced.
Another witness came forward with information about a hitch-hiker. He said the morning after Grace Livingstone’s murder, he picked up a man in Limerick. He was young, tall, thin, and wore a long coat and black boots. The hitch-hiker told him he left Dublin at 3am that day, got a lift to Limerick for a “look around” and was returning to Dublin to collect his dole. When news came on the radio about the Livingstone murder, he said the man became agitated. The motorist reported this to gardai later that day, but no one from the investigation team contacted him.
Connolly’s team took up the lead. They gleaned enough information from the motorist to trace the hitch-hiker in the UK. He turned out to have a conviction for assaulting a woman, and used to have a girlfriend whose sister lived close to the Livingstones. He admitted to detectives he was the hitch-hiker in question but denied the motorist’s claims that he had got upset at hearing the news reports of the Livingstone murder. He also denied owning a long coat. His fingerprints did not match those found on the black tape.
Connolly also revisited five charity workers who were collecting money in The Moorings between 4pm and 6pm on the day of the murder. Their fingerprints had been taken, but not from the correct finger, according to Connolly. Only four of the five were available when the review team went to re-take them. The fifth had moved back to England — he, too, was tracked down. His charity colleagues accused him of stealing — which he denied — and he had convictions for theft. He, too, proved a negative match for the fingerprints.
Connolly’s review concluded that Grace was murdered in her bedroom in Malahide between 4.30pm and 5pm.
This weekend, I asked Tom Connolly who he thinks killed Grace. “Considering all of the circumstances and the evidence available, it is most likely in my view that the crime was committed by the man seen in the porch by the landscape gardener,” he said.
“The landscape gardener was asked a number of times in the first investigation was it possible that it was a woman he saw. He was quite sure that the person he saw was a young man.
“This is a murder investigation. This is the number one suspect and he was written off on the theory that the witness made a mistake in believing that it was a man.”
James Livingstone declined to be interviewed for this article but it is believed the family have their own suspicions.
Mr Livingstone sold The Moorings many years ago but still lives in Malahide. Now 78, he remains close to Grace’s family. Grace’s only surviving sister spends Christmas with James and the children every year. When I rang him last week, he was on the Shannon with his grandchildren, getting great joy from teaching them how to fish.
The Garda’s Serious Crime Review team have completed a cold case review 24 years after Grace Livingstone’s murder. This weekend, the Garda press office said its recommendations are “being actioned by the investigative team in Coolock”.
‘Forensic tests didn’t support the theory the shot was fired into a pillow’