Mary Lowry’s delighted peals of laughter rang out from the secretly recorded tape
In week 11 of the murder trial, the voice of the accused’s former lover was heard on a covert recording recovered from his home
IT seemed that every head in the public gallery of court number 13 was craned towards the door.
Michael Bowman, prosecuting counsel in the murder trial of Pat Quirke, had just recalled Mary Lowry to the witness box.
The court door opened and the room hushed as she walked quickly in, brown hair styled and wearing a smart purple jacket and purple and black leopard print scarf. She was perfectly groomed.
It has been almost eight weeks since her last appearance on the stand in the trial of her exlover for the murder of her new beau, Bobby Ryan, aka Mr Moonlight.
Her appearance this week was to confirm that it was her and her boyfriend’s voices on an audio recording found on a hard drive in Patrick Quirke’s house.
Ms Lowry confirmed that she had no idea she had been taped while apparently alone with Flor Cantillon, a man she began dating in March 2012, nine months after Bobby Ryan disappeared.
Bowman signalled to the court official to begin the eight-minute 19-second tape.
‘I don’t think I was jealous at that point’
There was a crackling of static and rustling across the court room before Ms Lowry’s voice could be heard. She was reading a newspaper problem page. It described a woman looking for advice about her cross-dressing husband.
The woman said she’d found knickers and a bra in her husband’s suitcase after he returned from a business trip, both of which had been worn.
Journalists in the packed press gallery waited with pens poised to transcribe the rest of the tape.
In the end, they didn’t get to write much as most of it was inaudible but the phrase ‘you fecker’ and the words, knickers, bra and masturbation, peppered the recording.
What was clear though were Mrs Lowry’s delighted peals of laughter evident throughout.
Mr Cantillon also appeared to read from the problem page.
While the tape was being played, Ms Lowry stared down at the desk in front of her, keeping her head turned from Quirke who was sitting to her right in the dock. He occasionally glanced at her. Earlier, Mr Cantillon, a small wiry man with dark sallow skin and white hair, smartly dressed in a blue shirt and trousers, had also listened to the tape and confirmed it was him.
In a low almost inaudible voice, he told the court that he’d met Ms Lowry at a dance in the Gleneagle Hotel in Killarney and they’d begun a two-year relationship.
‘I danced with her a couple of times (in Killarney)... we were in relationship for a good while.’
In January this year, he was contacted by gardaí who played him the tape. He said that he also had no idea he had been recorded by anyone.
He said he used to buy the ‘smalls’, newspapers like the Sun and the Sunday World and sometimes racing papers.
And did Mary Lowry have an interest in them? asked Bowman.
‘Yeah she would read the problem pages,’ he said.
The audio recording was found on equipment seized from Patrick Quirke’s home in May 2013, 18 days after he found Bobby Ryan’s remains in an underground tank on land he leased from Mary Lowry.
Mr Ryan had been missing for almost two years at that stage and Quirke had been given notice to quit lease on the farmland by Mrs Lowry. The following January, Quirke was arrested on suspicion of harassing Mrs Lowry. This week the six-man, six-woman jury heard transcripts of interviews he gave at that time. Michael Bowman handed the foreman the lengthy typed statements and Quirke, in the dock, also had a copy. He put on his glasses and read his copy while Mr Bowman read the statements aloud in their entirety. At one point, the gardaí had asked Quirke about his affair with Mary Lowry and why it had happened? ‘Where you unhappy at home?’ asked the police officer ‘No,’ replied Quirke. ‘Had you an intimate relationship at home?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Pat I could understand it if you told me you had a boring wife at home who could not fulfil your needs,’ said the police officer. ‘You loved Imelda but were in love with Mary?’ Quirke went on to say that ‘a combination of companionship, intimacy, trust and honesty’ had characterised his relationship with Mary Lowry.
‘Where was the honesty? The garda asked.
The garda also asked Quirke if he had been jealous of Lowry’s new relationship with Bobby Ryan after she had finished with him.
‘I don’t think I was jealous at that point, no,’ replied Quirke.
Gardaí then asked Quirke how he had found out about her relationship
‘ I was in her bedroom in bed with her’
with Mr Moonlight. He told how in December 2010, he became suspicious that she was not being honest so he took her phone from her and discovered ‘lots of texts’ between Mary and Bobby.
‘I was in her bedroom in bed with her. Her phone was under her pillow,’ explained Quirke.
The police officer asked did she object to his taking it?
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘I don’t think she knew what I was looking at.’
‘What authority had you you take the phone?’
‘None,’ said Quirke. ‘I sent a text to Bobby Ryan from the phone.’
The text, he said, was about ‘ .... the fact she wasn’t being honest with him and she’d been with me for three years.’
When he received the text, Bobby Ryan phoned and Quirke picked up. He told him: ‘I’m the other man, I’m sorry you had to find out this way and I hung up.’
The garda asked if he was still in the bedroom at this stage?
‘No I had gone out into the yard,’ he replied ‘Were you angry?’ ‘Yes I suppose I was.’ ‘Did she have to plead with you for it (the phone),’ asked the garda. ‘Yes’. The officer asked him again was he jealous?
‘Anger, I think it was anger, the jealousy came later.’
‘Did the (incident) impact on you?’ ‘It broke us up,’ said Quirke. ‘Was this a blow to you?’ asked the officer. ‘Yes’. ‘Were you contemplating or speaking about self harm?’
Quirke then explained that he had sent a text to Mary which read ‘There is only one other option so.’
He said that Mary had taken this as a signal he was going to commit suicide but he insisted that he had meant was that ‘I’d have to stay away from Mary’. He was then asked about meeting Bobby Ryan with Mary, as they apparently tried to repair damaged relations between them
‘Had you anything in common with Bobby Ryan?’ Asked the garda. ‘No,’ replied Quirke. ‘When Mary asked you what did you think of Bobby Ryan, what did you say?’ asked the garda. ‘I can’t remember...’ he said ‘She said you stated that you didn’t like Bobby Ryan and that he smells.’ ‘I didn’t say that.’ The interviewer then returned again to the issue of jealousy.
‘I wouldn’t say I was ever jealous, angry. Sad but not jealous,’ said Quirke.
He was then asked about reporting Mary to social services for the alleged neglect of her children.
Why did he deny this when she confronted him?
He responded: ‘I told her it wasn’t me. I was afraid of what she would say and do to me.’
‘Sure she’s only a woman, all women get angry,’ replied the garda.
‘I wanted to avoid that,’ answered Quirke.
Referring to €20,000 she had given him and cash investments she had made and which he managed the garda asked:
‘Were you not getting cash on demand and sex on demand (from Mary)?’
Quirke denied this was the case. The trial, now about to enter its 12th week, continues.
‘I sent a text to Bobby Ryan from the phone’