Quirke appeared visibly emotional, his lower lip quivering
Accused held back tears in 12th week of the Mr Moonlight trial as young witness recalled his dead son
PAT QUIRKE appeared to struggle to hold back tears. In the witness box to his left, Mary Lowry’s son, Jack, was describing how as a boy, he had played in the fields with Mr Quirke’s son, Alan, who has since died tragically.
‘Do you remember when Alan passed away?’ David Humphries for the prosecution asked him.
‘Yeah. Very well,’ answered Jack softly, his eyes downcast.
Mr Quirke, sitting in the dock facing the 12-person jury, appeared visibly emotional, his lower lip quivering. He looked at the floor.
‘I know all three of them, I get on well with them,’ said Jack, using the present tense in relation to Pat and Imelda Quirke’s three boys.
‘Alan he was one year younger than me. He came with Pat to the farm most days... we’d always go playing when Pat came with Alan.’
Jack, the second oldest of Mrs Lowry’s three boys, was giving evidence in the trial of Mr Quirke for the murder of Bobby Ryan, aka Mr Moonlight, at a time undetermined between June 3, 2011, and April 30, 2013.
Ryan had replaced Mr Quirke in the affections of Mrs Lowry. Mr Quirke’s relationship with Mrs Lowry began the year after her husband, Martin, died in 2007.
Ryan disappeared in the early morning of June 3, 2011, after leaving Mrs Lowry’s bed.
His remains were found almost two years later on April 30, 2013, by Mr Quirke in a run-off tank on land he was leasing from Mrs Lowry. In court 13 of the Central Criminal Court this week, Jack remembered how he had known the accused since he was a child. His father’s sister, Imelda, was married to him.
‘I got on with Pat Quirke when I was younger. I’d nothing against him,’ he told the court.
After his father died, Mr Quirke began leasing the family farmland at Fawnagown.
‘I found him to be in control most of the time, grumpy some of the time,’ he said.
‘He went around the farm as though he kind of owned the place.’
Earlier, Jack, 19 years old, tall with red hair and bearing a strong resemblance to his mother, quietly described how he was eight years old when his father, Martin, died.
He admitted he was initially not sure about his mother’s new relationship with Mr Ryan,
‘I felt weird about it at first,’ he said. ‘I used to slag Bobby about being bald. I thought he was taking over my father’s role, really.’ He described an outing that Bobby had made with him, his mother and his two brothers. ‘Bobby brought us to Tramore for a day out. He brought us to the carnival rides and the arcade.’ ‘How did your mother and Bobby Ryan seem to you?’, asked Mr Humphries. ‘Very happy,’ he answered quickly. All the while, the jury seemed to listen intently, taking notes. Bobby, he said, had helped this mother to buy a car for the farm so Tommy, his older brother, could learn to drive. It was a Toyota Corolla with 1997 registration plates. At that stage, he said he was only ever in the car when Tommy was driving and he didn’t learn to drive himself until he was 14 or 15. Under crossexamination by defence counsel Lorcan Staines, he was asked whether he had ever driven the car at that point. He wasn’t able to drive the car, he said. ‘I could barely reach the pedals.’ Mr Staines asked why he told the gardaí the car was for ‘us’.
‘I meant to say “us” when I was older – I didn’t even know how to start a car at that age.’
He was then quizzed about the day Bobby Ryan went missing.
He was 11 and his younger brother, Micheál, was eight. They had both come in from school and gone straight into their grandmother Rita’s granny flat for stew.
Their uncle Eddie was there, which was ‘strange’, he said.
Mr Staines asked him about whether he had discussed the case with his brother Tommy, who has also given evidence, and in particular whether they had discussed the evidence he gave.
No, he said. ‘We just discussed how to come up here and be strong.’
His grandmother, Rita Lowry, mother of his father Martin and Mr Quirke’s wife Imelda, did not travel to Dublin but gave a deposition in the District Court in Tipperary last September. It was read to the court on Wednesday.
In it, she was asked how Mary Lowry was after Martin’s death.
‘She was very upset, she was upset. You know, really upset, she was grieving, like,’ she said.
She had been out playing cards on the evening of June 2, 2011, when Mr Ryan was with her daughter-inlaw in the adjoining part of the house.
She heard nothing that evening, she said.
Asked did she hear anything the following morning, she said no. ‘It was a normal morning,’ she said.
Bernard Condon, acting for Quirke asked her: ‘If you don’t think it’s impertinent of me to ask… do you sleep with the window open?’
‘Oh yes, in summertime yes,’ she agreed.
One of the final prosecution witnesses took the stand on Thursday.
Chief Superintendent Dominic Hayes, who oversaw the investigation into the murder of Bobby Ryan, denied that he ‘had been badly let down by the pathologist in the case’.
Dr Khalid Jaber had refused to attend the crime scene where Mr Ryan’s remains were found. The chief superintendent said he didn’t believe that fact had a negative effect on the investigation.
‘And you still hold that view? asked Mr Staines. ‘Yes, I do,’ he replied. On his second day of cross examination on Friday, the senior Garda admitted he couldn’t recall who had said ‘Mary Lowry had his head melted’, a note he had made following a case conference of gardaí, that had taken place when Mr Ryan’s disappearance was still a missing person case.
Mr Hayes agreed he’d made note of the comment.
Earlier in the week, Michael Bowman SC had said he believed the prosecution would rest its case on Friday. But evidence will now go on until tomorrow at least when the trial will enter its 13th week.
‘I used to slag Bobby about being bald’ ‘Do you sleep with the window open?’