HORROR ON THE FACES OF THE JURORS SAYS IT ALL . . .

THE three large screens facing the public gallery were shut down. Several smaller monitors in the barristers’ benches were also in darkness – only those facing away from the public stayed on.

What was about to be seen was only for the eyes of the jury, the witness, the judge and the accused.

‘A little bit of zoom,’ asked Lorcan Staines SC, for the defence, as one of his team uploaded the photos.

As the photos of Bobby Ryan’s dead body were magnified and examined, several members of the jury winced.

The photos were of Bobby after he was discovered in an underground tank on a Tipperary farm.

‘Bring the head in and the feet,’ continued Mr Staines, as his colleague toggled the mouse. ‘A little bit of zoom,’ he said. The trial, now in its fourth week of evidence, had reached a point Judge Eileen Creedon knew would be distressing.

Earlier, as Detective Inspector Pádraic Powell was asked about how the body looked when he peered inside the tank, Judge Creedon had interrupted.

‘Do people need to leave at this point?’ she asked.

‘I was actually going to suggest that,’ said Mr Staines, adding that he was about to get to some very graphic and distressing photo evidence.

With the news that proceedings were going to take a gruesome turn, the jury panel braced themselves. Several worried faces glanced toward the judge while others took a deep breath.

‘Turn off the big screens,’ said Judge Creedon.

There was specific concern about Bobby Ryan’s family, she said.

In the second row of the public gallery, huddled together in a long line, the Ryan family began to whisper among themselves.

It took a few minutes and some continued whispering, but soon after Bobby Ryan’s daughter Michelle was one of the first to leave, closely followed by her mother, Mary, and Michelle’s brother, Bobby Jr.

A series of photos were being put to the witness, Det. Insp. Powell. They had been taken on the day the body was discovered and were numbered sequentially.

Some of the first ones referred to depicted the area surrounding the tank. There then followed a serious of pictures taken around the tank, showing the slab that had been covering it and a nearby tanker.

‘These are pictures showing different angles of the tractor, said Mr Staines as he moved on to another.

‘2987, 2988, 2990,’ he continued, referring to the number of each picture.

THE material by then on view – the tanker, the tractor, the outer area of the tank – was innocuous, but as the sequence moved closer and closer to what was inside the tank, the tension in the room grew.

As the recital continued, a juror in the back row removed his glasses.

‘That is a picture of a body in a tank,’ said Mr Staines as another photo was uploaded. ‘You can see ribs visible there.’ In the front row of the jury box, a young man began to sink down into his seat, tucking his face beneath his scarf.

As the series of pictures continued, several jurors began scribbling notes.

Picture after picture, zoom after zoom, the cross-examination continued.

The court had been careful to spare the Ryan family and the public from what they showed, but often, as each picture was projected onto the jurors’ screens, the flashes of horror on their faces said it all.