THE DAY THEY FOUND THE BODY
Almost two years after the disappearance of Bobby Ryan – a part-time DJ known as Mr Moonlight – his body was found in a run-off tank. Patrick Quirke’s murder trial heard evidence this week about the search of the area where the body was found
PÁDRAIC Powell, a Garda Inspector, was kneeling down, peering into a small, dark opening in the ground. A cement slab that had been covering the hole had been partially moved back and another slab was nearby, tilted backwards. Visibility was poor and for that reason, he had to stoop low to the ground to get a good look.
As he crouched and peered into the hole, he told jurors at the Central Criminal Court this week, he caught sight of something gardaí had been looking for since 2011.
There, covered in what the detective described as a transparent, algae-like substance, was the outline of human remains. Two years after the disappearance of Bobby Ryan, the Lowry farm in the picturesque Glen of Aherlow had given up a dark secret.
Earlier that day, shortly after 1pm, Garda Tom Neville had received a call from Patrick Quirke’s wife Imelda. She told him that a body had been found in a tank at Mary Lowry’s land in Fawnagowan, the jury heard. He knew it was her because he had her number stored in his phone, having previously got to know her through the local hurling club, he told the court this week. ‘I told Imelda Quirke not to touch anything at the scene and that I would get a patrol car out,’ he added.
Inspector Powell and colleague Inspector David Buckley were dispatched to the Lowry farm. When they arrived, they found Patrick and Imelda Quirke sitting close together on a low wall at the back of the farm, the court heard. As Mr Quirke led Inspector Powell to the tank, he noticed the accused was ‘extremely clean’ considering he had been working with slurry. ‘His hands and clothes were clean,’ he told the jury, and he was ‘very quiet’. After confirming that there were indeed human remains in the tank, the operation to retrieve them began. A call was placed to the local fire service.
A digger was needed to remove the concrete lid covering the remainder of the underground tank. Once this was done, two fire officers were sent down to bring the body up. During evidence this week, the two men explained that working in such a confined space, while wearing bulky bio-hazard suits, made the task very difficult.
Eventually, they managed to retrieve Mr Ryan’s body and bring it to the surface. As the area came alive with activity, it became apparent the disappearance of Mr Ryan, aka part-time DJ, Mr Moonlight, was no longer a missing persons case. Gardaí now suspected they were dealing with murder.
Less than an hour after the discovery of the remains, Patrick Quirke was in Tipperary Garda Station, being interviewed under caution. Inspector Buckley told the court the accused had voluntarily agreed to go with officers to be questioned and had declined to have a solicitor present.
As the contents of his interview was recited in court No.13 this week, for the first time Patrick Quirke’s version of events in his own words were given a full hearing.
For weeks Mr Quirke’s name had barely made it into the transcript of proceedings but now his voice, albeit in words read by someone else, was shedding light on what may or may not have happened to Bobby Ryan all those years ago.
Gardaí asked Mr Quirke why he didn’t show them the tank when the farm was being searched in 2011. ‘I didn’t think of it,’ he said, the court was told. ‘I thought it was laughable to be emptying the slurry tank.’
Inspector Buckley put it to him that this was because he knew there was a body in the tank to which he replied: ‘No’.
In the interview, Mr Quirke detailed how he found the body, saying he was trying to empty a slurry tank and needed more water as the slurry was too thick. An open tank that he would usually draw water from was empty but, he said, he knew water had been leaking into the underground tank beside the milking parlour. He had not opened this tank since 2008, he said, but knew it was there because the previous owner of the farm, Martin Lowry, told him about it.
Covering the tank were two concrete slabs so he prised one of them aside using a shovel and put a suction pipe through the gap to draw whatever water was there. As the water was being sucked up, he noticed what he thought was a plastic dummy or an inflatable doll in the tank, the court heard. He turned off the pump and pulled off the second slab, which he said was easier to move. He said: ‘I could see clearly it was a body.’
He told gardaí he could see the pelvis and ‘what seemed to be the private area even though it looked to be face down. It was confusing.’
He was ‘shocked’, he said, and phoned his wife Imelda who arrived, confirmed it was a body and phoned her friend Garda Tom Neville. He said he called his wife rather than gardaí out of ‘instinct’ and because he wanted someone to confirm what he had seen.
During the interview, the court heard, Garda Buckley put it to the accused he was ‘fairly clean for a man doing a dirty job’. The accused replied he was ‘only getting into the dirty part of it’ when he made the discovery.
During cross examination by Bernard Condon SC, defending, Garda Buckley said from his recollection there was ‘no dirt’ on Mr Quirke, on his hands or his clothing. Mr Condon said ‘fairly clean’. Eighteen months later, there was ‘no sign of dirt’. Which would he say the jury would prefer? Mr Condon said the gardaí had not asked Mr Quirke for his clothing.
Garda Buckley said he distinctly remembers looking at him up and down and noticing that there was no sign of dirt.
He had ‘a vivid memory’ of this, though he couldn’t recall what clothing he was wearing. He said his terminology may have been misleading given in saying ‘fairly’ rather than ‘perfectly’ clean.
During the interview on April 30, Mr Quirke also told gardaí that there were ‘two tanks on the farm’, one open and one closed. The open one usually had a lot of rain in it and if he needed water, he usually got it from there. On this occasion it was empty and he knew there was another option because there would be water in the other tank.
On the day Mr Ryan disappeared, Mr Quirke said he was on the farm at about 8.40 that morning to let two bulls in with his cows, the court heard. He was going away for the weekend with his family and left a short time later.
Asked if he had been at the tank that day, Mr Quirke said no, nor did he see anyone else at the tank that day, the court heard. ‘I was possibly only there half an hour that morning. We were going away. It was a case of get in and get out,’ he said.
In relation to Mary Lowry, the woman with whom, the court heard, he had an affair, the accused made a number of claims.
As the interview progressed, Mr Quirke was asked if he knew Bobby Ryan, with whom Ms Lowry had also had a relationship after splitting with married Mr Quirke. He told gardaí he had met him three times: the first time at Hayes hotel in Thurles, the second at a social night in Clonmel when he and wife Imelda went out with Mr Ryan and Ms Lowry and the third time was ‘just a chance meeting’ at the office in Killough Quarry.
Asked if he approved of the relationship between Mr Ryan and Mary Lowry, he said: ‘Well, I’m sure you know I had an affair with Mary Lowry. But I didn’t disapprove of it,’ he said, adding that there was ‘no animosity between me and Bobby Ryan’.
Gardaí asked him if that was the reason she had ended her relationship with Mr Quirke and he replied: ‘Possibly yes.’
‘I don’t think we ever spoke about it candidly,’ he added.
Questioned as to whether the relationship had ended ‘good or bad’, Mr Quirke said it had been ‘mixed’, explaining that he had wanted to keep it ‘friendly’ as they were ‘family as such’.
Mr Quirke was asked if he had been ‘jealous’ but said no, the court was told.
‘You just took it on the chin,’ gardaí put it to him and Mr Quirke replied: ‘No’ adding, ‘What else could I do but take it on the chin.’
Put to him that it ‘couldn’t have been easy to see her carrying on with Bobby Ryan’, Mr Quirke replied: ‘No more than it was for her to see me with my wife.’
He had never had a one-to-one conversation with Mr Ryan about Ms Lowry, he said, and said they never exchanged heated words.
Asked if he had met Mr Ryan leaving Mary’s house on the morning he disappeared, Mr Quirke said no. He was then asked if he had known his body was there all along, Mr Quirke replied: ‘No. These are nice questions, now, lads.’ Mr Quirke said that ‘like everyone’ he had ‘hunches’ about what had happened to Mr Ryan.
Ms Lowry had told him ‘different things’ since the disappearance of Bobby Ryan, he said.
He found it ‘strange, then and now’ that she couldn’t tell if Mr Ryan had been ‘ten minutes or two minutes’ in the yard before he left.
He also thought it was strange ‘how she found the van so quick, when she had travelled a route she knew he didn’t take’.
Mr Quirke has asked her how she could see the van from the road but Ms Lowry had told her that she didn’t and ‘just drove in’.
‘I found it strange,’ he said and later said he found it ‘intriguing.’ She had a ‘couldn’t care less attitude about it,’ he said.
He told gardaí that Mary had told him that she had a friend who worked in a shop and had a conversation with a sales rep who had passed the van that morning.
Mr Quirke said he saw this information as a ‘breakthrough’. ‘I told her she should contact him and she would not contact him. I also drew on the fact that she said she had not heard any car drive in to the yard that morning so I kept asking her on and off on different occasions and she was certain a car didn’t drive into the yard,’ he said. ‘I found this quite strange,’ he added.
In further statements, taken in the months following the discovery of Mr Ryan’s remains, Mr Quirke revealed more about his relationship with Ms Lowry.
Detective Garda Kieran Keane told the court he took a statement from Mr Quirke in November 2011. In this statement, Mr Quirke said that he wished to add to his previous statement that he began seeing Mary Lowry in early 2008 after her husband died, the court heard. They were ‘off and on for a while’ he said, and they both knew there was no future in it. The break-up, he said, was ‘not amicable’. Ms
‘His hands and clothes were clean’ ‘What else could I do but take it on the chin?’
He got in his jeep and drove away
Lowry had met Mr Ryan a few months before and Mr Quirke was, he said, ‘very angry with her’ when he found out. He said he saw texts from Mr Ryan on her phone and took the phone. He replied to Mr Ryan that Ms Lowry was with him, Mr Quirke, now. The accused said he ‘never spoke a cross word’ to Mr Ryan. Mr Quirke also told gardaí he wanted to remain friends with Ms Lowry and said he told her things he has never told anybody else but she ‘wanted nothing more to do’ with him. He said Ms Lowry told Bobby about ‘this fight’ and that Bobby suggested they meet in the Hayes Hotel. Mr Ryan was ‘sympathetic’ Mr Quirke said, having gone through a relationship break-up himself. In December, Mr Quirke and his wife went ice-skating in Cork with Mary and her children. He was angry Mary had ‘dismissed him’, the court heard.
On the day Mr Ryan disappeared, Mr Quirke said he was at the farm unusually early, at 8.45am, because he was going away. He said he doesn’t think he ever saw Bobby Ryan at Ms Lowry’s home although he did see his van there on St Patrick’s Day. He saw Mary Lowry that morning and waved to her across the yard. He was gone by 9.15am and arrived at the Heritage Hotel in Laois at around midday.
He heard about Mr Ryan’s disappearance that evening from his wife Imelda. He took part in searches for Mr Ryan in the woods on the Bank Holiday Monday and another time with Mary Lowry and her brother, the court heard.
In an earlier statement, taken in June 2011, Mr Quirke told detectives he saw Mary Lowry on the morning Bobby Ryan went missing but that he didn’t stop to talk to her because he was ‘rushing.’ Detective Garda Martin Steed told the jury he interviewed Mr Quirke on this occasion at the accused man’s home. In that statement, the accused said he had a ten-year lease on Mary Lowry’s land at Fawnagowan and started grazing cattle there after her husband Martin died.
In March 2013 Mr Quirke gave a cautioned voluntary statement to gardaí at Tipperary Garda Station after he was seen on CCTV footage around Ms Lowry’s home on December 3, 2012.
Detective Steed said the accused told gardaí he went into Rita Lowry’s home – Mary Lowry’s motherin-law who lives in an adjoining property at Fawnagowan. Mr Quirke went inside, he said, to turn on the heating because she was away, the court heard. He also rang a doorbell and opened the post box but he said he didn’t think there were any letters inside. In the shed area he saw women’s underwear on the clothesline and looked at the label because, he said, he was ‘curious’. He took the underwear off the line and then put them back, the court heard.
He said he then tried a key that he had found in the yard in the lock of Mary Lowry’s front door and when he pushed the handle it opened. He heard the beep of the alarm and ‘panicked, having realised what I had done was wrong.’ He got in his jeep and drove away.
The following day he explained to Mary Lowry what had happened and gave her the key.
The trial continues.