‘Mary had a couldn’t care less attitude to Bobby going missing’: Quirke
Quirke told gardaí it was ‘strange’ how his former lover found her missing boyfriend’s van so quickly
MURDER accused Patrick Quirke claimed Mary Lowry had a “couldn’t care-less attitude” about the disappearance of her boyfriend, Bobby Ryan, and he thought it “strange” she “found the van so quick”.
On initially seeing the body, he told gardaí he thought it was “a dummy or an inflatable doll”.
Like “everyone else”, he had “hunches” about what happened to Mr Ryan, he told gardaí, saying people had wondered if he was “attacked” or had “gone to Spain”.
In interviews on the day Mr Ryan’s remains were found in the tank on Mary Lowry’s farm at Fawnagowan, Co Tipperary, gardaí asked Mr Quirke if he had “any role to play” in Mr Ryan’s body ending up there but he replied: “Absolutely not.”
Patrick Quirke (50), of Breanshamore, Co Tipperary, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Mr Ryan, a DJ known as Mr Moonlight, on a date between June 3, 2011, and April 2013.
Asked why he did not show the tank to gardaí searching the farm after Mr Ryan’s disappearance in 2011, he claimed he “did not think of it” and thought it “laughable” to be emptying the slurry tank as part of the search.
He described the location in which the remains were found as an old septic tank connected to the milking parlour which was out of use for years.
MURDER accused Patrick Quirke claimed Mary Lowry had a “couldn’t-care-less attitude” about the disappearance of her boyfriend, Bobby Ryan, and he thought it “strange” she “found the van so quick”.
In Garda interviews on the day the body of Mr Ryan was found in the tank on Ms Lowry’s farm, Mr Quirke said that when he initially spotted the body, he thought it was “a dummy or an inflatable doll”.
“Like everyone else,” he had “hunches” about what happened to Mr Ryan, he told gardaí. “Everyone had notions, was he attacked, did he leave for Spain,” Mr Quirke said.
He claimed he was not jealous of Ms Lowry’s relationship with Mr Ryan, though admitted it was “probably true” that he still had feelings for her.
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.”
Mr Quirke (50), of Breanshamore, Co Tipperary, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Mr Ryan – a part-time DJ going by the name Mr Moonlight – on a date between June 3, 2011, and April 2013
The trial at the Central Criminal Court heard that Mr Quirke was interviewed at Tipperary garda station on April 30, 2013, the day the body of Mr Ryan was uncovered in a tank on Ms Lowry’s farm at Fawnagowan, Co Tipperary.
Inspector David Buckley told the jury that he was one of the first gardaí to arrive at the scene.
Interviewing Mr Quirke afterwards, he put it to him that he was “fairly clean for a man doing a dirty job”, and Mr Quirke replied that he was “only getting into the dirty part, mixing the slurry”.
Put to him in cross-examination by Bernard Condon SC for the defence, the garda said from his recollection there was “no dirt” on Mr Quirke, on his hands or his clothing.
Mr Condon said gardaí had not asked Mr Quirke for his clothing and if they had, the jury would have been able to view it themselves.
Garda Buckley told the trial that he distinctly remembered looking at Mr Quirke “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.
He conceded his terminology may have been misleading in saying that Mr Quirke was “fairly” rather than “perfectly” clean.
In the interviews, Mr Quirke agreed with gardaí when they described the tank where the remains were found as a “septic tank connected to the milking parlour which hasn’t been used in a number of years”.
Asked about his movements on the day that Mr Ryan went missing, Mr Quirke told gardaí he had arrived at Ms Lowry’s farm “about 20 to or a quarter to nine”. He had gone there to collect two bulls to bring home to his cows and he was going to leave them in for the weekend, he said.
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.
“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.
Asked if he knew Bobby Ryan, Mr Quirke told gardaí he had met him three times – the first time at Hayes’s Hotel in Thurles, the second at a social night in Clonmel when he and his wife Imelda went out with Bobby and Mary, and the third time was “just a chance meeting” at the office in Killough Quarry.
At this point in the interview, Mr Quirke asked if he thought he would be able to get his tractor back this evening, and the garda replied: “That I don’t know at the moment.”
Asked if he approved of the relationship between Mr Ryan and Ms Lowry, he said: “Well, I’m sure you know I had an affair with Mary Lowry. But I didn’t disapprove of it,” 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 he said no.
“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?”
He had never had a oneto-one conversation with Bobby Ryan about Mary Lowry, he said, and they never exchanged heated words.
Asked if he had met Bobby Ryan leaving Mary’s house that morning, Mr Quirke said no.
Asked if he had known the 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.
“Everyone had notions, was he attacked, did he leave for Spain. I asked questions but found it strange and read too much into it,” he said.
Mary 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 “10 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 had asked her how she could see the van from the road but Ms Lowry had told him that she didn’t and “just drove in”.
“I found it intriguing she had a ‘couldn’t-care-less’ attitude about it,” he said.
He told gardaí that Ms Lowry had told him she had a friend who worked in a shop and had a conversation with a sales rep who had passed the van that morning.
“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 answer strange because on several occasions I was in the bedroom with her and the doorbell would ring and you couldn’t be certain if a car had driven into the yard,” Mr Quirke added.
Asked why he didn’t show gardaí the underground tank on the farm when the farm was being searched in 2011, he said: “I didn’t think of it. I thought it was laughable to be emptying the slurry tank.”
Asked if this was because he knew the body was there, he said no. The trial continues.