DARK SECRETS OF THE SLURRY TANK
Courtroom hears grizzly evidence of how decomposing remains of love rival were found after phone call from murder accused’s wife
IN THE wood-panelled jury box of Court 13 at the Central Criminal Court, two jurors leaned forward to hear Patrick’s Quirke’s statement more clearly.
The 50 year old – accused of murdering love rival Bobby Ryan, aka Mr Moonlight – was explaining CCTV footage of him looking through the windows of ex-girlfriend Mary Lowry’s Tipperary home in December 2012. He also explained why he’d been handling the knickers on the washing line.
Mr Quirke was not giving evidence but his words – given in a statement to gardaí a month before he found Mr Ryan’s remains in a run-off tank on Mrs Lowry’s farm in spring 2013 – were the first time his account of events was heard.
‘I saw there was women’s underwear on the line,’ he said. ‘I looked at the label on the underwear as I was curious. I took the underwear off the line and then put it back…’
He then described opening Mrs Lowry’s front door using a key he had found some months earlier in the yard. ‘Once I opened the door I heard the beep of the alarm. I panicked when I realised what I had done was wrong…’
The statement, was read by prosecution counsel Michael Bowman.
All the while Mr Quirke, who was sitting in the dock, did not look up but stared down, apparently intently rereading his statement. Dressed in his usual dark grey suit, the farmer had put on reading glasses for the occasion.
It was week four of the ‘Mr Moonlight’ murder trial, with public interest in the case continuing to
Mr Quirke and his wife appeared ‘red faced’
grow, evidenced by the large daily attendances. This week the court heard uncomfortable evidence of how Bobby Ryan’s body was found and removed from a small underground concrete tank.
The discovery was made less than 100metres from Mrs Lowry’s front door – almost two years after DJ Mr Ryan was last seen alive.
Mr Quirke had leased land on the farm owned by Mrs Lowry, who is his sister-in-law, but had been given notice to quit when he made his gruesome find on April 30, 2013. He apparently discovered the remains while attempting to drain the tank.
But as Garda Thomas Neville explained, it was Mr Quirke’s wife Imelda who had made the phone call to alert gardaí.
In the witness box, Mr Neville, now retired, described how he was at his home on the afternoon of April 30, when his phone rang at 1.07pm.
While stationed at Bansha Woods Garda Station, he was the garda who had taken the missing person report for Mr Ryan in 2011.
Mr Ryan’s daughter Michelle and Mrs Lowry had contacted him on June 3 that year – the day the DJ went missing after leaving Mrs Lowry’s home at 6.30am.
Mr Neville recounted his telephone conversation with Mrs Quirke on the day the body was found. He told how he phoned Tipperary Garda Station and requested a car to go to the scene.
Minutes later, Inspector Pádraic Powell arrived at the farm in the townland of Fawnagowan. Mr Quirke and his wife were sitting on a low wall at the back of the property. Garda John Ivers recalled they both appeared ‘red faced’.
Mr Quirke proceeded to show Inspector Powell an underground tank where he said he’d found a body. The garda said a cement slab had been lifted back but it was impossible to see what was in the tank without kneeling down. Even then, visibility was poor and he could just make out a silhouette, or outline, of the remains.
Mr Quirke, he said, was very quiet and his clothes and hands were very clean for a man who’d been farming. Following the discovery, Mr Quirke was brought to Tipperary Garda Station for questioning.
His statement, which was video taped, was also read to the jury.
Asked if he’d known all along that there had been a body in the tank, Mr Quirke replied: ‘No. These are nice questions, now, lads.’ He was asked about the moment he looked into the tank and saw Mr Ryan’s remains: ‘I could see his pelvis and what looked like his private area… I didn’t see his face.’
Asked why he had phoned his wife first after making the discovery, he said he didn’t know. ‘I suppose I wanted someone to confirm it with me. I suppose it was just instinct.’
The garda asked about the body, which was lying in several inches of slurry. ‘It’s fair to assume it’s that of Bobby Ryan?’
‘Yeah,’ answered Mr Quirke. He volunteered information about his relationship with Mrs Lowry, with whom he had started an affair after her husband, his best friend Martin, had died in 2007.
Mr Quirke’s wife Imelda was Martin’s sister. Asked if he approved of the relationship between Mr Ryan and Mrs Lowry, he said: ‘Well, I’m sure you know I had an affair with Mary Lowry. But I didn’t disapprove of it. There was no animosity between me and Bobby Ryan.’ ‘Were you jealous?’ ‘No,’ he said. ‘You just took it on the chin,’ said the garda.
‘No animosity between me and Bobby Ryan’
‘No, ‘said Mr Quirke, who then added: ‘What else could I do but take it on the chin?’
He also speculated on his ex-girlfriend’s attitude to her lover’s disappearance, describing her behaviour as ‘intriguing’. He was curious about how she found Mr Ryan’s car so quickly at Bansha woods, when it was on a route the DJ would not usually have driven.
‘When I asked how she could have seen his van from the road she said she couldn’t, she just drove in. I found it intriguing, she had a “couldn’t care less” attitude about it. ‘She said she hadn’t heard any car drive into the yard that morning. 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.
‘I suppose like everyone else I had a hunch of what happened. Everyone had notions. Was he attacked? Did he leave for Spain? I asked questions, I thought the answers strange. I read too much into it.’
On Thursday, the court heard how the body of Mr Ryan was retrieved from the tank by part-time members of the local fire service. It was a difficult operation, hampered by the restricted space and the Garda request to keep the body as ‘intact as possible’.
Defence counsel Lorcan Staines asked several firefighters whether an arm had fallen off or ‘been dislodged’ while the body was being taken out. None of the firefighters could remember this. Mr Staines asked firefighter Bernard O’Brien: ‘Did anyone say, “We better wait for the State pathologist?”’ ‘No,’ said Mr O’Brien. Garda Conor Ryan said that in June 2011, he had visited the farm at Fawnagowan where Mr Ryan had last been seen.
He had met Mr Quirke by arrangement and watched as the farmer used a vacuum tanker to empty two tanks on his land. One was a tank that collects waste through a slatted floor in a cattle shed. It had no slurry in it, Garda Ryan said.
The other was an open tank, which contained a ‘small quantity’ of slurry. He had asked Mr Quirke if there were any other tanks on the farm and was told those were the only two tanks.
Under cross examination, the witness told counsel for the defence that he could have asked Mr Quirke if there were any other ‘slurry tanks’, rather than ‘tanks’.
The trial continues.
‘Like everyone, I had a hunch of what happened’