Judge’s exasperation as mobiles ring out at Mr Moonlight trial
Key off icer in love-rival murder case tells a noisy courtroom that his investigation was not lacking and that victim had suffered ‘multiple injuries’
THE EXASPERATION in Judge Eileen Creedon’s voice was evident.
‘This is a murder trial,’ she scolded the courtroom. ‘There is serious evidence being given at this trial. Nobody, not even in a theatre, would have their mobile on. This is a trial for murder.’
A heavily made-up, middle-aged woman, still grinning, mumbled ‘sorry, judge’ as she tripped out of the courtroom. It had been the third time that a mobile phone had rung out in the room that morning, bringing proceedings to a standstill.
After two days of dry legal argument, the jury was hearing evidence again in the Mr Moonlight murder case on Friday. And the crowds were back too.
On the stand was senior investigating officer in the case, Pat O’Callaghan. Wearing a white shirt bearing his superintendent stripes, he rebuffed defence counsel’s Lorcan Staines’s suggestions that his investigation was lacking.
‘Do you hear the evidence of Dr [John] Manlove?’ asked Mr Staines, referring to an entomologist who had given evidence of fresh blowfly larvae being found in Bobby Ryan’s body.
‘I heard some of it,’ replied Supt O’Callaghan.
‘Did you hear the questions I asked about waiting for the pathologist, waiting for all experts, particularly in an unusual crime scene like this?’
‘The pathologist advised that he wouldn’t travel to the crime scene,’ said the superintendent.
‘Do you think best practice was followed?’ asked Mr Staines.
‘I think best practice was followed, yes,’ answered the superintendent, staring directly at him.
It was the fifth week of the trial of Tipperary farmer Patrick Quirke for the murder of his love rival, truck driver and part-time DJ, Bobby Ryan, aka Mr Moonlight.
Mr Ryan, 52, was last seen by his lover, widow Mary Lowry, when he left her bed at 6.30am on June 3, 2011, just minutes after they’d made love. His body was found almost two years later in a tank less than 100m from her front door by Mr Quirke, who is her brother-inlaw and also her ex-lover.
As the superintendent gave evidence of attending the scene while Mr Ryan’s body was recovered, Mr Quirke, in the dock, leaned in and listened intently.
‘It wasn’t as if we rushed into the recovery of the body – we didn’t. We took the best options open to us at the time.’ He said in his 29 years of attending murder scenes, he had never seen the services of an entomologist employed at one.
Mr Staines then asked why a hairclip found in the tank had not been logged or examined at the time of its discovery. ‘I didn’t take any measure or heed to it,’ Supt
O’Callaghan said. ‘I don’t have a whole pile of significance to a broken hair clip in the tank.
‘You had a number of girls growing up on that farm – it could have belonged to any of them. It could have washed in there.’
‘The most recent woman there would have been Mary Lowry, isn’t that correct?’ asked Mr Staines.
‘Yes,’ the superintendent said. Since the trial began, the jury has heard several hours of evidence about the run-off tank where Mr Ryan’s body was found – specifically about how one of two concrete lids that had been sealing it had been accidentally broken by gardaí attempting to retrieve the body on April 30, 2013, the day Mr Quirke told them he’d found the corpse.
Mr Staines returned to the topic on Friday afternoon: ‘There is nowhere on the book of evidence that mentions the lid breaking on the tank… I would have thought it was one of the most significant events of the day.’
‘No, the most significant event was a body being found in Fawnagowan, not the lid being broken,’ replied Supt O’Callaghan.
‘It’s correct to say an arm of Bobby Ryan fell off in that process [of the body being retrieved]?’ asked Mr Staines.
‘Well, I’m conscious family members may be here,’ said Supt O’Callaghan before answering.
‘Yes, if family members want to leave,’ interjected Judge Creedon.
Mr Ryan’s son Robert shook his head. Three days earlier, photographs of his father’s badly decomposed, naked body had been inadvertently flashed on large screens around the courtroom.
His sister Michelle shrieked twice when she saw the images. Her mother Mary, who had been separated from Mr Ryan since 2006, also began to cry. They rushed from the courtroom leaving their bags and coats behind them. They have not returned since.
The previous day, the family had listened to gruesome evidence from Dr Manlove, the forensic entomologist who detailed how he’d found blowfly larvae in the deceased’s chest cavity and on his back.
The larvae, he said, were all at the same stage of development, indicating that they had infested the body at least 11 days prior to the discovery. The small number of larvae and lack of other insects indicated that the body was not exposed for a long period, he added.
Dr Manlove said that because the tank had been sealed by two concrete slabs before the accused said he removed them, it should have been impossible for flies to get in or out. He therefore concluded that the first time the tank was opened was not on April 30, 2013, when Mr Quirke said he opened it, but some weeks before that.
Mr Quirke, dressed in a black suit, swivelled in his seat to look at the crime photographs of the tank and its broken lid.
Although the jury was told that former State pathologist Dr Khalid Jabbar would not give evidence, they heard this week that he’d told Supt O’Callaghan that Mr Ryan’s remains showed evidence of ‘multiple injuries’ that could have been the result of a serious assault or a traffic accident.
As proceedings drew to a close, the judge warned the jury to ignore all media reports of the trial and to base its judgements only on the evidence heard in court.
Just before the court finally broke for the weekend, another phone rang out in the public gallery.
The trial continues.
‘I didn’t take any heed or measure of the hairclip’