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Patrick Quirke -Guilty
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Ursus Horribilis wrote: »You'd be surprised what can be recovered from hard disks that have been supposedly "wiped". Or for that matter, computer history that your average user thinks they've erased.
That's the thing. If the space that was deleted is not over reating then it is still recoverable.0 -
King of Kings wrote: »On an aside..there seems to be some fierce amount of middle aged riding going on. I'll never believe my single mates telling me its hard to date in your 40s.
In a hardcore rural/agricultural area. And the community apparently doesn't bat an eyelid. Changed times indeed...0 -
The strange thing about his conviction was that Mary Lowry was surely a viable suspect also.
Bobby Ryan spent the night at her house and appears to hav never left her farm. I would have thought that having another credible person that could hve comitted the murder would have reduced the "value" of the evidence against Quirke.
What was available in teh media during the trial suggested that there was no other possible/likely guilt party outside of Pat Quirke or Mary Lowry or a combination of both.0 -
He looked like the last bloke who you'd associate with anyone called 'Mr Moonlight'.
Eye of the beholder and all that but I'm not sure I'd be committing 'crimes of passion' over that old Midlands Bridget either.0 -
He looked like the last bloke who you'd associate with anyone called 'Mr Moonlight'.
Eye of the beholder and all that but I'm not sure I'd be committing 'crimes of passion' over that old Midlands Bridget either.
I'm sorry that yours is the post I'm quoting, but it's because it's the last one here.
While people are on here making jovial remarks about the infidelity associated in this trial, keys in ashtrays, crimes of passion etc. let's just for one minute remember that Bobby Ryan was an innocent man, killed in cold blood and his naked remains left in the most undignified manner for two years.
He clearly was adored by his 2 children, he seemed to be still on good terms with his ex wife and any friends who were interviewed spoke highly of him.
All I want to say is, sympathy to his loved ones and may the man rest in peace.To thine own self be true
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Eye of the beholder and all that but I'm not sure I'd be committing 'crimes of passion' over that old Midlands Bridget either.
I remember seeing Mary Lowry on TV at the start of the trial while watching it with my ma while the voice over was explaining the love rival aspect.
We both looked at each other and my ma just said "ah here, for f*ck's sake...." :pac:0 -
What I've learned today:
Some people didn't realise that people in the countryside have a sexual life, people can be sexually attracted to others who aren't particularly good-looking, and most shocking of all, people over 40 can have a libido too.0 -
she shouldn't have got involved with a married man who was her sister in law , wrecked both families ,
decorating the house , pulling down posters , changing phones , jealous of boyfriend dancing with another woman and giving him the cold shoulder on the drive home , constantly ringing him the night before he went missing , I think a smart mind was at play here ,
the whole thing is strange and is not what we all think it is , was he set up by someone and if so , this is scary stuff that I as a juror couldn't sleep at night if I was the one to lock him up .
it's not fair on the two people going home tonite ,in their hearts who feel a innocent man is behind bars , it's not right , it should be unanimous .fair on every body .
if you guilty beyond reasonable doubt ,then everybody should agree ,
Birmingham 6 lived a life of prison hell and remind me of some tip man who was hung but now he has since been pardoned by the state ,as he was innocent .
today ,this is not good enough , the judge should be neutral in jury cases , nose out .0 -
Purple Mountain wrote: »I'm sorry that yours is the post I'm quoting, but it's because it's the last one here.
While people are on here making jovial remarks about the infidelity associated in this trial, keys in ashtrays, crimes of passion etc. let's just for one minute remember that Bobby Ryan was an innocent man, killed in cold blood and his naked remains left in the most undignified manner for two years.
He clearly was adored by his 2 children, he seemed to be still on good terms with his ex wife and any friends who were interviewed spoke highly of him.
All I want to say is, sympathy to his loved ones and may the man rest in peace.
Well said, and I agree completely.0 -
she shouldn't have got involved with a married man who was her sister in law , wrecked both families ,
decorating the house , pulling down posters , changing phones , jealous of boyfriend dancing with another woman and giving him the cold shoulder on the drive home , constantly ringing him the night before he went missing , I think a smart mind was at play here ,
the whole thing is strange and is not what we all think it is , was he set up by someone and if so , this is scary stuff that I as a juror couldn't sleep at night if I was the one to lock him up .
it's not fair on the two people going home tonite ,in their hearts who feel a innocent man is behind bars , it's not right , it should be unanimous .fair on every body .
if you guilty beyond reasonable doubt ,then everybody should agree ,
Birmingham 6 lived a life of prison hell and remind me of some tip man who was hung but now he has since been pardoned by the state ,as he was innocent .
today ,this is not good enough , the judge should be neutral in jury cases , nose out .
Lol at so much of this.
'She shouldn't have got involved with a married man'.
What's your opinion about a married man cheating on his wife? Don't see anything in your post pointing at him.
You sound pissed off that a murderer was found guilty to the point that you'll have a go at the woman he was having an affair with.
The conspiracy theories as well. Someone set him up ffs.
Someone searched 'body decomposition timelines' for him?
Someone also wrote 'what the guards will know' on a notepad and planted it in his office, in his own handwriting?
Wise up. He was found guilty and the evidence against him was overwhelming. But no, your first thought is that Mary Lowry shouldn't be getting involved with a married man and letting him off scott free for cheating on the woman he was supposed to have committed himself to.0 -
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Indeed. Right on thid thread we see Mary Lowry being referred to in disrespectful terms such as The Bould Mary and Yer Wan. Ireland hasn't really come very far from the Kerry Babies days.Georgia Shapely Yogurt wrote: »2. He wanted to destroy Mary Lowry
Totally agree with this. I think he couldn't win her over or get the better of her despite trying everything and in his twisted mind the 'discovery' would result in her either going down for the murder herself or him taking her down with him by at the very least destroying her reputation. Even though he was the married one, society is always harsher on a woman's reputation. In fact I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the fact that her reputation is in tatters is a great comfort to him as he sits in jail. Kindof a case of if I can't have her, nobody else will either.0 -
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I know. All this super trivial stuff being bizarrely focused on about people in their 40s being sexual (no sh1t - people younger than Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp and Jennifer Aniston are sexual?! :eek:) and the way Mary Lowry looked, because all that is the important stuff... when a man was butchered to death and his remains hidden for nearly two years. Ffs.Purple Mountain wrote: »I'm sorry that yours is the post I'm quoting, but it's because it's the last one here.
While people are on here making jovial remarks about the infidelity associated in this trial, keys in ashtrays, crimes of passion etc. let's just for one minute remember that Bobby Ryan was an innocent man, killed in cold blood and his naked remains left in the most undignified manner for two years.
He clearly was adored by his 2 children, he seemed to be still on good terms with his ex wife and any friends who were interviewed spoke highly of him.
All I want to say is, sympathy to his loved ones and may the man rest in peace.
In fairness it has. There was no divorce or abortion then. Rape within marriage wasn't even recognised. Flippant comments don't mean Ireland overall hasn't come very far since those days.Electric Sheep wrote: »Indeed. Right on thid thread we see Mary Lowry being referred to in disrespectful terms such as The Bould Mary and Yer Wan. Ireland hasn't really come very far from the Kerry Babies days.0 -
"It's not what we all think it is"? What do "we all" think it is and how do you know it's not?she shouldn't have got involved with a married man who was her sister in law , wrecked both families ,
decorating the house , pulling down posters , changing phones , jealous of boyfriend dancing with another woman and giving him the cold shoulder on the drive home , constantly ringing him the night before he went missing , I think a smart mind was at play here ,
the whole thing is strange and is not what we all think it is , was he set up by someone and if so , this is scary stuff that I as a juror couldn't sleep at night if I was the one to lock him up .
it's not fair on the two people going home tonite ,in their hearts who feel a innocent man is behind bars , it's not right , it should be unanimous .fair on every body .
if you guilty beyond reasonable doubt ,then everybody should agree ,
Birmingham 6 lived a life of prison hell and remind me of some tip man who was hung but now he has since been pardoned by the state ,as he was innocent .
today ,this is not good enough , the judge should be neutral in jury cases , nose out .
"An innocent man"?
Do you actually think there's no way he could have done it so, when you bring up the Birmingham Six? Surely you can see how it's very possible at least?0 -
Valentino Enough Pinprick wrote: »I know. All this super trivial stuff being bizarrely focused on about people in their 40s being sexual (no sh1t - people younger than Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp and Jennifer Aniston are sexual?! :eek:) and the way Mary Lowry looked, because all that is the important stuff... when a man was butchered to death and his remains hidden for nearly two years. Ffs.
In fairness it has. There was no divorce or abortion then. Rape within marriage wasn't even recognised. Flippant comments don't mean Ireland overall hasn't come very far since those days.
The media really played up on her appearance. It sells the story for them.
When ever I saw her they mainly showed her in a manky grey hat on a damp day but she looked alright in other photos which weren't used as often.
They'll have a book out in a few night about the Murder of Mr Moonlight/etc.0 -
"Of late"? :pac:Atoms for Peace wrote: »I'm seeing a weird trend in threads of late, if in doubt blame women.
To do the "reverse the roles" thing so beloved of some, if this was a murder case convicting a woman, we'd be seeing far FAR less "could be innocent", "could be a set-up" etc. And kneemos very likely wouldn't have said "not a shred of evidence".
... and something about a bit of an auld murder.alchemist33 wrote: »What I've learned today:
Some people didn't realise that people in the countryside have a sexual life, people can be sexually attracted to others who aren't particularly good-looking, and most shocking of all, people over 40 can have a libido too.0 -
Sorry just got onto this thread and couldn't face reading all 15 pages. Just to point out the tank question. If the tank was not working and was never used and people who knew the farm ie workers owners contractors neighbors knew this to be the case then that would be the the last straw for me and along with all the other things as motive, opportunity and the circumstantial evidence, AND to do something that is very unusual to do on the farm on the last day (or so) of the lease......well. Now back to the tank question. What exactly was the tank for? Did it work? Was it ever used for it's original purpose. Why was it used that day? Did it make any sense to use it that day?
Was it an overflow slurry tank or a runoff tank or a runoff /rainwater reservoir for adding to slurry slat tank before agitation?0 -
Now back to the tank question. What exactly was the tank for? Did it work? Was it ever used for it's original purpose. Why was it used that day? Did it make any sense to use it that day?
Was it an overflow slurry tank or a runoff tank or a runoff /rainwater reservoir for adding to slurry slat tank before agitation?
Despite the Media's insistence on calling it a "run off" tank, it seems to have been a "dairy washings tank".
The farm no longer had dairy cows so the milking parlour was unused for perhaps a decade.
But the underground tank constructed to catch and store spilled snd discarded milk and the water used twice daily would still be sitting there, collecting any water that went down the drain from the unused milking parlour and dairy. (Dairy being the name of the room containing the refrigerated milk tank , hand washing facilities, usually two 25 gallon containers for holding water for washing the milking machine ( one for water with detergent, the other for rinsing water) the milk filtration system used, often a water heater and sometimes the electrical controls and a high pressure washer .
Ground water could also be seeping into a dairy washings tank.
Regular practice on dairy farms to use the contents of this tank to dilute cattle slurry to get it thin enough to spread.
If you have a tank holding 8 or 10 thousand gallons of water sitting beside you, why wouldn't you use it, it would take a day and a half a day at least to get that much wster from a hose pipe .0 -
the_pen_turner wrote: »im sure there are loads of ways if you put your mind to it.
a mini digger
tracter and loader
take it out in pieces
A body decomposing in water for 2 years?
It might be still in a vaguely human shape, but it'd fall apart if you tried to move it.
Did you ever casserole a chicken for slightly too long, then try lifting it out of the dish?
Slip into pieces on you.0 -
Bob Harris wrote: »A lot of indications he was up to no good but no actual evidence.
Hardly proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The bauld Mary Lowry was as dodgy as he was.
Read a newspaper article praising her "honesty" when in fact she was proven to have lied several times about different things. Very dodgy. He probably did do it but don't see how you can convict on that evidence. There's also a strong possibility someone framed him.
Even that AI woman finding and then losing her notebook that the guards asked to see... Yet she was 100% certain he was there that morning. Very suspect.
"Beyond reasonable doubt"... I have a ton of reasonable doubt.0 -
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Despite the Media's insistence on calling it a "run off" tank, it seems to have been a "dairy washings tank".
The farm no longer had dairy cows so the milking parlour was unused for perhaps a decade.
But the underground tank constructed to catch and store spilled snd discarded milk and the water used twice daily would still be sitting there, collecting any water that went down the drain from the unused milking parlour and dairy. (Dairy being the name of the room containing the refrigerated milk tank , hand washing facilities, usually two 25 gallon containers for holding water for washing the milking machine ( one for water with detergent, the other for rinsing water) the milk filtration system used, often a water heater and sometimes the electrical controls and a high pressure washer .
Ground water could also be seeping into a dairy washings tank.
Regular practice on dairy farms to use the contents of this tank to dilute cattle slurry to get it thin enough to spread.
If you have a tank holding 8 or 10 thousand gallons of water sitting beside you, why wouldn't you use it, it would take a day and a half a day at least to get that much wster from a hose pipe .
Above is my understanding of the tank a parlour tank, this tank was slabbed and grass growing over it and not in use. How many people knew about this tank and when quirke left it would be one less. From day one could not understand why he found the body and if he said nothing the body could still be undiscovered in the tank to this day. Also if he did not seal the tank so well nature would have decomposed the body down to the bones.0 -
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Purple Mountain wrote: »I'm sorry that yours is the post I'm quoting, but it's because it's the last one here.
While people are on here making jovial remarks about the infidelity associated in this trial, keys in ashtrays, crimes of passion etc. let's just for one minute remember that Bobby Ryan was an innocent man, killed in cold blood and his naked remains left in the most undignified manner for two years.
He clearly was adored by his 2 children, he seemed to be still on good terms with his ex wife and any friends who were interviewed spoke highly of him.
All I want to say is, sympathy to his loved ones and may the man rest in peace.
In Ireland everybody loves you when you’re dead.0 -
[Deleted User] wrote: »Read a newspaper article praising her "honesty" when in fact she was proven to have lied several times about different things. Very dodgy. He probably did do it but don't see how you can convict on that evidence. There's also a strong possibility someone framed him.
Even that AI woman finding and then losing her notebook that the guards asked to see... Yet she was 100% certain he was there that morning. Very suspect.
"Beyond reasonable doubt"... I have a ton of reasonable doubt.
I’d say if a police force anywhere wants to pin anything on an individual they will find a way.0 -
Despite the Media's insistence on calling it a "run off" tank, it seems to have been a "dairy washings tank".
The farm no longer had dairy cows so the milking parlour was unused for perhaps a decade.
But the underground tank constructed to catch and store spilled snd discarded milk and the water used twice daily would still be sitting there, collecting any water that went down the drain from the unused milking parlour and dairy. (Dairy being the name of the room containing the refrigerated milk tank , hand washing facilities, usually two 25 gallon containers for holding water for washing the milking machine ( one for water with detergent, the other for rinsing water) the milk filtration system used, often a water heater and sometimes the electrical controls and a high pressure washer .
Ground water could also be seeping into a dairy washings tank.
Regular practice on dairy farms to use the contents of this tank to dilute cattle slurry to get it thin enough to spread.
If you have a tank holding 8 or 10 thousand gallons of water sitting beside you, why wouldn't you use it, it would take a day and a half a day at least to get that much wster from a hose pipe .
Yes, except this would have held no water. They had to pump in 27 ton of water over two days to fill it with 4 ton.
There would have been no water in it for Pat to suck out, it was far too porus. .0 -
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was marys or pats dna in the van ?
maybe someone flooded the old milking palour with a leaking pipe , normal practice for the farmer who's leaving a property to clean out the slurry tanks , so he needed water and said let's get it from the old palour tank as the pipe leaked and might get water there for agitation ,
maybe someone else has planned and got away with the perfect murder .0 -
Spanish Eyes wrote: »Where would one get the court transcript? Is it available to the public?
While not a transcript, there’s a lot of detail here. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/anatomy-of-a-murder-how-patrick-quirke-murdered-bobby-ryan-1.3877518
In Court 13 at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin for nearly three months, the family of Bobby “Mr Moonlight” Ryan sat with quiet dignity while details of his horrific death and the jealousy of Patrick Quirke seeped out drip by morbid drip.
Quirke’s wife Imelda was there too, and sat stoically, often taking notes, as details of her husband’s crime and his “seedy” affair with his late brother-in-law’s wife Mary Lowry were pored over. Again and again, the court heard Quirke say, in interviews with gardaí and in a letter penned to a Sunday supplement agony aunt, that he loved Lowry; that he wished he could transfer his feelings for her to his wife; that he still loved his wife but wasn’t “in love” with her, and that he was devastated when he found out Lowry was seeing another man.
If it hurt, and it must have, Imelda Quirke did not let it show. Every morning she arrived with her husband, before sitting alone in the body of the court, unless she was accompanied by her son as her husband sat in the dock.
When there was a break the couple shared a packed lunch. And when the occasional warm afternoon came, they strolled in the Phoenix Park. In the evening they left together. The only time her husband showed any emotion was when there was mention of the tragic death of their son, Alan, in August, 2012.
To Imelda’s right throughout those 13 weeks were Robert Ryan Jnr and his sister Michelle, the heartbroken children of a loving and charismatic father who disappeared for 22 months only to be found bludgeoned to death and buried in a slurry tank.
Prosecution counsel Michael Bowman called it a concrete sarcophagus - a disused waste-tank that had once been used to collect mud, milk, cow faeces and chemicals washed through an underground pipe from an old dairy farm across the yard.
Robert and Michelle Ryan were visibly shaken by some of the evidence given during an often gruelling trial, particularly the pathology that detailed the multiple blows that had fractured their father’s skull in several places.
On one occasion a photograph of their father’s skeleton, freshly taken from the tank and blackened by the filth it had lain in for 22 months, was accidentally displayed on the court monitors. Michelle and her mother, Mary Ryan, Bobby’s former wife, left sobbing.
Robert Jnr remained but the colour left his face as the horror of what happened to his father and the callousness of his killer were revealed in sickening detail. It was an emotional moment in a trial that veered from high emotion to painstaking examination of evidence and legal arguments on fine points of law.
EVIDENCE ISSUES
Much of the 13-week trial took place in the absence of the jury as lawyers argued over admissibility of evidence and even whether the jury should be discharged, or directed to find Quirke not guilty without beginning their deliberations.
Twice the defence asked for the jury to be discharged amid concerns about the late disclosure of evidence and complaints about the Garda investigation. Fingerprint evidence had been ignored, the defence said, and photographs lost.
Prosecution witnesses had failed to disclose everything they knew, or everything they would later rely on in court, it was claimed. Witnesses changed their evidence when they got in the stand, they said, undermining the defence cross-examination.
But Ms Justice Eileen Creedon refused to discharge. When the prosecution case closed, following a three-month trial, the defence asked her to take the fate of their client out of the jurors’ hands and direct them to acquit.
The only evidence against Quirke, they said, was speculative, and at its height it would arouse suspicion but fell well short of proof beyond reasonable doubt. A conviction on such evidence, they said, would be unsafe. Again, Ms Justice Creedon disagreed and left Quirke’s fate to the six men and six women of the jury.
Barristers Bernard Condon and Lorcan Staines, for the defence, frequently rose to ask the jury to leave whereupon they would make various applications or complaints to the judge.
When Condon rose on Wednesday, March 6th, following weeks of seemingly interminable legal argument, there was a gasp and even a “f**k sake” muttered from the back of the court. Even jury members could be seen rolling their eyes.
The arguments sometimes became heated. On a number of occasions, Ms Justice Creedon warned counsel not to be “rude” to one another. When the prosecution junior counsel David Humphries asked one witness if he was “sure” when he said that Patrick Quirke was at the milking parlour in Breanshamore at 8.15am on the morning that Bobby Ryan disappeared, Bernard Condon asked the jury to leave before branding the question a “disgrace”.
Condon accused Humphries of impeaching his own witness and said the question suggested to the jury that there was something questionable about the witness’s evidence. Condon said the only reason he did not ask for the jury to be discharged was because his client wanted the trial to continue.
He accused Humphries of setting the witness up and said the prosecution should not have led evidence if they did not believe his answers were credible. Denying that he had impeached the witness, Humphries pointed out that the witness had said in his Garda statement that he was not sure about the details.
Meanwhile, Staines, for the defence, suggested that the Director of Public Prosecutions was trying to hide evidence by refusing to call Acting State Pathologist Dr Michael Curtis. The defence wanted Dr Curtis to give evidence that Bobby Ryan’s injuries could have been caused by a vehicle but the prosecution had their own pathologist, Prof Jack Crane, who said the injuries were most likely from a blunt object. The prosecution refused to call Curtis, leaving the defence to call him themselves. The prosecution was therefore able to cross-examine the pathologist, something they could not have done with one of their own witnesses.
Prosecuting counsel Michael Bowman used the opportunity to some effect, using evidence Curtis gave to suggest to the jury that Bobby Ryan’s killer could have lured him to an area that would be easy to clean, like the nearby milking shed where there is a hose and drain.
This helped the prosecution to overcome the obvious shortfall in its case that nobody had noticed an area of blood staining anywhere around Fawnagowan despite extensive searches by gardaí. If Bobby Ryan was beaten to death with a blunt object within 60 metres of Mary Lowry’s home, where were the blood stains? Juries are not allowed to speculate but at least this was a possible explanation of something that required explaining.
Quirke (50) of Breanshamore, Co Tipperary had pleaded not guilty to the murder of Bobby Ryan whose body was found in an underground run-off tank on the farm owned by Mary Lowry and leased by the accused at Fawnagown, Tipperary 22 months later in April 2013.
TESTY EXCHANGES
There were many testy exchanges between counsel in what was a particularly niggly trial. The defence repeatedly accused prosecution barristers of asking leading questions and were exasperated by the level of disclosure and fresh statements coming at them throughout the 13 weeks of evidence. These exchanges and fresh disclosures accounted for much of the delay in what was initially expected to be a six- to eight-week trial.
The defence tested to the limit every aspect of the prosecution case and in particular honed in on the idea that Bobby Ryan could have died as a result of a collision with a vehicle rather than a beating with a blunt object.
They questioned numerous witnesses about a Toyota Corolla in a shed that was used by Lowry’s teenage son Tommy as a “field car” and asked gardaí why it was not taken away and properly examined. They asked Lowry’s son Jack, who was 11 when Bobby Ryan went missing, whether he ever drove the field car.
He had to insist more than once that at age 11 he had no idea how to drive, did not know how to start a car, and could not reach the pedals. Mary Lowry and her family often seemed to feature more highly in the trial than Quirke or Bobby Ryan.
The defence focused on the fact that her house was not properly searched when Ryan went missing in 2011. They asked her son Jack if his uncle Eddie had called around on June 2nd, the night before Bobby Ryan went missing.
“I was 11, I don’t remember,” he told the court. Gardaí did search Lowry’s house in 2013 following the discovery of Bobby Ryan body and much was made of the fact gardaí discovered what they thought were blood stains in Lowry’s bedroom and living room.
David Humphries tried to ask one Garda witness if he knew what the final outcome of scientific tests on those supposed blood stains was when Staines interrupted, saying the witness should not be allowed to give evidence beyond their area of qualification.
The court adjourned for the day and press headlines screamed that blood was found in Mary Lowry’s home. The following day scientists revealed that those stains were false positives. They were not blood at all.
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Dr Martina McBride said one sample on a light fitting and ceiling that gave a “presumptive positive” result for blood was probably fly faeces which can be mistaken for blood by equipment routinely used by gardaí.
The defence tried to prevent much of the prosecution case going before the jury and were successful in excluding evidence that someone had used Quirke’s computer to search for infamous Irish murderers Brian Kearney and Joe O’Reilly.
Ms Justice Creedon said the searches were relevant but she was concerned that those murders were “notorious” and therefore the fact of the search would be prejudicial to Quirke but not sufficiently probative to justify their inclusion.
She also ruled out recordings found on a hard-drive in Quirke’s home which contained audio of an intimate sexual nature between Quirke and Lowry. She said the fact he had such recordings suggested a “strange sexual proclivity” on his part and therefore was again potentially more prejudicial than probative.
The fact of the affair, she said, was already established. The jury did hear that the hard-drive contained a recording of Mary Lowry in conversation with her boyfriend Flor Cantillon, whom she met in 2012 after Bobby Ryan’s disappearance.
How Quirke made that recording is not known but it suggests his obsession with Lowry continued long after she decided she wanted nothing to do with him.
QUIRKE-LOWRY RELATIONSHIP
Patrick Quirke relied on Mary Lowry emotionally and financially. Her husband Martin, best man at Quirke’s wedding and brother of Quirke’s wife Imelda, died in September 2007. Almost immediately Quirke started farming what was now Mary Lowry’s land at Fawnagowan.
He helped Mary Lowry with her finances and they started sleeping together in early 2008. Lowry called this a “seedy” affair, something she was ashamed of. She had not had sex in a long time, she said, and felt that Quirke was overpowering and intimidating.
She said she had not chosen to have an affair, but was “led” into it when she was vulnerable following her husband’s death. Quirke’s and Lowry’s finances became intertwined as he used €80,000 of her money to invest in contracts for difference (CfD), a way of betting on share-price movements.
He suggested to her that she leave €100,000 to him in her will so that he could take care of her children if anything happened to her. He took up a seven-year lease on her farm where he kept dry stock, his dairy herd remaining at his home farm at Breanshamore.
He borrowed €20,000 from her when his creditors started demanding repayments on loans. When he lost cattle to bovine venereal diarrhoea he said it came from her late husband’s herd and she should compensate him.
He later claimed that she offered to let him keep the €20,000 as compensation, something she denied. They had other joint investments in stocks and shares. Later, it emerged that his lease on the 50 acres at Fawnagowan cost him just €1,600 annually when EU single farm payments were taken into account.
Quirke would repeat over and over that he loved Mary and that he called to her home almost every day for about three years. But then, in August 2010, she met Bobby Ryan. Ryan was, she said, a “breath of fresh air” and with him she no longer had to lie and hide.
Her three boys loved him and he loved them. He was fun, funny and full of life. They shared a passion for music and dance. When Quirke found out in late 2010, he was furious. He told gardaí that he became suspicious, checked her phone and discovered text exchanges with Ryan.
He took her phone and used it to text and telephone Ryan in a bid to break up the relationship, telling Bobby Ryan, “I’m the man.” Mary Lowry had to plead to get the phone back and later had to come clean to Bobby Ryan about her relationship with Quirke.
Even after that Lowry did not turn her back on Quirke. She was worried about him, he seemed down and messages he sent her made her think he might be suicidal. Bobby Ryan offered to meet Quirke, to give him some guidance. Bobby Ryan suffered after his own marriage break-up and he thought he could help.
They met in Hayes’s Hotel in Thurles, talked for about an hour and shook hands. Quirke would later tell gardaí that he enjoyed this meeting as he felt Ryan knew that he was not some “monster” out to get him. But, in reality, Quirke was unimpressed.
‘A MAN FOR THE WOMEN’
Later, he would tell Lowry that her new boyfriend smelled. He told Lowry’s brother Eddie to talk sense into his sister, that Ryan was the type of person who would be out late, and was “a man for the women”.
The jury did not get to hear that when Quirke and his wife accompanied Bobby Ryan and Mary Quirke to a Brendan Grace concert, Quirke warned Ryan to stay away from Mary Lowry. Later, Ryan would tell his daughter Michelle about this but she could not give it as evidence as it was hearsay.
In February 2011, a desperate Patrick Quirke sent a “Dear Patricia” letter to the Sunday Independent agony aunt complaining that he had ruined his life by starting an affair with a “family friend”. He said he was still in love with this woman but she had started seeing someone else.
He was broken-hearted and angry that things were going so well for her while he was left with nobody to talk to. He wished he could transfer his feelings from Lowry to his wife, but he could not. Mary Lowry saw the letter. Immediately, she knew who had written it. When she confronted Quirke he told her he had nobody else to confide in.
But Quirke was not out of ideas yet. On February 4th, 2011, he carried out his second sabotage attempt on the relationship when he contacted Tusla and claimed Mary Lowry was neglecting her children emotionally and staying out late with her new boyfriend. She had “lost the run of herself,” he said.
This attempt to scuttle the relationship also failed as Tusla found nothing untoward was going on at the Lowry home. His later claims to gardaí that he was not jealous and was happy for Mary Lowry and Bobby Ryan were flatly contradicted by his devious and repeated attempts to break them apart.
By June 2011, Quirke had hatched his final plan to kill Bobby Ryan, though the exact details will never be known. What is known is that Bobby Ryan called to Mary Lowry’s at about 9pm on June 2nd. The following morning they awoke at about 6am and made love before he left at about 6.30am.
Three to 10 minutes later she heard his van cross the cattle grid at the end of her drive, which she would tell gardaí was longer than usual for him to leave. The prosecution argued that it was during this time that Bobby Ryan was lured to his death before Quirke drove away in Bobby Ryan’s van.
‘HOT AND SWEATY AND BOTHERED LOOKING’
At 8.30am, Mary Lowry saw Quirke on the farm and noted he was “hot and sweaty and bothered looking”. It was her routine on Fridays to take her children to school and her mother-in-law, Rita Lowry, into town. That meant there was nobody at Fawnagowan for much of that morning, leaving Quirke clear to complete his plan by placing the body in the tank and cleaning the scene of the murder.
As Bowman pointed out, only someone with knowledge of the Lowry family’s habits would have known that a Friday morning was the perfect time to murder Bobby Ryan and dispose of his body unseen at Fawnagowan.
The alarm was raised when Ryan failed to show up for work. His daughter Michelle was immediately distraught. She knew her father had been down following the split with her mother and feared the worst. She met Mary Lowry, who was also by now deeply worried.
Michelle Ryan found her father’s car at a car park leading into Kilshane Woods that afternoon, prompting searchers to focus their efforts there. Though they did not know it, his body lay no more than 60 metres from Mary Lowry’s bedroom.
With his work done, Quirke went to a hotel in Portlaoise later that morning as a treat for his wife’s birthday. But he had already made mistakes. Breda O’Dwyer, an artificial inseminator, noted that for the first time in 15 years of visiting Quirke’s farm he was still in his milking parlour at Breanshamore when she arrived at 9.30am. Clearly something had put out his schedule.
The searches went on for Bobby Ryan, his distraught family left with no idea what had happened to him. Life went on for Quirke. He tried to get back with Mary Lowry and convinced her to spend a night with him at Fitzpatrick’s Hotel in Killiney, south Dublin, in January 2012.
She told the trial she did not want to be there, got drunk, and left early the following morning. “We didn’t rekindle our affair,” she insisted. There was also a suggestion that she spent a night with Quirke at the plush Cliff House Hotel in Ardmore, Co Waterford, in September 2011, three months after Bobby Ryan went missing.
But Mary Lowry strongly denied staying in the Cliff House despite a payment for more than €400 from her bank account to the hotel. In March 2012, over the St Patrick’s Day weekend, Mary Lowry met Flor Cantillon and they started dating.
INFATUATION CONTINUED
Again, Quirke was pushed aside but his infatuation with Lowry continued. He would tell gardaí that he wished Mary Lowry well but he somehow managed to record a conversation between her and Cantillon as they joked and laughed while reading from a letter to a Sunday supplement agony aunt.
The recording was on a hard-drive in Quirke’s house but no explanation was given as to how it got there and Quirke was never asked about it in interviews. Gardaí only discovered the Cantillon recording some weeks before the trial began.
By now the relationship between Lowry and Quirke had soured. He began badgering her for money, insisting she should compensate him for the infection to his cattle. In August 2012, tragedy was visited on the Quirke family when Quirke’s son Alan died in a farming accident. Two weeks after the funeral, Quirke confronted Mary Lowry and accused her of not supporting him, complaining: “After all I’ve done for you.”
When he bumped into her brother Eddie at Fawnagowan he told him Mary Lowry was a “right bitch” and warned that he would personally remove her from the church if she turned up to Alan’s month’s-mind Mass.
He may have been angry but he was still interested in Lowry. In December 2012, Quirke was caught on CCTV snooping around her home. She had set up CCTV after her house alarm repeatedly went off and now here was Quirke on camera, peering in her windows, taking underwear from her line, checking her post box, and using a key to open her front door.
Gardaí arrived, reacting to the alarm, but Quirke disappeared only to re-emerge once they had gone. Mary Lowry already believed Quirke had stolen her passport from her house, preventing her from taking a planned family holiday.
For her, this was the end. Considering the Quirke family was still grieving, she did not want to be too harsh and asked a solicitor to invite Quirke to terminate his lease at Fawnagowan, for both their sakes. After initially demanding compensation, Quirke agreed to just leave. He was to be out by early July.
DISCOVERY OF BODY
The clock was ticking. Quirke could not leave the body where it was because, as prosecution counsel Michael Bowman pointed out, the next person to farm that land might want to reopen the dairy and would almost certainly open that tank to find out if it could still be used or repaired.
On April 29th, 2013, Mary Lowry had a final run-in with Quirke. She bumped into him and called him “some c**t” and berated him for taking her “knickers” from her line. Quirke was now feeling vindictive.
The following day he staged the discovery of the body, telling gardaí he needed water to agitate slurry in one of the sheds. He thought the old run-off tank from the dairy would contain water because a leak from the mains some weeks earlier had run into it.
The tank measures 3.6 metres by 1.8 metres and is 1.6metres deep. It could be accessed by removing two slabs of concrete that covered about one-quarter of the entire tank. The rest of it was covered by poured concrete which was not designed to be removed. Each movable slab weighs well over 20 stone (130kg).
Quirke said he had not opened that tank since 2008. On April 30th, 2013, he used a shovel to prise open one of the slabs just far enough so he could push through a pipe from his suction tanker. He said he watched as the water level went down and then noticed something peculiar in the tank. He used his hands, he said, to push aside the second slab and saw what he now knew to be human remains.
There were a couple of problems with that story. Engineer Michael Reilly found the tank was porous and incapable of holding water. That April was a dry month so there was no way the tank contained more than a few inches of sludgy water. Also, when Quirke prised the first slab open his view into the tank would have been severely limited. When gardaí reconstructed what Quirke would have seen they determined it was impossible to see anything in the tank.
The jury did not hear about this reconstruction because the defence objected on the grounds that gardaí had not consulted an engineer, took no measurements, and did not take into account lighting conditions, the time of day, or the time of year. Ms Justice Creedon described the reconstruction as “frail”.
Gardaí were immediately suspicious of Quirke. They had, by now, gathered much evidence about the volatile relationship between Quirke and Lowry. But Quirke was prepared for their questions and tried to point suspicion at Mary Lowry.
JEALOUSY
He denied having any role in Ryan’s body ending up in the tank and questioned why Mary Lowry was unclear about whether it took 10 minutes or two minutes for Bobby Ryan’s van to leave her driveway the morning he disappeared.
He asked gardaí how she found his van so quickly later that day and wondered why she searched for the van on a route she had no reason to think he would have taken. He also wondered how she saw the van from the road.
“I found it strange,” he said. Later, he described it as “intriguing”. She had a “couldn’t-care-less attitude about it,” he said. He further tried to point suspicion at Lowry by saying she knew about the existence of the tank. His jealousy had turned to spite but again Quirke had made errors.
Some weeks before the “discovery” of Bobby Ryan’s body, Quirke had secretly opened the tank to check on the remains. In doing so, he inadvertently allowed flies into the tank. They laid eggs and entomologist Dr John Manlove would later identify larvae on the body that showed there had been a single fly infestation at least 11 days and probably some weeks before April 30th.
Quirke had also been busy preparing for his Garda interviews. When his house was searched on May 17th, almost three weeks after the discovery, they found traces of notes on an A4 page which were uncannily similar to what he said in interview with gardaí about Mary Lowry and Bobby Ryan’s disappearance. It begged the question, had he made those notes before the “discovery” on April 30th and, if so, why would he be preparing for Garda interviews unless he knew he was going to discover Bobby Ryan’s body?
During the search of Quirke’s home in May 2013 gardaí also seized computers and hard-drives. Supt Patrick O’Callaghan, the senior investigating officer, had predicted they would find searches related to human decomposition.
He was right. On the same day that Quirke was caught on CCTV snooping around Mary Lowry’s yard he searched for “human body decomposition timeline” and looked at various articles relating to how the body decomposes after death.
In the months prior to that he had carried out similar searches and also looked at an article about DNA evidence and its limitations.
When gardaí asked him about those searches he told them his son had recently died in December 2013. But gardaí established that he had looked up decomposition prior to his son’s sudden death. Quirke’s web of lies was breaking apart.
Quirke is a meticulous murderer. He planned everything and managed to hide the fact of the murder for 22 months, leaving gardaí to believe that they were dealing with a suicide. But he was undone by his own meticulousness - his internet research on DNA and decomposition, his need to check on the body weeks before revealing it to the world, his ham-fisted attempts to point suspicion at Mary Lowry.
As he begins his life sentence he can reflect on all the things he might have done differently.0 -
I can't recall who Quirkes defence team were but it would have been better if he 'called Saul-ace attorney' !0
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Yeah it must have been someone else and not the guy with motive, opportunity/immediate access, internet history on bodily composition.was marys or pats dna in the van ?
maybe someone flooded the old milking palour with a leaking pipe , normal practice for the farmer who's leaving a property to clean out the slurry tanks , so he needed water and said let's get it from the old palour tank as the pipe leaked and might get water there for agitation ,
maybe someone else has planned and got away with the perfect murder .
Come on, why are you so determined not to believe it was him when it very much looks like it was?0
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