The Killing of Fr Niall Molloy

Therese Flynn died in 1993.

Thanks for that.

A great watch. Very concise.

I don't remember an account that the pub closed at 10pm. I would have thought this less likely in that era. Pubs were usually busy on a Sunday night.

There was a total group of 10 who ended up in Whites. Even if they were all in cahoots in giving false accounts of their movements, they were leaving themselves open to contradiction by independent witnesses by using such a public setting for an alibi.

I wouldn't say it's definitive that the pub closed at 10pm. People give best guesses on timelines, so expect some leeway. Perhaps the witness gave an estimate that if they left at closing, then it must have been just after 10.

In that era the pubs in Clara would have been still going after 10pm on a Sunday. That day Offaly had played Dublin in Tullamore and there were 25,000 at it. I would think this would see a bigger turn out in the pubs. My recollection is that the local sergeant Kevin Forde was quite sociable himself and wouldn't have been known to be hammering on pub windows with flashlight 1 minute after closing.

Also, if Denis Hoctor was not going to corroborate the Flynn timeline, would he give a false alibi if the assaulter was part of the group of 10?

More interestingly. Was it strange that the group went out to Tubber for a night cap instead of back to Flynn's? Surely it was a bit unsocial to not reconvene with the remaining wedding guests in Kilcoursey? Did they get word that something was up and to stay away, or did they get quickly ushered away from the house and told to get elsewhere if they were coming back directly from White's?

The key timelines are when did any remaining guests start to evacuate the house when they realised there was an incident brewing? In the McGinn report there is an account of someone well dressed vaulting the wall between 10pm and 11pm and running away. There were other anecdotal accounts in the locality of people scattering away from the estate around this time.

Could the guards have checked phone records to see when the phone calls to the solicitor in Dublin began? There are accounts that this is where the advice to clear the house of witnesses came.

The technology may have less advanced but Telecom Eireann at least had the capability of knowing how much to bill you by for regional phone call.

Yes, there was a cafe (Chez Ninis) in the old Quinnsworth shopping centre that Therese was running up until her death.

Richard Flynn owned a group of motorfactors, they were more in the Halfords line than your local motorfactor now. I think they were called Richland. I think he had one in the Parkway shopping center in Limerick. He bought out the lease of one in the Cresent Shopping center and renamed it. I remember at the time the product offering was not as good as under the previous management.

They were called RichSpeed at some point.

That today tonight investigation programme was excellent and what struck me most was the partnership between fr Molloy and Therese Molloy which included valuable land holdings and horses but when fr Molloy died,the Flynn's would seem to have got full control of those assets as the previous partnership not registered legally it seemed and was based on trust and fr Molloy's trust he had with the Flynn's may have being coming to a end that weekend.

Seemed to be a profitable partnership.... certainly didn't look like it was for the love of horses alone that put them together but the lucrative earning potential for both partners

Correct, but I think they were called Richspeed. He had one in the Galway Shopping center Headford road too. The chap that managed the Galway one eventually took it over and it is still there today but moved to a smaller unit along with changing it's name a few year ago.

There was obviously a lot of speculation and gossip about the case. In McGinn's report the then DPP had to deny he was a godfather to one of the Flynn children - the cold case team or whatever they are called went to the trouble of checking the baptism records for the Flynn children from the late 1950s to the early 1960s. The 'high society' side of the wedding might have been over done a bit. Therese Flynn was in college with Ann Lenihan and stayed friends with her. I don't know the overall attendance at the house but the Bridge House hotel sent 30-40 staff or something like that for the catering so it was a reasonable size. Amidst presumably a large crowd there was also in addition to Lenihan a member of the Fianna Fail National Executive which from memory is (or was) quite a large committee.

Kevin Forde is quoted in the report as having been stationed in Clara from 1980 to 1997 and said that the Flynns pre 1985 were not known to the station in relation to even the most minor of motoring offence. No summonses had ever been pulled or alleged influence brought to bear.

McGinn tends to find no evidence that Frank Roe wrote to the DPP claiming he knew Mr and Mrs Flynn and Fr Molloy. The Judge's usher/ tip staff was still alive at the time of McGinn's report and claimed never to have driven Roe to any meeting where he met the Flynns or Molloy. David Flynn is also quoted in the report as denying a rumour that his mother stopped speaking to him after the death of Fr Molloy albeit he concedes that their relationship did change.

David Flynn was re-interviewed in 2012/2013 and that interview was quoted in McGinn report. The gist of his not that intelligible explanation for the post inquest interview was that he could have addressed some speculation. Except he did not. It wasn't the right time. Exactly what strand of the speculation he was going to attack he did not say (in 2012/2013) and how he was going to do it again he didn't say. So that cleared all that up.

I agree wholeheartedly. That programme was excellent, with so much information,

some of which I was hearing for the first time. I did not get the name of the presenter,

who was brilliant, but, obviously, not a media star!