The Cold Case Files (18 page)

Another theory is that the murder was perhaps not sanctioned by a subversive group or criminal gang, but was perhaps carried out by someone who was trying to join such a group, and who wanted to
prove they were capable of clinical murder. There is nothing to prove this, it is simply one of the many theories to try and explain what type of character might have committed such a callous
murder.

Perhaps the most likely scenario, however, is that it was a psychopathic young man acting on his own initiative who carried out the murder. This begs the question whether he knew his victim, or
was Grace simply the unfortunate victim of a random burglar. There was no sign of a break-in, but perhaps Grace answered the front door to someone who initially looked innocent. Perhaps Grace was
punched and quickly disorientated, then forced upstairs and bound and gagged. Perhaps the burglar then found the guns in the house, and for some reason decided to shoot Grace as she lay face down
on her bed. Her clothing had not been disturbed so sexual assault was not a motive for the murder. Was the killer someone who was high on drugs, who forced his way into the house with perhaps
simply theft on his mind, but whose plan changed when he saw the weapons?

It would appear the killer had brought a roll of black tape with him. The tape was unusually large, it was about two inches wide. The origin of the tape, the place it was manufactured, was never
identified. But what type of person carries black tape with them? Did they carry it with the specific intention of using it to tie someone up?

Maybe the killer knew that there were weapons in the Livingstone house. Maybe he knew his victim, maybe he was invited into the house, or maybe he was a stranger who for some reason didn’t
cause Grace any suspicion when he called to the front door before he suddenly struck out. There are so many theories, but in the absence of fact, theories are all we have ...

The day after the murder the landscape gardener who was working across the road returned to work at The Moorings. He had seen on the previous night’s news that there had been a murder in
the cul-de-sac where he had been working. As he pulled into the estate he saw that the house where he had seen the man standing in the porch the previous afternoon was the house which was now
sealed off. He immediately spoke to a Garda and gave a description of the man he had seen. He told of seeing the young man picking up a large pot plant in the porch. The gardener pointed out a
large leafy plant on the left-hand side of the door. That looked like the plant the unidentified young man had touched. The witness was later asked if it might have been Grace he had seen in the
porch, but the gardener was adamant it was a young man. Four teenage girls also gave statements about a young man they had seen near The Moorings. He wasn’t a local, they didn’t
recognise him.

Four of Grace’s neighbours gave statements outlining how they all, independently of each other, heard a loud sound at around 4.30 p.m. on the day of the murder. One woman likened the sound
to what you might hear if someone struck an empty oil tank. One of the women had experience of guns where she had grown up in the countryside and she said she knew the sound of a firearm when she
heard it. She believed the sound she heard at 4.30 p.m. on the day of the murder was a gunshot.

The gardener who had seen the unidentified youth at 4.40 p.m. on the day of the murder had told Gardaí that he didn’t see any car in the driveway of the Livingstone home. This
raised the possibility that Grace had gone out for a drive and later come home not knowing there was an intruder in the house. Had someone been watching Grace’s movements that afternoon and
waited until she had gone out of the house before breaking in? But there was no sign of a break-in, no damage to the front or back door. For every theory it seemed there was something to knock it
back. What was without doubt was that Grace’s car was parked in the driveway as normal by the time Jimmy came home that evening.

As investigations continued it was established that a young man had called to a number of houses close to The Moorings cul-de-sac that afternoon and represented himself as a collector for a
recognised charity. When Gardaí checked with that charity they discovered it did not have any registered collectors in the Malahide area on 7 December 1992.

As the investigation continued, Gardaí sent a file to the Director of Public Prosecutions in relation to the two unlicensed firearms which Jimmy Livingstone had at his home. In the hours
and days after Grace’s murder, Jimmy had volunteered all the information he had about the guns he kept. To this day he is still very upset about his arrest under Section 30 of the Offences
Against the State Act in March of 1993. He was later summonsed to appear at Swords District Court and in November 1993, approaching the anniversary of his wife’s murder, he was fined
£300. Asked by journalists outside the court if he was surprised he had been prosecuted, Jimmy thought about his wife’s unsolved murder and solemnly said he hoped the authorities
“now had other things to do”.

It was in late 1993 that a Deputy Garda Commissioner asked a new team of Gardaí to carry out a cold-case review of the unsolved murder of Grace Livingstone. Detective Superintendent Tom
Connolly and Detective Sergeant Todd O’Loughlin from the Crime Branch at Garda Headquarters were despatched to Malahide to carry out a root-and-branch review of the case. Both men were much
experienced and well-respected officers. Tom Connolly had been part of the team which caught English serial killers John Shaw and Geoffrey Evans in the late 1970s. Shaw and Evans had abducted and
murdered women in Co. Wicklow and in Co. Mayo and had planned to commit further murders but were caught by detectives before they could kill again. Connolly had also helped to solve the murders of
three Irish soldiers by a fellow soldier in the Lebanon in 1983. Todd O’Loughlin had worked on many serious crime investigations, and would in time be one of the main detectives to
investigate the murder in 1996 of journalist Veronica Guerin.

The two detectives read the complete case file, including witness statements. The cold-case review looked at every one of the original reasons that Jimmy Livingstone was initially considered a
suspect, and the cold-case team concluded none of the reasons were credible. Central to the cold-case investigation was trying to ascertain the time of Grace’s murder. The sound heard by four
women in their respective homes in The Moorings at 4.30 p.m. needed to be further investigated. Det. Supt Connolly arranged for two members from the Ballistics section of the Garda Technical Bureau
to carry out a test at the Livingstone home. Jimmy Livingstone invited the officers into the house and gave them every assistance. The cold-case team arranged for the four women to be in their
homes and in the exact same locations as they had been on the day of the murder. The Gardaí from the Ballistics section went to the bedroom where the murder had occurred and set up a large
chest stuffed with cotton wool to use as a ‘gunshot chamber’ to safely fire the gun. The Garda then fired a shotgun into the chest. This test was to see if the four women could hear the
sound—was it similar to what they had heard on the day of the murder. The test was carried out at 4.30 p.m. on a particular day, but the weather conditions were different to what they had
been on the day of the murder. A near gale was blowing on the day of the test, and none of the women heard the gunshot. The Gardaí arranged for a second test to be carried out on another day
when weather conditions were similar to what they had been like on 7 December 1992. A shotgun was again fired in the bedroom where Grace had been murdered. Three of the women heard the shot this
time. The fourth woman wasn’t available, but a Garda stood at her home and he too heard the shot. Crucially, the second investigation team asked the women if the sound was similar to what
they heard on the day of the murder. It was the exact same sound, they said. As one woman described it, it was like someone banging an empty oil drum.

A short time after the gun was test-fired, Det. Supt Connolly asked retired nurse Margaret Murphy to enter the bedroom and she said she could get a strong smell which she did not get on the
evening Grace’s body was found. The smell was evident in the hall once you entered the house. A Garda who had attended the crime scene on 7 December 1992 also entered the bedroom and he too
said there was a distinct smell of a discharged firearm which was not there when he attended the original scene. The Garda Ballistics officer who fired the test-shot gave his clothing for testing
and it was found to have gunshot residue.

This test firing of the shotgun was not absolute proof in itself. You cannot precisely replicate an original situation, and when people are listening out for a sound perhaps they are more likely
to hear it. But the fact that the sound the women heard during the test firing was the same as the sound they heard at around 4.30 p.m. on the day of the murder was hugely significant. When you
take into account the following pieces of information—an unidentified man had been seen at the Livingstone front door at around 4.40 p.m. on the day of the murder; an unidentified youth was
also seen in The Moorings at around 4.30 p.m.; the blood from Grace’s wound was congealed by 6 p.m. indicating she had been shot earlier that afternoon; Dr Moodley’s belief that Grace
had died around two hours before he examined her body at 6.35 p.m.—it all leads to the conclusion that the murder happened sometime around 4.30 p.m. on 7 December 1992. At that time Jimmy
Livingstone was still working in his office in Nassau Street.

The second investigation team led by Tom Connolly also found there were a number of cars which had been seen in the Malahide area on the day of the murder which had never been traced. Det. Supt
Connolly went on the
Crimecall
programme on
RTÉ
television on Monday 16 May 1994 to specifically appeal for assistance in tracing the man seen near the
Livingstone house on the day of the murder, as well as help in tracing vehicles. The programme got a number of calls, including one from a man who said that at 4.40 p.m. on the day of the murder he
had been parked in the car park near the seafront at the Coast Road. He was parked about 200 yards from the pedestrian entrance of The Moorings and he saw a man run from this pedestrian entrance
and get into the only other car which was in the car park. The witness said this man drove off in the direction of Malahide village. He was described as about 25 years old, about six foot tall, of
slim build, with long hair to his collar and was wearing an overcoat. The car he drove was described as an old Fiesta, bronze or orange colour with a green visor stuck onto one of the
windscreens.

Another car which remains of great interest is an Opel Kadett or Fiat 127 which was driving erratically coming from the Malahide direction on the afternoon of the murder. One driver had to
swerve to avoid this car and became so annoyed that they followed it from the Swords area all the way to Drogheda where they lost sight of it. The car had a registration number beginning with
either
HZV
9 or
NZV
9.

Two other cars in the area that day were a white
BMW
which was seen speeding in the Seapark estate, and a black car with red stripes also seen driving at speed in the
area. And then there was a red-coloured car with a hint of orange parked on the Coast Road at around noon that day. The car was facing towards Portmarnock. A woman who was walking by noticed a man
sitting in the driver’s seat of the car. What was unusual was that he didn’t seem to be doing anything except looking at the woman through the car mirror. He seemed to be looking at the
woman weirdly, and she remembered he had dark collar-length hair.

Det. Supt Connolly and Det. Sgt O’Loughlin carried out extensive efforts to identify the source of the black tape used to gag and bind Grace Livingstone. Their enquiries took them to other
countries to try and establish the origin of the 2-inch wide tape which was considered to be particularly strong tape, possibly normally used for binding carpet. But the manufacturer was never
found, nor was the actual roll from which the three sections of tape had been taken to constrain Grace. Expert opinion was given that each manufacturing machine gives a particular defined cut to
the edge of the tape it produces, but the machine which made the tape used by the murderer was not located.

The fingermarks left on the black tape remain a very real clue which may yet yield results as forensic science advances. While Gardaí may one day get a ‘hit’ on the
fingerprints, they also know that there is always a possibility that the killer left a trace of their
DNA
on the tape. If the killer was sweating, for example, perhaps they
left their
DNA
on the adhesive side of the tape. It’s the same principle which is applied by forensic scientists when they take ‘sellotape lifts’ of items
to check for
DNA
profiles. The three sections of black tape found on Grace’s body could yet prove crucial.

Perhaps in time we will all have to give our fingerprints as part of the process of introducing biometric passports. Such passports allow for a microchip which can contain a facial scan of the
passport holder, and could in theory also hold a thumbprint or full handprint of the passport holder as another identifier. If we had something like that in this country, a number of criminal
investigations such as the murder of Grace Livingstone might see a breakthrough. This assumes that the person who left fingermarks on the tape was the killer and that furthermore they are
Irish.

The second investigation team which began its work in late 1993 came across a number of young men from Britain who were in the Malahide area on the day of the murder. Garda enquiries brought
them to Wales and England, but of the individuals that they located, the fingerprints on the black tape did not match any of them. However, it remains a possibility and an active line of enquiry
that the killer may not only have been a visitor to Malahide, but may have been a visitor to Ireland.