The Cold Case Files (3 page)

When it was launched in October 2007, the Cold Case Unit said it was initially going to examine 207 unsolved murders which had occurred since 1980. The year 1980 was chosen simply because they
had to start somewhere. The Brian McGrath case was the first success for the Cold Case Unit, so it might have been thought this would reduce the number of unsolved murders to 206. But such figures
are only ever a guide to a situation which is impossible to accurately quantify. For example, what about the cases of missing people where it was quite possible the person had been murdered and
their body hidden? What about murders which had never been recognised as such—unexplained deaths where no crime was ever detected but where one couldn’t be ruled out? What about more
recent murders which have occurred since 2007 and which have not been solved, and which in time will come under the remit of the Cold Case Unit? The only certainty is that there are hundreds of
unsolved murders, hundreds of families seeking justice, hundreds of killers who have quite literally got away with murder. Every killer has a family, has friends, has a social network, perhaps has
work colleagues. The more you look at the scale of Irish cold cases, the more you realise there are potentially thousands of people on this island who have direct information or strong suspicions
about the identity of killers who have evaded justice for far too long.

L
orcan O’Byrne and his fiancée were celebrating their engagement with Lorcan’s family and friends when he was fatally shot by an
armed raider who burst into the O’Byrne family home at around 11.30 p.m. on Sunday 11 October 1981. The O’Byrne home was directly above the pub they ran—The Anglers Rest—at
Knockmaroon, close to Dublin’s Phoenix Park. The two raiders who forced their way into the building were after the pub takings. It’s quite likely they didn’t expect to find over
twenty people in the O’Byrne home when they broke in. As well as Lorcan and his fiancée Olive, Lorcan’s parents and two brothers and two sisters were there, and some friends and
fellow workers. Lorcan was 25 years old and was a bar manager at the family pub. His parents were planning to retire and let their eldest child take over the business. Lorcan and Olive had been
going out for around three years and had only that evening announced that they were getting married. Everyone was absolutely thrilled. Olive was from the country and had been living and working in
Dublin for a few years. She was already part of the family. When the couple announced their engagement that Sunday evening, an impromptu party was organised for later that night. Lorcan’s
mother made sandwiches and once they got the pub closed early, the family and a number of friends all adjourned upstairs to the sitting room at the back of the building. Lorcan and Olive were
sitting on a couch and people were sitting and standing around the room. Lorcan’s brother Ger was down at the stereo on the ground and was acting as the
DJ
. Everyone
was chatting and toasting the bride and groom to be. Lorcan’s parents Bernie and Lar were there, and his sister Anne and his youngest sister Dorothy, who was just 15 years old. There was a
wonderful happy and excited atmosphere in the packed room. The chat was all about Lorcan and Olive getting married. And then, from nowhere, a masked man suddenly burst through the sitting room door
brandishing a shotgun.

Meeting Lorcan’s brothers Ger and Niall three decades on, it is the first time they have spoken with a journalist, and the loss of their brother is clear. What is particularly upsetting
about Lorcan’s brutal killing is that his fiancée Olive and his parents and two sisters all saw it happen. Niall O’Byrne didn’t see his brother being fatally wounded
because he himself was being attacked elsewhere in the house by the second raider, who had forced his way in the front door. But Ger was in the sitting room. He saw it all. “I was down on my
hands and knees at the stereo changing an album,” he recalls vividly.

The attack seemed so surreal, so unreal, that for a split-second some people thought it was some type of prank. But once they saw Lorcan on the ground the horror hit home. Just moments earlier
everyone had been celebrating, chatting, laughing. Now Lorcan was lying on the ground having taken the full blast of the shotgun in the chest. Olive was by his side. Everyone started screaming. Ger
and one or two others were the first to react and they grappled with the barrel of the gun as the masked man started to back out of the room.

What is particularly galling for the O’Byrne family is that, although the gunman’s accomplice was later caught and jailed for six years, the man who fired the shotgun, the man who
took one life and tore so many other lives apart, is still free. While the accomplice confessed to his part in the attempted robbery and killing, the man who brought a loaded shotgun to the scene,
and who fired it directly at Lorcan, never owned up. The fact that one other person had been brought to justice meant very little to the O’Byrne family. That person wasn’t the person
who fired point-blank at Lorcan, he wasn’t the person who took away the life of a son, brother, and fiancé. When the Garda Cold Case Unit was set up in late 2007, the O’Byrne
family contacted the Garda Commissioner and asked that Lorcan’s case be re-investigated. The family believed there was enough evidence to warrant a full review of the case. The Cold Case Unit
examines historic murder files, looking for angles that might benefit from a fresh analysis. This includes considering advances in forensic science which can link a killer to a crime scene, and
revisiting witnesses who may be able to shed new light. There might also be witnesses who hadn’t come forward before. The murder of Lorcan O’Byrne seemed like a case of an attempted
robbery which had spiralled rapidly into murder. Detectives believed it was very likely the killing had been spoken about at length in the criminal world. The more it was spoken about, the more new
witnesses might come forward. And there was already a lot to go on. Cold-case detectives read in the file that the murder weapon had been located, the getaway car had been found, and one of the two
members of the gang had been successfully prosecuted back in the early 80s. Gardaí took time to study the file in detail and then came back to the O’Byrnes saying yes, they would
indeed carry out a full cold-case review to try and catch the man who shot Lorcan O’Byrne.

The other member of the two-man gang which broke into The Anglers Rest that night in October 1981 was John Meredith, a 32-year-old criminal from Ballyfermot who at the time was living at
Sillogue Road in Ballymun. Meredith’s role that night was very violent, but he didn’t carry the loaded shotgun; instead he used his hands to drag Niall O’Byrne by the hair through
a number of rooms apparently in a search for the pub’s cash box. Meanwhile Meredith’s accomplice, who had entered the front door first, had gone on ahead to the sitting room where he
shot Lorcan. The two raiders fled the scene empty-handed but the massive Garda investigation which followed saw John Meredith being identified as a suspect within days. Less than two weeks after
the murder of Lorcan O’Byrne, Meredith was charged with the crime. In February 1982, just four months after the killing, Meredith pleaded guilty to manslaughter and this plea was accepted by
the State. He was jailed for six years, and in later life he wrote to the O’Byrne family seeking forgiveness for his part in the killing. The O’Byrne family did not respond to his
letters; they wanted nothing to do with him. In late 2007 John Meredith took his own life.

From the admissions of John Meredith about his own part in the raid, and the recovery of the murder weapon and the getaway vehicle, Gardaí had a good deal of information from very early
on in the case. It would seem that while the attempted robbery had been ill-thought-out on the night in question, some degree of planning had gone into targeting the pub’s takings. Meredith
and his accomplice had been watching the O’Byrnes. It’s most likely both men had been in the pub in previous weeks under the guise of being customers, but were secretly watching the
movement of cash, and watching the movement of Bernie and Lar O’Byrne and the bar staff. Certainly Meredith would later tell Gardaí that he had watched Bernie O’Byrne bring cash
to a bank in Ballyfermot and he knew that she drove a Renault. He and his accomplice had discussed trying to snatch the cash another time that Bernie might be walking from the pub to her car to
make the journey to the bank.

Monday was normally the day that Bernie and Lar would go to the bank with the pub takings. They usually went to the Bank of Ireland on Camden Street, but would also sometimes go to the Ulster
Bank in Walkinstown, and to a bank in Ballyfermot. Meredith and his partner may have originally intended to hold up the O’Byrnes on the Monday as they went to the bank, but for some reason
decided to break into the O’Byrne home instead the night before. When later arrested, Meredith claimed that he and the gunman had hatched a plot about two weeks before the attack to rob the
takings of The Anglers Rest. For some reason they decided to strike that Sunday night, but they apparently failed to carry out any surveillance of the pub and living quarters that evening, because
until they had actually broken in, they seemed oblivious to the fact that there were around twenty people still inside. And this is despite the fact that there would have been some cars parked
outside the premises.

The two gangsters drove to The Anglers Rest in Meredith’s own green Hillman Hunter car. He had bought the car for £400 from someone on Dublin’s southside. Using his own car as
the getaway vehicle was not a smart move. When Meredith and his accomplice fled the scene in the Hillman Hunter they drove to Finglas, en route to abandoning the car at Dublin Airport. As they
drove in a panic along River Road near Finglas, a Garda attending the scene of a traffic accident saw the car and saw Meredith driving it, and the Garda could clearly see another man in the
passenger seat. The officer got a good look at both men. Meredith drove on past the accident scene, but for some reason the Garda fortuitously made a mental note of the car. The shotgun used to
murder Lorcan O’Byrne would later be found hidden in a field just a few hundred yards from where the Garda spotted Meredith’s car in Finglas.

Before that terrible night, life at The Anglers Rest had been idyllic for the O’Byrne family. They had been living at and running the premises for over twenty years. Lorcan had been a
toddler when the family had bought the pub and moved in. His Dad Lar was in the pub business all his life. Originally from Aughrim in Co. Wicklow, Lar had come to work in Dublin in the 1930s and
had worked in many pubs in the city centre.

Lorcan’s mother Bernie was from Dublin’s Liberties. Bernie and Lar had a dream of owning and running their own pub, and in late 1959, early 1960, they set their sights on The Anglers
Rest. The couple by now had two children—Lorcan and Anne—and were living near the Navan Road in north Dublin. The Anglers Rest was up for sale and soon after the O’Byrnes viewed
it, they bought it. Ger, Niall and Dorothy were all born in the early to mid-1960s, as the family began a long process of turning the pub into a major attraction. “The first couple of years
were very tough,” Niall tells me.