The Cold Case Files (31 page)

St Kevin’s Park is a well-maintained, small park a short distance from the Garda offices at Harcourt Square. It’s nestled behind
DIT
Kevin
Street, close to Wexford Street and Camden Street. The old church ruin where Tommy Powell’s body was found on 20 June 1961 is still there within the park. It was the year after the
five-year-old boy was found murdered here that Dublin Corporation took control of the church ruins and graveyard. The Corporation, and more recently Dublin City Council, have done a fine job in
making this a peaceful and welcoming park. At the time of Tommy Powell’s murder, the old graveyard was overgrown and almost beyond repair. Today, mature trees and closely cropped grass, park
benches and hedges provide a space to reflect. Some of the original headstones remain undisturbed while others have been placed along the outer walls of the church ruin and perimeter walls of the
park.

There is nothing here to mark it as the location where Tommy Powell was found murdered. The file on his case has been kept safe all this time at the National Archives on Bishop Street, less than
a five-minute walk away. In one sense Tommy’s murder was so long ago, yet in another it was only a half century ago. The Minister for Justice at the time was Charles Haughey. In a
parliamentary question at the time about the number of unsolved murder cases, the Minister listed six unsolved murders as having occurred between 1952 and 1961. In his reply the Minister stated
that “Garda investigations still continue in relation to all of them.”

It’s natural to speculate, it’s human nature. Was Tommy Powell killed by an older child or children? If so, they might only be in their sixties or seventies now. Even if he was
killed by someone in their twenties or thirties they could quite possibly still be alive. There is nothing in the case file to suggest any particular line of enquiry. There was simply no motive for
killing a little boy who was last seen walking alone on nearby Camden Street. His killer may have died long ago, but might they just possibly still be alive?

Brian McGrath was finally laid to rest on Saturday 18 September 2010. It was less than two months since his wife had been found guilty of his murder, a
murder which had occurred more than 23 years previously. Vera McGrath was now serving a life sentence, while Colin Pinder, who had been found guilty of manslaughter, was still awaiting sentence. He
would later be jailed for nine years.

Local funeral director Michael Cassidy met Gardaí at Mullingar Hospital and received the body of Brian McGrath. Back in 1993, when forensic science of the time had failed to establish
Brian’s identity to a mathematical certainty, it was Michael Cassidy who had taken care of the burial of the ‘unidentified’ man, who everyone believed was indeed Brian McGrath.
Michael had been present at the exhumation of the body in May 2008, pointing out to detectives the precise plot where he had buried Brian fifteen years previously. Now he was helping to bring Brian
on his final journey.

Michael brought Brian’s coffin to the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Coole, where Brian’s daughter Veronica and sons Andrew, Brian Jnr and Edward and other members of the
family said a final farewell. Local people came to the church to pay their respects, people who had known Brian back in the 1980s and who knew his children. Also present were many of the
Gardaí who had worked on the successful cold-case investigation. Detective Inspector Martin Cadden from Athlone was there, as were many of the cold-case detectives who had travelled from
Dublin. The head of the Unit, Christy Mangan, was present, as was Detective Garda David O’Brien and Detective Garda Annelisa Hannigan. The new Detective Inspector in the Unit, Eamonn Henry,
also attended the funeral, as did Detective Garda Maurice Downey, the man who had initiated the first enquiries when he received that phone call in 2007 from retired detective John Maunsell, who
was urging the newly formed Unit to review the unsolved case.

Now the murder was indeed solved, and Brian McGrath’s killers were behind bars. In death Brian’s name had become well known throughout the country and indeed overseas as word had
spread about the solving of a 23-year-old murder case in which the victim’s body had been secretly buried, dug up and burned, reburied, found and later buried in a cemetery, exhumed and
analysed forensically, and was now being laid to rest for the final time. Brian McGrath had a life which was a mixture of happiness and pride in his four children, but he had faced much tragedy not
only in death but in his early years. Brian had been abandoned as a baby when he was born in Monaghan in August 1944 and when he was found by a Garda he was brought to local nuns. He never
discovered who his birth mother was and when he was ten years old Brian was placed in Artane Industrial School. When he became an adult he joined the Irish Army, but left soon afterwards. In the
1960s he met his future wife Vera, who was from Dublin. They lived in London for a time and Southampton and also in Dublin. In 1979 they bought a cottage near Coole in Westmeath and the family
moved to the country. It was eight years later that Brian McGrath vanished.

Brian and Vera’s daughter Veronica McGrath bravely told the truth at the Central Criminal Court trial. She told of witnessing Colin Pinder and her own mother Vera beating her father to
death and then secretly burying him in the field next to the family home. She outlined the extreme lengths to which the killers had then gone to try and hide evidence of the murder, by digging up
and burning Brian’s body and then burying it again. Veronica had first come forward in 1993, meeting with detective John Maunsell and making a full statement about the crime she had
witnessed. The failure to get justice back then had left Veronica and the Gardaí very frustrated. When the Cold Case Unit had first contacted Veronica all those years later she did not
hesitate to say she was still prepared to give evidence. It was through her determination and strength that she and the Gardaí finally got justice for her father.

Parish priest Fr Michael Walsh celebrated the funeral mass at the church in Coole. Afterwards, members of the community who had come to pay their respects shook hands with the McGrath family and
offered their condolences. Gardaí also extended their sympathies to Veronica, Andrew, Brian Jnr, and Edward. After the funeral mass Brian’s body was slowly driven from Coole through
the town of Castlepollard and on to Whitehall Cemetery. There Brian’s coffin was placed back in the same plot from where he had been exhumed over two years beforehand. During that period
Brian’s body had been cared for at the Dublin City Mortuary in Marino. It was only at the conclusion of the trial of his killers that Brian’s body could be reburied.

By the time Brian was laid to rest for the final time in September 2010 the Garda Cold Case Unit had assessed the files relating to hundreds of unsolved murders, and the Unit had selected dozens
of those files to be actively reviewed. There was much work ahead, many families seeking answers and seeking justice.

Ultimately Brian McGrath got justice, ultimately the full story of his violent death was revealed. His murder was solved through a combination of brave witnesses, advances in forensic science
and pathology, the good fortune that suspects were still alive, and a determination by detectives to pursue justice for a man who suffered a horrific death. As Brian McGrath was reburied at
Whitehall Cemetery his family now had closure, and Brian could finally and forever more rest in peace.

Lorcan O’Byrne was 25 years old when he was shot dead by armed raiders in his family home above The Anglers Rest pub in Dublin in October 1981. (
Courtesy O’Byrne
family
)

Behind the bar at ‘The Anglers’, Lorcan shares a joke with his mother Bernie. (
Courtesy O’Byrne family
)

The murder of Lorcan O’Byrne was one of the first to be reviewed by the Garda Cold Case Unit. (
Courtesy O’Byrne family
)

An image of The Anglers Rest from a news report within days of Lorcan’s murder. The bar and lounge were on the bottom floor and the O’Byrne home was on the top floor.
The armed raiders had walked up the steps to the right of picture, and burst in the front door of the O’Byrne home towards the centre of picture. (
Courtesy
RTÉ
News
)