The Cold Case Files (6 page)

The Cold Case Unit are actively working to bring Lorcan’s killer to justice. Based on descriptions given by witnesses, Garda intelligence in the case, and looking at the circumstances of
his accomplice John Meredith, it is quite likely that the killer who escaped justice is now in his sixties and from Dublin. As we chat about their memories of Lorcan, both Niall and Ger
O’Byrne tell me of how their brother’s murder has affected how they have reacted to other violent incidents. On one occasion an armed man hijacked Ger’s car, but not before Ger
started screaming at him. While other people might be frozen with fear, Ger found he was consumed with anger. Likewise, Niall once witnessed a high-speed car chase with Gardaí in pursuit of
a group of people. The ‘getaway car’ came to a halt near Niall, and he offered his assistance to the Gardaí in keeping the suspects on the ground until Garda reinforcements
arrived. It was an instinctive reaction by someone who has previously come face to face with the worst type of people in our society. I ask them their thoughts on John Meredith’s apparent
remorse for what happened to Lorcan. They don’t know if it was genuine or not, but Ger sums it up well. “Meredith may have been remorseful,” he says. “But the other man
never had any remorse. He never said sorry. Committing a murder didn’t faze this man, he has no value on life.”

“This case is not solved at all,” adds Niall. “Although Meredith was caught, the other guy, the one who shot Lorcan, is still walking around, and has been for the last thirty
years.”

A
fter strangling 79-year-old Nancy Smyth to death, her killer set a fire in Nancy’s bungalow in an attempt to make her death look like an
accident. It was the early hours of Friday 11 September 1987 at Wolfe Tone Street in Kilkenny city. The killer had most likely entered Nancy’s home through the front door. Nancy lived alone
with just her small pet dog; Nancy’s husband Dick had passed away the previous year. After getting into the house, the murderer had either punched or kicked Nancy in the head before
strangling her to death in the living room of her home. The attacker then apparently set fire to the sofa which was beside Nancy’s body. And then the killer fled the scene, while
Nancy’s small dog fretted over its owner’s body. As thick smoke filled the living room and then other rooms in the house, Nancy’s dog died beside her from smoke inhalation.

It is most likely that the killer was not a visitor to the city, but was actually a Kilkenny man. A credible theory is that after he murdered Nancy, the killer would have walked home to his own
house in another part of Kilkenny, perhaps further out of the city. Based on all the witness statements which were taken in the original investigation, all the indications are that the murderer of
Nancy Smyth knew her in some way, or had known her late husband. It would appear that a young man specifically targeted Nancy because he knew she lived alone, and he knew that, at 4’9”
in height and aged 79, she would have been defenceless to an attack. After strangling Nancy and setting fire to her home it is likely the murderer slipped away to walk the streets of Kilkenny to
his own home. Over the years he may have come to believe he got away with murder. However, approaching a quarter of a century after Nancy’s murder, the Garda Cold Case Unit recently completed
a full review of the case and made 200 recommendations, including that all significant witnesses be re-interviewed and all items found or seized during the original investigation be forensically
tested once again.

As he walked away from Nancy’s home shortly after setting the fire, the killer obviously hoped the bungalow would be engulfed in flames. Certainly the sofa where the fire had started was
practically burnt out, but while this had caused thick plumes of smoke to spread throughout the bungalow, the fire was burning itself out in the living room by the time the emergency services were
alerted. Although one bedroom window was slightly ajar when the fire service arrived, with heavy black smoke filtering out through it, it seemed that because the bedroom door was tightly shut, the
fire in the living room had died out due to a lack of oxygen. So because Nancy’s body did not suffer extensive fire damage, the State Pathologist was later able to determine that not only was
she dead before the fire was started, but that she had been strangled.

Nancy Smyth was seen arguing with a man at the front of her home just a few hours before she was murdered. A young witness was walking home after a night out with his girlfriend when he saw an
altercation between Nancy and a man. The witness who saw this argument was able to provide a significant amount of detail about what he had seen. The witness had earlier left his girlfriend’s
house in the north of the city at around 12.30 a.m. and arrived at Wolfe Tone Street sometime between 12.45 a.m. and 1 a.m. The witness was heading towards nearby John’s Green to get a lift
home. He had only begun walking down the top of Wolfe Tone Street when he looked across the road and saw a man knocking on the window of a bungalow. The bungalow was itself distinctive—it was
set in off the road with a small garden to the front, whereas other more recently built houses on either side of the bungalow were fronted directly onto the footpath. But it was the commotion at
the front of the bungalow that immediately caught the witness’s attention.

A man was banging on Nancy Smyth’s porch window which was to the left of the front door. The man was shouting something but the witness could not make out what it was. The witness slowed
down as the man at the front of Nancy’s house continued to bang and shout. Just then the man saw the witness and walked out of the front gate onto the footpath and called over to the witness,
asking him if he had a light. The witness crossed the road and would later tell Gardaí that he had been expecting an explanation from the man as to why he was banging on the window of the
bungalow. However, the man did not offer any explanation to the witness, who gave the man a light for his cigarette. The man said something to the witness to the effect that he would offer him a
cigarette but didn’t have a spare one, and the witness said it was okay, that he didn’t want one. The witness then walked back across the street and continued walking down Wolfe Tone
Street, but looked back towards the house. He didn’t know who lived there. As he looked back he saw a woman inside the porch of the bungalow opening the front door.

The witness did not know Nancy Smyth, but from a distance back on the other side of the wide street he was able to tell it was an elderly lady. She began shouting at the man, who was standing on
the footpath outside her house. Across the road the witness stopped to observe fully what was going on. He would later tell detectives that the woman was shouting angrily at the man on the path,
who began shouting back at her. From the animated tones, the witness heard the woman make some reference to a sister of the man’s. The man then said something to the effect that he was going,
and the witness began to walk on himself on the other side of the road. When the witness looked back again a short time later the woman had gone back into her house, and the man had walked away to
the end railings at the front of Nancy’s bungalow. The witness presumed he was witnessing an argument between two people who knew each other and he continued on his journey. A short time
later he was at the end of Wolfe Tone Street and onto John’s Green and got a lift home from there. It was only when he heard the next day about the murder of a woman in her bungalow at Wolfe
Tone Street that he realised the potential significance of what he had witnessed and he made a detailed statement to Detective Gardaí Jim Ryan and Michael Delaney.

The man who the witness saw arguing with Nancy Smyth continues to be of great significance to Garda enquiries. It is quite possible that Nancy knew the person she was arguing with, but perhaps
not very well. Nancy was well known in the area, and her late husband Dick had many acquaintances through his interest in keeping pigeons. Ever since the Garda Cold Case Unit re-investigated this
case in recent years a lot of its attention has been focused on the man who was seen both banging on Nancy’s window and arguing with her at the front of her house just a few hours before her
body was discovered inside.

Nancy’s body was found shortly after 5.10 a.m. after a passing night security worker spotted smoke coming from Nancy’s house and raised the alarm. Members of Kilkenny Fire Service
all lived within a few hundred yards of the fire station at Gaol Road and, when they were awoken by their bleepers, they raced to the station. Their fire tender then travelled at speed through the
quiet streets and crossed the River Nore to the eastern side of the city, pulling to a halt outside Nancy’s home on Wolfe Tone Street. Fire officers Tony Lacey and Martin Cleere put on
breathing apparatuses and went to the front door of the smoke-filled house. Together with Garda Pat Starr, who had already arrived at the scene, the firemen used a sledgehammer to break open the
door.

Tony and Martin went into the house, and soon found themselves in a room where there was a sofa on fire. Small flames were coming out of the arm of the sofa but the fire itself was almost burnt
out. However, the smoke throughout the house was intense, and visibility was practically nil. Conscious that there might be someone who had been overcome by fumes while sleeping, Tony Lacey felt
his way to a bedroom at the end of the bungalow. Before he had entered the house he had noticed that the front window of this room was ajar. He did a full search of the bedroom but didn’t
find anyone in there. Meanwhile Martin Cleere had made his way to the other bedroom at the far side of the bungalow to check there, but there was no occupant of that bedroom either. Tony Lacey was
now back in the room containing the burning couch. He moved the couch slightly and that’s when he saw Nancy’s body. She was lying on her back parallel with the couch and fireplace. The
smoke was so thick in this room that Tony couldn’t tell if he had discovered the body of a man or a woman. He could just tell it was an adult.

All these years later, Tony’s memories of the early hours of that morning are vivid.

Whoever murdered Nancy Smyth hoped that her home would go up in flames and that all evidence of a murder having occurred would be lost. Nancy Smyth was a smoker, and perhaps the killer hoped
that Gardaí would assume the fire had been the result of an accident involving a lit cigarette. If the fire had taken hold and Nancy’s body had suffered extensive fire damage, the
marks around her neck indicating strangulation would not have been visible. Similarly, the bruising to her head indicating punches or kicks would no longer have been visible either. But for some
reason, the fire didn’t accelerate as the killer had planned. The intense heat of the fire and smoke plumes didn’t cause the windows of Nancy’s home to explode, which in turn
would have seen the flames grow rather than diminish. One strange thing about the fire was that a bedroom window in another part of the house was partly open, and in different circumstances this
might have helped to accelerate the fire. But perhaps the door of this bedroom, which was closed when the fire service arrived, was particularly airtight and kept all outside air away from the fire
in the sitting room. Whatever the explanation, the killer failed in his intention to destroy all evidence of the crime.

Even before the fire service arrived at Nancy’s house that morning, Gardaí were at the scene. Once Nancy’s body was removed to St Luke’s Hospital, Gardaí remained
at her house, which would eventually become a crime scene. In the immediate aftermath of Nancy’s body being found, it was thought that perhaps her death was indeed an accident. Over the
following hours, as neighbours stood around expressing their shock, Gardaí soon started hearing reports of the altercation between Nancy and a man at the front of her home just a few hours
before she was murdered. Gardaí contacted State Pathologist John Harbison to ask him to conduct a post-mortem examination.

Members of the Garda Technical Bureau travelled from Dublin to assist in a forensic analysis of Nancy’s house. Detective Sergeant Willie Hogan took photographs of the scene, Detective
Garda Séamus Quinn looked for clues as to the source of the fire and Detective Garda Oliver Cloonan dusted Nancy’s property for fingerprints. These officers also attended the
post-mortem examination along with local Sergeant Michael Melia.

It was Nancy’s nephew Des Murphy who had to identify her body and the memory is still with him. “It was the day after Nancy was murdered, the afternoon of Saturday 12 September, that
I went to the morgue to identify her,” he tells me.