The Cold Case Files (5 page)

There was no such thing as counselling when Lorcan O’Byrne was murdered. There was no recognition of the trauma and stress that the O’Byrnes and Lorcan’s fiancée must
have endured. One moment, a vibrant happy man with so much expectation was celebrating his engagement to the love of his life. The next moment he was gone. And the man who shot Lorcan dead was
still walking the streets.

“Only for Mam we all would have gone off the rails,” remembers Niall. “Dad never spoke about what happened to Lorcan.” Ger O’Byrne agrees, adding, “Dad took
it really bad, he wouldn’t talk. Lorcan and Dad had been planning a major renovation of the pub, and in 1981 Dad would have been thinking Lorcan might take over the pub. We stayed on in the
pub until 1984 but the heart had gone out of it and we really didn’t want to be there anymore.”

Bernie and Lar O’Byrne had also owned a site close to ‘The Anglers’. It was a beautiful spot up on the hill behind the pub. Before Lorcan was murdered, his parents had a plan
that they would build a house on the site and retire, letting Lorcan take over the pub. After Lorcan was shot dead, his parents never built the house and the planning permission lapsed. Both Ger
and Niall said they did not want to be involved in the pub anymore, so the family sold up and moved out.

Niall and Ger show me some wonderful photos of Lorcan. With his red hair, moustache and ever-present smile he is very distinctive. In one image, he is pictured with his mother behind the bar in
‘The Anglers’. Lorcan and his two sisters and two brothers were very close. Anne was 23 when her brother was murdered, Ger was 19, Niall was 17, and Dorothy was 15. The family’s
memories of their big brother are a mixture of sadness and anger at the circumstances of his violent death, and happy treasured memories. “Lorcan had a Renault 12,” recalls Ger.
“He called it ‘the Lady’ and I stuck a
CB
radio in it and we would keep in touch that way when he would be driving.” “He was a qualified pilot
as well,” says Niall. “I was up with him once or twice. He was close to getting a commercial licence.”

In the first few nights after Lorcan was murdered, Niall O’Byrne was brought out by two Gardaí to try and spot the car used by the raiders. The officers trawled around different
areas of Dublin with Niall in the back seat of the patrol car but they didn’t spot the Hillman Hunter. However, soon it was found burnt out in a field in Monasterevin.

Lar O’Byrne died in 1990, aged 74. He had spent his whole working life in the pub trade and had a huge circle of friends who were barmen or publicans. He and his wife also knew many
Gardaí. From the early 60s right through to the early 80s, generations of young Gardaí assigned to Dublin stations had socialised at The Anglers Rest.

Sometime after Lorcan’s murder Lar O’Byrne got a gild painter to make a gold sign which read ‘Lorcan’s Lounge’ and he placed it on the wall of the pub. But Lar
never spoke to his family or to anyone else about what they all had witnessed that awful night. He simply couldn’t. When the family left ‘The Anglers’ in 1984 Lar would still go
back to the new owner and make suggestions about what they should do to keep customers or attract new ones. Lar and Bernie had built up a vibrant music scene at the pub, both Irish traditional
music and cabaret. By October 1981 business was thriving. And then their eldest son was murdered in front of their eyes.

In 2009, Bernie O’Byrne passed away, aged 85. By the time of her death she knew that the Garda Cold Case Unit was re-investigating her son’s murder. She took comfort from that fact.
Niall tells me that his Mam welcomed the new publicity being given to the case. “Mam’s whole attitude was that at the end of the day, if the armed raider was sitting in a pub somewhere
watching the news and had beads of sweat running down his face looking up at a picture of Lorcan, that would be something. At the very least to feel uncomfortable and for him to be looking over his
shoulder for the rest of his life, for the Gardaí to come knocking. She’d be happy with that. There would be some satisfaction to see him worry for the rest of his life. If he went to
jail it would be like winning the lottery.”

When I visited The Anglers Rest with Niall and Ger thirty years after their brother’s murder, we went upstairs. Where once there were 14 rooms in what was the O’Byrne family home,
now there is one large function room which runs the length of the building. ‘The Anglers’ is no longer a home as well as a pub, it is now purely a licensed premises. The current owners
have done a good job on transforming the upstairs to cater for large gatherings, and they have recognised that good food as well as drink is a key to success. Thirty years ago, the O’Byrnes
had spotted the trend of the time that good music as well as drink was the order of the day—different times and different business plans to ensure ‘The Anglers’ keeps on top of
the game. Niall and Ger point to one particular corner and then another. The sitting room where Lorcan was fatally shot is gone, as is the hallway where Niall was standing with his two friends when
the two attackers burst in that Sunday night in October 1981. What was once the front door to the O’Byrne home is now a fire escape.

Some years ago John Meredith was interviewed on radio. He was talking about a group he had helped to set up in Ballyfermot for ex-prisoners. It was mentioned during the interview that Meredith
had served a sentence for ‘a shooting in the Strawberry Beds’. It wasn’t specified that Meredith was one of the two-man gang which had caused the death of a young man celebrating
his engagement.

As well as Lorcan’s family witnessing the murder, friends and work colleagues were also in the room when the gunman entered. Each of those people would keep harrowing memories of that
night with them. Mick Byrne was a barman at ‘The Anglers’ and he and his wife Breda were among those helping Lorcan and Olive celebrate their engagement that night. “I remember
Lorcan standing up and the next thing he took the full blast of the shotgun,” says Mick. “When the gun was fired it blew Lorcan backwards. My brother Paddy was also in the room and he
was hit on the face with the gun during the attack. I remember people grappling with the gunman trying to get the gun and then he was gone.” Breda tells me how she was eight months pregnant
at the time. “I remember people trying to calm me down, I was in shock, we were all in shock. Lorcan was a very nice young man. Myself and Mick were very fond of him, of all the
O’Byrnes.” The month after Lorcan was shot dead, Breda gave birth to a baby boy. Herself and Mick decided to call the baby Lorcan.

Niall O’Byrne’s friend Eamonn Balmer was one of the first to see the gunman that night. He was standing in the hallway near the front door along with Niall and another friend Roger.
Eamonn was only 17 years old at the time, and thirty years on his memory of that night is vivid.

The lead detective involved in the original investigation into Lorcan’s murder was Detective Inspector Noel Conroy, who later became Garda Commissioner. He retired from the force in
November 2007, shortly after he oversaw the establishment of the Garda Cold Case Unit, which is now re-investigating Lorcan’s murder. “A substantial team of investigators worked on the
original case”, Noel tells me. “We received good descriptions of the culprits and their mode of transport. Information gleaned from Lorcan’s family under the most trying and
harrowing of circumstances was of great benefit in establishing the make, model and description of the getaway car which in turn led us to suspects. I am conscious one person was convicted before
the courts but the other person to commit this crime was not prosecuted. It would bring a lot of peace to the family of Lorcan O’Byrne if the person responsible for this shooting was finally
brought to justice.”

Throughout the 1980s and into the 90s the murder of Lorcan was rarely spoken about in the O’Byrne home. They spoke about Lorcan and their happy memories of him, but they couldn’t
speak about the night he was murdered. Each member of the family had memories of that night, memories that never faded. As Lorcan’s brothers and sisters grew older they began to ask questions
about the failure to bring the killer to justice. They found it galling that such a person could still be walking the streets, having never owned up to what they had done. And what other harm might
that kind of person have caused to others down the years? The kind of person who carries a loaded shotgun and is prepared to fire it indiscriminately, what else had they done since they killed
Lorcan O’Byrne in 1981? The O’Byrne family began asking the Garda Commissioner to help them. The family heard about the setting up of the Garda Cold Case Unit. “I contacted senior
Gardaí and asked if Lorcan’s case could be included, could be reviewed,” Niall O’Byrne tells me. “I met with Christy Mangan from the Cold Case Unit and after I went
through the whole case with him he agreed to take a look at it. Two weeks later Christy told me there was enough to fully re-open the case.”

Before the Cold Case Unit ever got to visit John Meredith he took his own life. It was a pure coincidence that within weeks of the Unit being set up in late 2007 John Meredith shot himself. He
was 55 years old and was terminally ill at the time. In previous years he had tried to contact Lorcan O’Byrne’s family, he wrote to them seeking forgiveness. A Garda told him to stop
trying to make contact, the O’Byrnes wanted nothing to do with him.

John Meredith may have been genuinely remorseful for what happened to Lorcan O’Byrne. On the surface, it would appear that his later work in developing a group for ex-prisoners in Dublin
was evidence of a changed character. The real test perhaps would have been if the Cold Case Unit had ever got the chance to speak with him. Meredith had the full story of what had happened on the
night of Sunday 11 October 1981. The fact that he wasn’t armed himself and simply used his hands and feet to terrorise and assault Lorcan’s brother Niall might indicate that he was the
lesser of the two criminals. The gunman may have been the leader, the thinker, the boss. Meredith may have been in fear of the other man after Lorcan was killed. While Meredith readily confessed
his own role when he was arrested within two weeks of the crime, you have to wonder if he was alive today what his stance would be about the gunman, the cold-blooded killer who got away with
it.

Despite John Meredith’s death, the Cold Case Unit have a wealth of material to re-examine as part of their review of Lorcan’s murder. Gardaí have also built up a significant
amount of information from people in the criminal world. With the passage of time, allegiances change, people fall out, people talk.

The murder of Lorcan O’Byrne is one of the oldest cases that the Serious Crime Review Team are re-investigating. Because you have to start somewhere, the Cold Case team took 1980 as a
start date to review every unsolved homicide. The detectives also look at cases from the 1970s if they are asked, but most of their earliest cases are from the start of the 80s. While
Lorcan’s case is one of the oldest, there is another case that precedes it which is also being actively pursued at present.

Four months before Lorcan was shot dead at The Anglers Rest, a 54-year-old mother of three, Nora Sheehan, was abducted and murdered in Co. Cork. Nora was last seen outside the South Infirmary
Hospital in Cork city on Monday 6 June 1981. Her body was found on 12 June by two forestry workers at Shippool Wood at Innishannon, 17 miles from Cork city. Nora had been suffocated during the
course of a sustained assault and the killer was never brought to justice.

Similar to the murder of Lorcan O’Byrne cold-case detectives believe there is potential for achieving a breakthrough in the case of Nora Sheehan. A number of items recovered by
Gardaí during their initial enquiries in Cork in June 1981 are being re-examined at the Forensic Science Laboratory. It’s hoped that microscopic material which the killer may have left
at the scene of the crime or elsewhere might now be positively identified.

And north of the border, a recent cold-case investigation by the
PSNI
has led to the solving of another murder case which is now more than thirty years old. Jennifer
Cardy was nine years old when she was abducted and murdered while cycling near her home in the village of Ballinderry, Co. Antrim, on 11 August 1981. Her bike was found hidden behind a hedge but
Jennifer had vanished. Six days later her body was found ten miles away in McKee’s Dam at Hillsborough, Co. Down. This shocking murder was actively re-investigated by the
PSNI
’s Serious Crime Branch in recent years, and a man in his sixties was arrested and questioned about the crime in 2005. In October 2011, this man—Robert Black—was
convicted of Jennifer’s murder. The court heard he was already serving three life sentences for murdering three girls in Britain in the 1980s.

When I obtained a copy of Lorcan’s inquest file from the National Archives, I found official documentation which rightly records the cause of Lorcan’s death and his address and age
and occupation. But the documentation only allows for a Coroner’s Certificate to specify if a deceased person was married, widowed or single. Never has official documentation been so
inadequate to properly reflect a tragedy. There is no section to acknowledge that Lorcan was engaged, that he wanted to be married, that he was in love with his fiancée Olive, that only that
night he was celebrating his engagement, that they had their whole lives ahead of them. The documentation in Lorcan’s inquest file merely records that he was ‘single’.