A widower whose wife was murdered by a man twice freed on bail said he has ‘no faith’ in the gardaí – as details of a report into Garda malpractice were revealed yesterday.
Lorcan Roche-Kelly’s spouse, Sylvia, was found dead in a Limerick hotel room in 2007 after she had been out celebrating her 33rd birthday with friends.
Jerry McGrath was later found guilty of murdering the mother of two. The violent killer was out on bail for assault and attempted kidnapping charges at the time.
Mr Roche-Kelly said it has taken gardaí almost a decade to admit their failings in properly investigating the cases leading up to his wife’s murder.
The O’Higgins Commission report, which has yet to be made available to the public, was established by the Government last year after claims made by Sergeant Maurice McCabe about the Cavan-Monaghan Garda division.
The report found failings in the investigation into an attack by McGrath on taxi driver Mary Lynch in Cavan earlier in 2007.
It seems an initial misclassification in terms of the seriousness of the assault led to McGrath being granted bail – and left him free to commit an attempted abduction on a child and Sylvia’s murder.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1’s Today With Seán O’Rourke, Mr Roche-Kelly said: ‘It was a very serious assault, Mary Lynch testified that she was able to fill a shopping bag of her own hair in the car afterwards. The initial offence in Cavan was treated so wrongly that it never raised any flags for anybody.’ Six months later, in October 2007, while still on bail, McGrath was caught trying to abduct a five-yearold girl from a house in Tipperary, causing her injury.
The judge was not informed of the outstanding case in Cavan and he was released on bail.
Later again that year, Virginia District Court was not told on December 3, 2007, that McGrath had been charged with the false imprisonment of the girl. Five days later McGrath murdered Mr Roche-Kelly’s wife in a Limerick hotel room after she expressed her revulsion when he admitted to trying to abduct a child.
According to RTÉ, the report has highlighted serious flaws and failures in criminal investigations in the region in 2007 and 2008, including the assault on the taxi driver. The report also found victims of crime were ‘not well served’ by the Garda Ombudsman or the Garda investigations, most of which had been led by a probationer or newly graduated gardaí, and were characterised by errors and delays. However, the investigation led by Mr Justice Kevin O’Higgins, said the failures it investigated were ‘at a human level and caused by poorly supervised individuals’.
The report identified serious failings in eight criminal investigations including assaults, dangerous driving, child abuse, and in the case of depraved murderer McGrath. Mr Roche-Kelly said: ‘There is nothing new or surprising in the report.’ He added: ‘My biggest issue is the obfuscation, what felt like a coverup from the gardaí afterwards. ‘It’s taken nine years to get to where we are now and the gardaí have been incredibly unco-operative throughout the entire process to admit to any failing.
‘To get that admission [in the latest report] has taken nine years. ‘The gardaí decided to approach their own failings by denying the failings existed at all… This is nine years later and I’ve never had any guard come to me to try and explain what happened. I’ve never had anyone from the Department of Justice come to me… I have no faith in the gardaí at all.’ In January 2008, McGrath pleaded guilty to the assault of taxi driver Ms Lynch for which he got nine months.
A year later McGrath pleaded guilty to the murder of Ms Roche-Kelly and he was given a mandatory life sentence. Four weeks after that he was sentenced to ten years for the Tipperary attempted abduction to run concurrently with the life sentence. Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has said she will publish the O’Higgins Report as soon as it has been cleared by the Attorney General.
The commission report, seen by RTÉ, also upheld some of Sgt McCabe’s complaints but found others were inaccurate, incorrect, overstated and unfounded.
The report states the whistleblower acted out of genuine and legitimate concerns but that in one case he lied in a report to a senior officer, which it described as ‘unacceptable’. The report also found ex-Garda commissioner Martin Callinan ‘is entitled to have his reputation vindicated’.
A Garda spokesman said: ‘This report has not yet been officially published. An Garda Síochána are not commenting on this matter until the report is published.’
By Darren Hassett
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