Barron probe an ‘extraordinary shambles’
The ambulance crew attended to him promptly and professionally but the garda supposed to be on duty in the town, Garda Padraig Mulligan, could not be contacted by the garda communications centre in Letterkenny because he was drinking in a pub with off-duty colleague, Garda John O’Dowd.
Mr Mulligan and Mr O’Dowd would later refuse to account for their movements on the night and “devised various methods of thwarting the superior officers making these lawful enquiries” in what was a “shocking disregard of their duties”.
The crew of the Lifford garda car which was contacted by Letterkenny in Mulligan’s absence, deliberately delayed responding to the call because they wanted to finish their meal break.
When they arrived belatedly at the scene, they failed to preserve the scene.
They then made up an excuse to leave the scene, possibly because it was raining. No forensic examination was sought or carried out until later when the scene was already contaminated.
Speculation and rumour at Mr Barron’s wake was picked up by gardaí, turned into a credible statement that the deceased had been murdered and presented as fact to senior officers.
No forensic postmortem was carried out on Mr Barron’s remains. Had there been one, it would have ruled out murder as the cause of his death.
The theory that Frank McBrearty Jnr and his cousin, Mark McConnell, were responsible for the “murder” developed as a result of an inaccurate piece of evidence from a witness, John Patton.
A false statement was provided by another “witness”, Robert Noel McBride, to back the distorted version of Mr Patton’s evidence and this was used as the basis for the arrests of practically all the suspects. This was despite the fact that Mr McBride was known to be under the influence of a well-known criminal and was not even in Raphoe on the night Mr Barron died.
Another “suspect” and relative of the Mr McBrearty’s, Michael Peoples, was the victim of extortion calls by a garda informant and known criminal, William Doherty, with the approval of his garda handler in the hope that Mr Peoples would implicate himself in the “murder.”
As the false case against Mr McBrearty, Mr McConnell and Mr Peoples grew, serious neglect, obstruction, interference, incompetence and deceit from all ranks of gardaí failed to expose the farce and wrongdoing.
Mr Justice Morris concluded:
The Gardaí in Donegal lacked coherent leadership.
Mass arrest was used as a weapon of investigating a crime.
Gardaí were left unaccountable for their duties.
Important documents were destroyed by the most senior officers in Donegal.
The prevailing systems in Garda Headquarters failed the stop the “astonishing activity” in Donegal.
As for the wrongly accused suspects, the report states their innocence of any involvement in Mr Barron’s death which, it also concludes, was the result of a hit-and-run accident.
It also finds as a result of the “extraordinary shambles of the Barron investigation” that a “deep sense of bitterness and division pervades considerable sections of the town of Raphoe”.
