‘Mark my words, it’s a murder ... ’

John Breslin

The mourners were in the Raphoe home of Mr Barron, whose body was lying in the open coffin.

Talk turned to murder. The V mark on his head, Mr Barron's brother

Vincent directing people to the fingers, three of which were black.

"They were talking about that he wasn't a victim of hit and run, that somebody had hit him with an implement," William Doherty, a petty criminal and a supposed IRA informant, told the tribunal.

Within two days, Chief Superintendent Denis Fitzpatrick, the then head of the Donegal Division, was able to say: "Mark my words, it's a murder and Mark McConnell and Frank McBrearty Jnr did it."

Mr Barron was found dead in the early hours of Monday, October 14, 1996. Mr Fitzpatrick, who retired from the force following the first Morris report, made his definitive statement early on Wednesday, October 16.

Rumours about a fight that had occurred in a pub in Raphoe and people were putting together one and one and getting three,"

Doherty said.

The three added up to two men, Mr McBrearty Jnr and Mr McConnell, being fingered as murderers and pursued intensely by the State.

Doherty tells Garda O'Dowd of the rumour, Garda O'Dowd tells Chief Supt Fitzpatrick that he has been given information about the supposed murder, Chief Supt Fitzpatrick phones the district officer, Superintendent John Fitzgerald, and tells him that Mr Barron had been murdered and the culprits were Mr McBrearty and Mr McConnell.

"There is evidence of wilful blunders, gross negligence, laziness, emotionally wrong-headed rushes to judge people as guilty ," Mr Justice Frederick Morris said in his report.

As October ran into November, suspicions that the pair murdered Mr Barron hardened. Information, some of it false, much of it garbled, none of it cross-checked, came in from other supposed witnesses putting the two suspects in the frame.

"A failure to check any of these matters... was an astonishing oversight on the part of senior officers amounting to unbelievable negligence," Mr Justice Morris concludes.

Furthermore, if information came in that didn't fit, it was essentially discarded.

This was all, it has to be remembered, happening in the absence of a forensic pathology examination by then State Pathologist John Harbison, who, when the body was finally exhumed years later, was able to say that it was a hit-and-run.

Then, on November 29, came the statement of Noel McBride the man that would nail Mr McBrearty and Mr McConnell. He was arrested on a minor charge, but then gave a statement to Garda O'Dowd and another garda, placing the two suspects walking down from the road where Mr Barron died at a crucial time. If any checks had been carried out, it would have been quickly discovered that he had not been in Raphoe that night.

His statement led directly to the arrests of Mr McConnell and Mr McBrearty a few days later, during which the supposed confession to murder was made.