Parents’ fury over refusal to probe Lyons murder case

JUSTICE Minister Michael McDowell has ruled out any further inquiries into the Dean Lyons case — the now dead addict who was controversially charged with a double murder in 1997.

The minister’s decision was greeted with dismay yesterday by the parents of the 27-year-old, who died in a Manchester prison in September 2000 from a heroin overdose.

John and Sheila Lyons have campaigned for years for a public inquiry into how their son was charged with the deaths of psychiatric patients Sylvia Shields and Mary Callinan in March 1997.

“I’m not too happy about that. We want a full inquiry into our son’s death,” said John Lyons.

In August 1997, gardaí arrested Englishman Mark Nash in relation to the double murder of Catherine and Carl Doyle in Co Roscommon. Nash then made statements in relation to his alleged involvement in the murder of Ms Shields and Ms Callinan.

Despite this, Dean Lyons was held in prison for a further seven months before the DPP dropped all charges against him in April 1998.

Nash later retracted his statements. In December 2000, the DPP decided not to prosecute Nash.

After becoming minister, Mr McDowell said the Dean Lyons case was one he wanted to “further consider”, but yesterday said he believed no private or internal inquiries were needed.

Mr Lyons said he had written to Mr McDowell asking to see the internal garda report into the circumstances of the charging of Dean Lyons.

“I’m waiting for a Government reply to that. I got a reply from the minister’s department, saying they had received my letter.

“The gardaí themselves have said it’s not a secret inquiry. So why can’t we see it?”

A Justice Department spokesman said yesterday that neither the former Minister of Justice John O’Donoghue nor Mr McDowell received a copy of the internal report, but were given verbal reports from Garda Commissioner Pat Byrne about it.

The spokesman said the internal inquiry established that Lyons was lawfully arrested on July 26, 1997, and that he was interviewed in compliance with the Criminal Justice Act 1984, which laid down regulations covering the electronic recording of interviews.

But Mr O’Donoghue said that despite this the events “clearly have implications for garda interviews”.

The garda report said that Mr Lyons made a full admission of his guilt, which was recorded on audio-video tape.

Later on the same day, he made a further detailed admission of his alleged involvement in the murders.

This interview was not audio-visually recorded, at Lyon’s request, according to gardaí.

But the report said that the “greater part of the detail in Mr Lyons’ statement was general in nature, and within the public domain, as the murders had occurred more than four months previously”.

Mr Lyons is still awaiting the result of DNA tests being carried out in England in relation to the murders.

Dublin City Coroner Dr Brian Farrell will rule next week on whether he will apply to the High Court to compel Nash’s attendance at the inquest into Ms Shields and Ms Callinan.