‘He’s the bad apple in the clan’

ROBERT HOWARD was a loner. He’d been in trouble since his early teens. He was born in 1944, one of eight children reared in this tiny, country cottage at The Swan in Co Laois.

His father, James, worked as a mould-maker in the local Fleming’s Fireclay factory, which made bricks. His mother, Anastasia, had eight children, among them Bob, James Jnr, Bill, John, Annie, Gretta, Bridie and Teresa. Both parents are now deceased, as are Bridie, who died several years ago in Britain, and Gretta, who died earlier this year in the parish.

He rarely attended the local primary school at Wolfhill, a two-classroom school on top of a windswept hill about a mile through the fields from the family home.

Howard was light-fingered even in his school days, and was convicted of burglary at the age of 13. The evil, serial rapist was odd, had very few friends and there were few tears when he left the parish of The Swan in Wolfhill in his late teens. His sister, Teresa Wilkie, still lives in the family home and she and Howard’s cousins are highly regarded in the area. Howard spent a few years working in the local mine but never really “belonged”, one woman who went to school with him said yesterday.

“I remember him well from school. He didn’t have that many friends and was always a bit different. But he wasn’t particularly violent or anything.

“The rest of the family were grand, nice, quiet people. They are all now living in the shadow of this,” she said. “He got into trouble early and disappeared off to England. He didn’t come home that often. He wouldn’t have been very welcome if he did. I’m sorry for the family. They don’t deserve all this.

“People are not shocked by what they have been hearing and reading over the past few days. We’ve been following it for the past 20 years. Nobody really knows what went wrong with him or why he turned out so bad. He’s very much the bad apple among the clan. People don’t want to talk too much about it locally because he’s got so many family still around here.”

Local woman, Helen Brennan, now in her late 20s, remembers her parents warning about him when he was home. “I feel sick over what has come out about him. It puts a shiver up my spine. There was a reported sighting of him around here about 10 years ago and we were not let outside. We were warned by our parents to keep well away from him.”