‘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.