Surreal tale of murderer jailed for insurance offence

IT was nothing short of surreal when Fred Flannery was imprisoned in 1997 for riding a motorbike without insurance.

A year earlier, the same man had been charged with murder, but the trial in the Central Criminal Court despite having heard macabre and brutal evidence collapsed with a crash which still reverberates through garda ranks.

Frederick Flannery, then aged 35, of no fixed abode, had denied the murder of Denis Patrick O'Driscoll, aged 32, at Wellington Terrace, off Grattan's Hill, Lower Glanmire Road, Cork, between December 15 and 31, 1994.