Superintendent stopped exhumation ‘on orders from superior’

DISGRACED former Garda Superintendent Kevin Lennon told a tribunal into garda corruption yesterday he had stopped the exhumation of the body of cattle dealer Richie Barron at the request of his superior.

Kevin Lennon said he had been rushed into halting the exhumation of Mr Barron by the chief superintendent in Donegal, Denis Fitzpatrick. “From there on, my hands were tied in the investigation in the death of Richie Barron,” he said.

At the Morris Tribunal, Mr Lennon told Superintendent Joseph Shelley, who was in the witness box for the 12th day, that the request was made in 1997 when he was in the car with them on the way back from Sligo.

“I was directed to stop the exhumation. You were in the car, you agreed with it,” he said. However, Superintendent Shelley said he had not been consulted, briefed or asked about the exhumation of Richie Barron, whose body had been buried in 1996 without a post mortem examination by the state pathologist.

“I had no input into that and you know that. I wasn’t consulted or briefed or asked. Why would I agree with something I had no knowledge of,” he asked.

He told Mr Lennon that it was the first time he had ever heard this incident mentioned. Mr Lennon said he made the phone call to the coroner’s office from Letterkenny garda station. He added he had refused Chief Superintendent Fitzpatrick’s request to halt the exhumation the previous day as it had been ordered by the minister for justice.

Following the establishment of an inquiry into the Donegal Garda Division by Garda Assistant Commissioner Kevin Carty, the body of Richie Barron was exhumed in July 2001.

State Pathologist Professor John Harbison found the injuries to the skull were most likely to have been caused by a motor vehicle rather than the blunt instrument suspected by gardaí.

Mr Lennon, who described himself yesterday as an “honest and honourable individual,” was dismissed from the force last summer after the tribunal found he had told lies and orchestrated hoax explosives finds. Chief Superintendent Fitzpatrick, who was also criticised in the report, resigned his position a week later.

Meanwhile, Supt Shelley said he had concealed new information in the Barron investigation from Lennon because he was suspicious of him.

Key witness Noel McBride had retracted his statement in September 1997, which had implicated Frank McBrearty Jnr and Mark McConnell in the death.

Mr Justice Frederick Morris asked Superintendent Shelley if he feared Superintendent Lennon would revisit McBride to “mend his fences” and change his statement again.

“I thought he might have been approached. I can’t say if anyone would ever do that but it was certainly in my mind,” he said.

The tribunal is examining allegations of garda corruption in Donegal during the early 1990s. The current module is investigating the events surrounding the apparent hit-and-run death of Barron in October 1996.