Detective cites ‘GUBU’ elements in murder probe
Det Supt John McGinley was responding to tribunal counsel suggestions that the Donegal investigation was “a disaster” because it was misled by false witness statements and failed to follow up leads.
Det Supt McGinley said: “A lot of it is unprecedented, certainly. A lot of it is maybe GUBU. But there were sinister elements there and I accept that.”
Queried by Mr Justice Frederick Morris on the GUBU word, the witness replied: “That was a word used by Mr Haughey one time in the past.”
“Oh GUBU! Oh I understand now,” added the judge to laughter.
Conor Cruise O’Brien coined the GUBU acronym in 1983 after former Taoiseach Haughey referred to the discovery of killer Malcolm MacArthur in the flat of Government Attorney General Patrick Connolly as “grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented”.
Det Supt McGinley added: “I couldn’t accept that the investigation was a disaster.
“At the time a genuine effort was made to get to the bottom of this and to establish the truth.
“There were elements that we didn’t know about. There may have been aspects that slipped through that we could have captured and we didn’t.”
The witness, who was a detective inspector in daily control of the investigation in Letterkenny, is into his fourth day of evidence on day 243 of the tribunal.
The inquiry is probing alleged Garda corruption in Co Donegal in the 1990s.
It is currently focusing on the investigation of Mr Barron’s death, during which members of the local McBrearty family were identified as suspects.
In earlier evidence, Det Supt McGinley denied that a search of the crime scene tried to find evidence that could link Frank McBrearty Jnr and his first cousin Mark McConnell to the death.
He said that local rumours linked both men to the crime but this “didn’t affect the direction of the overall investigation.”
The witness also claimed that people tried to “meddle and interfere” in the investigation into the death of the Raphoe cattle dealer on a roadside in October 1996.
