Garda chiefs ‘ignored plea to probe malicious phone calls’

A DISGRACED former garda superintendent warned senior officers that extortionate phone calls made from a colleague’s home would haunt the force, it was claimed yesterday.

Kevin Lennon told the Morris Tribunal that top brass in the Donegal division failed to fully investigate malicious calls made from ex-garda John O’Dowd’s house in Letterkenny.

He also told the corruption inquiry he was aware it was a huge scandal that had to be probed.

“I told the chief superintendent that this was the smallest file in the pack and that it would haunt the system,” Mr Lennon said.

“I went to the chief superintendent about that and I asked him to appoint an independent officer to investigate these matters; the whole area of the phone calls.” Mr Lennon claimed his request was ignored.

Mr O’Dowd, who was expelled from the force last December, came clean over the malicious phone calls in a statement to the tribunal in October 2004.

He admitted a petty criminal and informer, William Doherty, telephoned a Raphoe couple from his house in November 1996 in an attempt to blackmail Michael and Charlotte Peoples over the death of a local cattle dealer.

It emerged that Mr Doherty was trying to implicate Mr Peoples in the death of Richie Barron. Mr Doherty demanded several thousand pounds from the couple or he would tell gardaí Mr Peoples had been at the crime scene.

The calls were not probed by Donegal gardaí for another six months. Later, a special internal unit headed by Assistant Commissioner Kevin Carty was sent to Donegal to get to the bottom of the scandal.

Mr Lennon claimed he had instigated the first moves to discover why blackmail calls had been made from a garda’s house.

He named three officers who failed to flag up the scandal or call for a full investigation - Inspector John McGinley, Sergeant Martin Moylan and Sgt Sylvie Henry.