New unsolved murder evidence by July

GARDAÍ conducting a forensic ‘cold case’ review of the 1997 Grangegorman murders, which were never solved, expect to have preliminary findings by the end of July.

They hope there will be sufficient new evidence gleaned to bring charges against the principal suspect, Mark Nash, who is already serving a life sentence for the murder of two people in Roscommon later that same year.

Sylvia Shields, 59, and Mary Callinan, 61, both patients of St Brendan’s Psychiatric Hospital in Grangegorman, Dublin, were murdered on the night of March 6 to 7, 1997. Up to 30 stab wounds were found on each of their bodies.

Dean Lyons, a homeless drug addict, was wrongly charged with one of the murders. Earlier this month, Justice Minister Michael McDowell announced he was appointing a barrister to probe how Mr Lyons “came to make a confession to a crime which he did not commit”.

The barrister will scrutinise the gardaí’s original handling of the case.

Mr McDowell also said the gardaí had launched a cold case review, in which a large number of exhibits and samples were being reexamined using DNA technology developed since the original investigation.

“The outcome of this review could lead to charges being made in the future,” Mr McDowell said at the time.

Now, Mr McDowell has told the Dáil he expects preliminary results within three months.

Mr Lyons was picked up in July 1997 and interviewed by gardaí. The first interview was recorded but the second was not. That statement contained knowledge of the crimes that could have been known only to the killer and investigating officers. On its basis, Mr Lyons was charged.

In August the same year, Mark Nash was arrested after murdering his girlfriend’s sister and her husband in Roscommon. While detained, Nash made a statement admitting to the Grangegorman murders.

Despite this, Mr Lyons remained in prison until April 1998, when the DPP finally dropped the charges. He died two years later of a drugs overdose, aged 27.

Nash, meanwhile, later retracted his statement confessing to the Grangegorman murders.

Earlier this year, the garda issued a public apology to the family of Mr Lyons.