New garda team leads murder probe

A NEW garda team, supported by specialist officers, has made progress in the troubled Grangegorman murder investigation, gardaí said yesterday.

The investigation team was appointed to break the deadlock in the double murders of Sylvia Shields and Mary Callinan.

The women were stabbed to death in their sheltered accommodation at St Brendan’s Psychiatric Hospital in Grangegorman, north Dublin, in March 1997.

The investigation originally led to charges being brought, in controversial circumstances, against an innocent man, Dean Lyons.

Garda chiefs are to apologise in the coming weeks to the parents of Mr Lyons, who died from a heroin overdose in 2000, aged 27.

A garda spokesman yesterday said the murder investigation was “open and live” and that progress was being made.

He said experienced murder detectives from the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation were involved in a joint investigation with a new team of detectives at Bridewell Garda Station.