A tale of two cultures - one clash, two life sentences
“A total stranger has come and he wants to bury my sweat and blood in concrete,” bellows The Bull whose temper has tragic consequences.
The actions of Padraig Nally, 61, a bachelor farmer from Mayo, also had tragic consequences, but he was no Bull McCabe. In fact it was his very timidity that led to his downfall and the death of Traveller John ‘Frog’ Ward, a father of 11, on October 14, 2004.
Nally says he was shaking with fear when he first blasted Mr Ward with a shotgun and that it went off accidentally after he spotted him leaving the kitchen of his farmhouse.
His second shot was no accident, though. After a struggle, Nally went back to his shed to reload and shot Ward in the back, killing him instantly.
The six-year sentence for manslaughter handed down last week by Mr Justice Paul Carney has sparked outrage among the extended Ward family and Travellers support groups. They see it as far too lenient. Mr Ward’s sister, Sally Sweeney, said: “He’s complaining he got six years but we are devastated, I have no brother and Marie has no husband and 11 small children have no father.”
It wasn’t just two men but two cultures that collided on that day, because there is huge sympathy for Nally, particularly among the farming families of rural Ireland. An emotional debate has erupted with the IFA and GAA embroiled in a controversy that has shown the extent of the cultural chasm between Ireland’s settled and Travelling communities.
Raymond O’Malley, a candidate for the IFA presidency, speaks of farmers living in fear of having their lives and property violated. Mr Justice Carney said it was the most difficult matter he had dealt with.
The GAA became involved after comments by Mayo county secretary Seán Feeney on Morning Ireland, acknowledging his county executive’s support for a pro-Nally protest in Athlone. The rally has been postponed but not before Mr Feeney’s remarks revealed the extent of feeling among the local GAA.
He said: “We are a sporting organisation but we are a political organisation as well. It’s not a question of the GAA versus the Travellers. It’s a question of the right to defend one’s property.”
Up until October 14, 2004, Nally had never so much as been cited for a parking offence. He lived on the same small, isolated Mayo farm in the townland of Funshinagh on which he and his only sibling had been born and reared.
John Ward, by contrast, had a troubled psychiatric history, 12 separate sets of convictions and was due to face charges of swinging a slash-hook at gardaí investigating the theft of a fireplace. He lived with his wife and family on a halting site near Galway city and was “trying to make a living by selling old cars”, according to his son Tom, 18, who was driving him on the day he died.
Nally’s simple life took a turn for the worse when break-ins were reported in the remote area where he lived. Trouble came to his doorstep in 2001 when his house was burgled. In February 2004 his door was kicked in and a chainsaw stolen. His father’s old shotgun, which Nally always kept beside his bed, had been kicked out of place and under the bed.
After that, he moved it outside to the barn because he was “afraid I might be shot in my own bed”.
He began to throw buckets of water in the dry clay at the entrance gate to his yard, to get the footprints of callers in his absence and started to write down the registration numbers of strange cars.
Nally had also taken to sitting in the shed, holding his shotgun, for up to five hours at a time. He was afraid to go out, and was sleeping little. The farm was being neglected, the turf wasn’t being brought home or the sheep sheared.
The weekend before October 14, when his sister Maureen - who spent every weekend with him - left for home, he cried: “I felt something was going to happen. If it didn’t, I’d have to shoot myself the following weekend. The pressure had got to me.”
During that same weekend John Ward was a psychiatric in-patient at University College Hospital Galway. Two days after being discharged, he turned up with Tom, at Nally’s house having ingested drugs including opiates, cannabis and tranquillisers.
Nally had only an hour’s sleep the night before. When he saw Tom Ward parked inside his gate, with the car facing out and the engine running, he asked him where his “mate” was. Told that he had gone “for a look around the back”, Nally went after him, saying: “He won’t be coming out again.”
Within minutes, John Ward lay dead, his body thrown over a wall.
The idea of someone trying to break into our homes is psychologically threatening. Many now have panic buttons by their bedsides, but that only works in urban areas where the gardaí are nearby.
The case bares a striking resemblance to the 2001 trial in England of Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer who shot dead 16-year-old burglar Fred Barras.
Like Nally, Martin had become fearful and paranoid after a spate of burglaries. Like Mr Ward, Mr Barras was a Traveller.
Martin was convicted of murder and would have had to serve a life sentence but for an appeals court that reduced the charge to manslaughter, after evidence suggesting he was suffering from a paranoid personality disorder. He served a little more than three years of a five-year sentence.
The Nally case is awash with ironies. Each man was oppressed, but in different ways - Nally imprisoned in an isolated farmhouse in fear of his safety; Mr Ward the product of a society that offered him little opportunity to earn an honest living. On October 14, the career criminal became the victim; the victim the criminal.
Nally’s agony is over. Anyone who saw his humble kitchen, which RTÉ filmed, would be forgiven for thinking they were back in the 1930s. His was a Spartan life. His cell in Midlands Prison will most likely provide him with far greater comfort, especially a good night’s sleep.
But at the same time, the agony for the Ward family is only beginning, as they face their own life sentence without the father and husband they loved.
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