Family of wrongly accused man call for public inquiry

THE family of a deceased young man wrongly accused of a double murder yesterday joined calls for a public inquiry into the garda investigation of the case.

The request follows a call from the sister of Sylvia Shields, who, along with Mary Callinan, was brutally murdered almost seven years ago in Grangegorman, Dublin.

Stella Nolan said this week that if Justice Minister Michael McDowell refused to set up a public inquiry into the unsolved murders she would take a legal case to force one to be established.

John Lyons, father of Dean Lyons, yesterday said: “I feel sorry for that lady [Stella Nolan]. She’s gotten no answers. I’ve gotten no answers. The people who have the answers are the guards and they won’t give the answers.”

Sylvia Shields, 58, and Mary Callinan, 61, were stabbed to death in their sheltered housing at St Brendan’s Psychiatric Hospital in March 1997.

Dean Lyons, a 27-year-old homeless heroin addict, twice admitted to murdering the two women four months after the deaths. The second, written confession, which was used in the prosecution, was not videotaped like the first confession.

Written in clear, mostly grammatically correct English, it contained extremely detailed, and accurate, descriptions of the house and how the murder took place.

Just days after this confession, another man, Mark Nash, admitted to the Grangegorman murders after being arrested for a double murder of a couple in Roscommon.

Despite this, Lyons was kept in custody for another eight months before the Director of Public Prosecutions dropped all charges against him in April 1998.

Nash later retracted his statements and in December 2000 the DPP decided against prosecuting Nash.

Dean Lyons died of a heroin overdose while in a Manchester prison in September 2000.

Mr Lyons said he was determined to pursue the matter in the courts if necessary.

“If I don’t get any satisfaction I’ll go further about it. This time I’m definitely going to push it. Seven years is a long time, not to be told anything.

“I want to find out what went on in the police station. I want to know how my young fella knew everything that went on in that house,” he said.

Mr Lyons wrote to the Justice Minister in 2002 looking for a copy of the internal investigation into the handling of the case.

He hasn’t got it, nor has a much promised meeting with senior gardaí taken place.

A garda spokesman said last night they had been in contact with the Lyons family and that they were awaiting a response from the family in relation to the last correspondence sent to them.

In a verbal briefing to Mr McDowell, the former Garda Commissioner Pat Byrne said that the internal inquiry concluded that Dean Lyons was lawfully arrested and was interviewed in compliance with regulations.

A spokeswoman for Mr McDowell said the minister would consider the letter from Stella Nolan’s solicitor Michael Finucane when he received it. Mr McDowell has previously ruled out the need for any further inquiries into the case.