Drug addict Lyons ‘not framed’ for double murder

GARDAÍ did not attempt to frame Dean Lyons, the drug addict wrongly charged with a double murder in 1997, the deputy commissioner of the force has reiterated.

However, TP Fitzgerald has acknowledged the failings of the officers who interviewed Mr Lyons.

In an article in the latest edition of the garda management journal,

Mr Fitzgerald says the late Mr Lyons “freely admitted” his involvement in the crimes during a number of interviews.

“He engaged openly with his interviewers,” the deputy commissioner writes.

“Although a heroin addict, he did not display any signs of drug withdrawal or physical discomfort.”

Apart from those confessions, Mr Lyons also “made an unsolicited admission to a uniformed sergeant” engaged in the routine task of checking him into detention at the Bridewell Garda station.

“He also made separate admissions on different occasions to each of his parents and persisted with these admissions and claims even when challenged by his parents.

“There was no deliberate attempt to frame Dean Lyons.”

Mr Lyons was charged in July 1997 with the murders in March that year of Sylvia Shields, 59, and Mary Callinan, 61, both patients of St Brendan’s Psychiatric Hospital in Grangegorman, Dublin.

Both women had been stabbed to death in the sheltered accommodation they shared on the grounds of the institution.

In August that year, Mark Nash, who had been arrested on charges of killing his girlfriend’s sister and her husband in Roscommon (and would later be convicted), made a statement admitting to the Grangegorman murders.

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

A Government-established Commission of Investigation, chaired by senior counsel George Birmingham, this year cleared the gardaí of deliberately framing Mr Lyons.

However, the commission found Mr Lyons was able to construct a detailed account of the killings because of the “leading questions” put to him by interviewers.

Those questions, asked during interviews that were not videotaped and of which incomplete records exist, allowed Mr Lyons to detail the weapons used in the killings and the sexual mutilation of the victims in a way only the real murderer could have known about.

In his article, the deputy commissioner acknowledges that Mr Lyons was able to “provide accurate details of the murders that it is now accepted he did not commit due to the manner in which he was interviewed by gardaí.”

Meanwhile, discussing the garda corruption revealed in Donegal, Mr Fitzgerald said “most major police organisations have encountered similar scandals, investigations or tribunals of their own over the years.”

He cites an array of such scandals in Britain, US and Australia, adding: “The prevalence of similar international corruption investigations does not in any way excuse the actions of certain members of the Garda Síochána, but it does perhaps provide a sense of context and perspective to the unfortunate events of that time.”