Gardaí praised for work in capturing rapist

THE gardaí who investigated the brutal rape of a 75-year-old widow were yesterday praised for their work in capturing and securing the conviction of Joseph Cummins.

At the Central Criminal Court, sitting in Limerick, the most senior criminal judge in the country, Mr Justice Paul Carney, ordered 20-year-old Cummins of St Joseph’s Park, Nenagh, to be placed on the sex offenders’ list.

Mr Justice Carney said: “I don’t normally make observations on police investigations, but the gardaí in Nenagh involved in this case cracked it immediately with classic police observation work by Garda Paul O’Driscoll.”

He also singled out Superintendent Catherine Keogh who came back from holiday immediately on hearing of the rape.

Her leadership in the case, said Mr Justice Carney, led to an immediate solution to this appalling outrage.

Garda O’Driscoll was the first person to take a statement from the victim on arriving at her house.

When she began to tell about the blue and white shirt her attacker wore along with brown trousers and brown boots, Garda O’Driscoll told the trial this rang a bell with him.

The previous day after he went off duty for a meal break at about 6.15pm while in his private car, he saw Cummins, a man he knew well.

Cummins walked across the street in front of his car which had to stop to let him cross.

The jury could not be told that Garda O’Driscoll, along with every other garda in Nenagh, knew Cummins well as he had a long history of crime going back to when he was 14 and for which he had amassed 60 convictions.

He passed on his suspicions to Supt Keogh and the next day Cummins was arrested in a shed near his home and his home was searched.

While the victim gave a good description of the clothes her attacker wore, she was unable to pick him out in an identity parade.

But the investigation got a huge break when DNA samples taken from Cummins’ blue and white shirt and his underpants came up with a match.

Body fluids found inside the front part of the underpants and the front of his shirt matched the DNA profiles of both Cummins and his victim.

The chances of these coming from another person were 600 million to one and one billion to one, DNA expert, Dr Dorothy Ramsbottom, told the trial.

Cummins, even at the young age of 20, was well aware of his rights and kept his mouth shut during garda questioning.

But DNA put him in bodily contact with his victim.

The trial spent a day in legal argument in the absence of the jury.

Tony O’Leary, SC for the defence, submitted that a search of the home of the accused was not legally carried out due to a defect in the search warrant.

The submission was not allowed by Judge Carney.