‘I was very close to my grandfather, I did love him dearly’

DESPITE his age, Eddie Fitzmaurice was fit and healthy.

At 83, he continued to run his drapery and clothes shop, as he had done for more than 40 years.

“He was incredible. He didn’t have a wrinkle in his face,” said his granddaughter Audrey Snee fondly.

“He had high definition cheekbones, and he had this sheen on his face.

“He was just so healthy looking. He had a fresh glow. For a man of his age, it was incredible.

“He was just so fit. I think it was because he worked. He was always self employed.”

Audrey said his wife, Rita, inherited the family drapery business in Bellaghy, a village near Charlestown on the Sligo-Mayo border.

“They took it over. There were two shops, one a drapery, the other sold clothes.

“It did everything, bedding and linen. They ran the two. When Rita was older they focused on one, which sold things like wellingtons, shirts and clothes.”

When his wife died in 1990, Eddie kept the business on and lived in rooms above the shop.

Three of their four children — Valerie (Audrey’s mother), Colette and Billy — went to England when they were young to find work.

One son, Oliver, stayed in Ireland and lives in Limerick.

Audrey, 41, who has two daughters and is now living in Essex, said she visited her grandfather regularly, often during the summer and did so the year before he was brutally murdered.

“I was very close to my grandfather, I did love him dearly.”

Audrey said her grandfather suffered an horrific death when burglars broke into his shop on May 1, 1998, and found him upstairs.

They beat him severely around the head and neck, gagged him and bound him tightly to a chair.

He was not found until five days later.

“It wasn’t just they went in and tied him up and it was a tragedy that hypothermia or whatever set in. No, they beat him to a pulp,” said Audrey.

“I saw him lying in the coffin. I’d seen dead bodies before and they have a serene look, death has come and it is a relief.

“He had a twisted look in that coffin. He was battered.

“They tried to do the best they could with the makeup, but you could see it. As much vitality as he had, he was an old man and he had a stoop.

“He was robust, but he wasn’t muscular, he wouldn’t have been able to fight anyone off.”

She said the business didn’t earn much money and there wouldn’t have been much cash in the house. “The shop was a past-time. He’d get the odd customer in.”

She added: “It was an horrific crime brought upon a very innocent, vulnerable member of the community who never in his entire life brought any harm or trouble to others.

“I think that’s why people were so shocked. We live in a time when we hear of death and murder all the time, but when somebody has been brutally attacked and then left to die in such horrific circumstances alone over a number of days, it is just torturous just to think what he went through.”

She said the attackers needed to be caught.

“The fact is no one knows who did it and they’re still out there. It makes it all the worse. They might do this again. They’re probably laughing thinking ‘we got away, the police aren’t capable of catching us’.”

Audrey said she hangs onto what one senior garda once said to her.

“He said ‘look your grandad’s dead, you can’t bring him back, but time is on our side. We see this so often, people at the time will clam up and won’t say anything, but often, in years to come, people change their minds and will come forward. It is obviously not going to change the here and now, but it will change the future for you’.”

“I’m hoping at this stage now, someone will come forward.”