Gardaí failed previous victims as McGrath went on to kill

Mary Lynch was working her taxi for just over two hours when she encountered Jerry McGrath. It was 2.15am on Monday, April 30, 2007. McGrath emerged from the nightclub in the Headford Arms Hotel in Kells, Co Meath, and asked would she take him to Virginia, Co Cavan, where his sister lived. He was from Dundrum in Tipperary, but was staying with his sister.

In Virginia, he gave her directions that led down a dark cul-de-sac. He didn’t seem to know which house was his sister’s, although he had been staying there some time. Ms Lynch stopped outside a random house, and told him the fare was €32.

He got out of the taxi and walked around to the driver’s side, opening the door.

“I tried to drive off and he took the keys out of the ignition. When he took the keys out, he started pulling my hair and telling me to get out of the car. I knew if he could get me out of the car I was in very bad danger.

“He pulled lumps of hair out of my head. He kept telling me to lean forward and I could see that his zip was open. He stood back and started kicking me into my stomach. He was shouting at me all the time.”

Ms Lynch managed to grab her phone and press the green button that brought up her last dialled call to her husband, George. He heard her screams, rang the gardaí, and immediately set out for Virginia.

After a sustained assault, McGrath calmed down. Ms Lynch, petrified that he might attack again, agreed to drive him into the town. By then, her husband and the gardaí were out looking for her. On Main Street in Virginia, they found her.

McGrath was arrested. Ms Lynch was in a hysterical state, believing that she had just escaped from what could have been a violent death. Photo-graphs taken later that morning at Navan hospital show serious black bruising under her right eye, across her throat, and on her shoulder, as if somebody had splashed large daubs of ink on her. The right side of her upper body had sustained repeated kicks from her assailant.

The following day, McGrath was released on station bail of €300, provided by a relative. He was charged under section 2 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against The Person Act, amounting to “assault” — a minor charge, dealt with by the district court. No conditions attach to such bail.

He was released before Ms Lynch gave her statement, which detailed the assault. Therefore, he was not questioned on the details of her statement.

A subsequent investigation by the Garda Ombudsman reported that the decision to release McGrath in this manner was to have “lasting consequences”.

The investigation of the assault appears to have been minimal, despite the harrowing detail of Ms Lynch’s account and the medical and physical evidence presenting. No detective was appointed to the case.

In the months that followed, Ms Lynch frequently rang Bailieborough Garda Station to inquire about progress. Usually, she was referred to the arresting garda, Padraig McEvoy, and, more often than not, she says she was told he was not on duty at the time of the call.

“I kept being told that they were waiting for the file to come back from the DPP,” she said. In reality, the file hadn’t gone to the DPP. It wasn’t sent until the following October, nearly six months after an assault that required basic investigation.

The file came back within three weeks, upgrading the charge to section 3, “assault causing harm” and a robbery charge. But by then, all had changed.

Around 3.30am on October 9, 2007, McGrath broke into a house in Dundrum, Co Tipperary. He encountered a 5-year-old girl in one of the bedrooms, his entry possibly having awoken her. He clasped his hand over her mouth, and on her throat, and made his way down the stairs with her.

The girl’s father heard the disturbance and cornered McGrath in the kitchen downstairs. He managed to overpower McGrath and held him until the arrival of the gardaí.

McGrath was charged with assault causing harm, burglary, and false imprisonment. The girl and her family had been left highly traumatised.

While McGrath was being held in Limerick Prison on the Tipperary charge, his Cavan case came up for a routine renewal of bail in Virginia District Court on October 18. McGrath’s solicitor was informed that he wouldn’t have to attend the hearing as it would be a waste of resources to have him brought from Limerick Prison.

No objection was made at the Virginia court to renewing bail, despite the fact that it was known that McGrath was now in custody on a more serious charge.

On October 30, McGrath applied for bail in Clonmel Circuit Court on the false imprisonment charge. The gardaí objected. Detective Sergeant John Long outlined the Garda’s huge concerns about bail being granted.

Yet the court was not told about the Cavan incident. An officer attempting to make the strongest case possible to keep a suspect in custody did not present the court with the strongest evidence to back up his argument. If the judge had been told that McGrath was already on bail for a violent offence, it is inconceivable that bail would have been granted.

In a subsequent investigation, Det Sgt Long said that prior to the bail application, he had checked McGrath’s background on the Garda Pulse system. (This would be second nature to any garda investigating a violent incident.) On seeing an entry about Cavan, he rang an “unidentified garda” in a “Cavan station” — also unidentified — and was told the case involved a minor assault over a taxi fare.

Irrespective of how vague the detail, or how serious the Cavan incident, it still does not explain why the case was not mentioned in the Clonmel bail application.

McGrath was granted bail. Five weeks later, on December 7, he was socialising in Limerick City when he encountered Silvia Roche Kelly, a separated mother of two. She accompanied him back to his room in the Clarion hotel where, at some stage in the early morning, he assaulted her. Around noon the following day, hotel staff discovered her body face down in the bath.

McGrath told gardaí he had hit Ms Roche-Kelly in the face, pulled her hair, and put his hands around her neck and strangled her.

Up in Cavan, Mary Lynch was digesting the news with horror. She rang Bailieborough Garda Station. “I spoke to the superintendent and I said McGrath has just murdered somebody and you told me I was safe. He said they were sending me a liaison guard. He came the following week and said he’d keep me informed and made an appointment to see me for the next time. I never saw him again.”

Ms Lynch’s main concern now was the disposal of her case in court. Finally, she was given a date for the case: Monday, January 7, 2008, at Virginia. She psyched herself up for the occasion, considering whether to deliver a formal victim-impact statement. Then, two days before the appointed date, she got a call.

“I was told there was no need for me to show up on the Monday, that it would be held over.” Disappointed, she accepted the situation.

The next communication was on the Monday afternoon. “I got a call from an inspector who stated to me, ‘your man got nine months’,” according to a witness statement made by Ms Lynch.

“When I asked who, he stated that Jerry McGrath had got nine months. I told him that I was told the case was not going ahead and he said he knew nothing about that. I told him I was informed I would be given the opportunity to make a victim-impact statement to the court. He said he did not know anything about that and he was only handed the case file that morning and told to go into the court.

“He also told me that if I wanted to see Jerry McGrath, he was still in Virginia Garda Station. I said I do not want to see Jerry McGrath in a Garda station, I wanted to see him in court.”

Informing Ms Lynch that the case was not going ahead could well have been a simple cock-up. But it’s also the case that at that stage, any public statement she might have made on McGrath — by then a notorious figure — could have been highly embarrassing to elements in the force.

In January 2009, McGrath was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. The next month, he received a 10-year sentence for the robbery and false imprisonment in Tipperary. At that hearing, the court was told by Det Sgt Long that McGrath had not already been on bail the previous October when he had been granted bail in Clonmel. This statement was wholly inaccurate.

A complaint to the ombudsman was lodged by Ms Roche Kelly’s husband, Lorcan. That investigation resulted in a recommendation of minor disciplinary action against Padraig McEvoy in Cavan and Det Sgt Long in Tipperary. The Irish Examiner understands that Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan decided not to invoke disciplinary action against either officer.

On Monday, Mr Roche Kelly’s action against the State over how McGrath’s bail was dealt with is due to be heard in the High Court.