Man charged with pensioner’s murder

More than 28 years after her violent death, a man is due to appear in court in Killkenny this morning charged with the murder of pensioner Ann Nancy Smyth.

The partly burned body of the 79-year-old was discovered in her small cottage on Wolf Tone Street in Kilkenny on September 1987 by firemen, who found her pet dog dead beside her.

On the night she was murdered the recently widowed woman, who was only just over 4ft in height, had been socialising in O’Gorman’s Pub near her home.

Ms Smyth, who had lost her husband Dick the previous December, had taken a lift home from her local barman.

Soon after she arrived home, she was seen having an argument with a male, and at 5.05am a passer-by saw flames coming out of her sitting room window.

Firemen discovered her body on the sitting room floor but an autopsy revealed she had been strangled before her home was set alight.

Gardaí re-opened the cold case into the murder in 2012 and an edition of RTÉ’s Crimecall reconstructed Ms Smyth’s last movements, piecing together the events leading up to the discovery of her body.

At the time local barwoman Anne Leharte, who was a friend of Ms Smith, said the Kilkenny woman was a huge part of the local community.

“She was about four foot four, a jolly little woman,” said Ms Leharte. “When she would come into the bar, if there was something going on she wanted to be kind of in the middle of it.

“She was kind of part and parcel of the bar and bar life, parish life. She never put in or out on anybody. She was a joy really to come in. When she’d come in, you’d enjoy seeing her come in,” said Ms Leharte.

Last night a garda spokesman said a 52-year-old man had been arrested in Kilkenny city and brought to Kilkenny garda station where he was subsequently charged with murder.

He will appear at a special sitting of Kilkenny District court at 9.30am.