New Age Traveller attempts plea change

A New Age Traveller about to be sentenced for a killing on a campsite in Leitrim in 1998 has tried to change his plea to not guilty, claiming new evidence that shows Garda corruption.

Last June, three new age travellers - Andrew Gordon Roche (36), a father-of four, with an address in Drumlease, Dromohair, Co. Leitrim; Keith Cooper (25), with an address at Gortimar, Manorhamilton, and Mark Francis Barber (33), a father-of-one, with an address at the New Age Traveller settlement in Boihy, Manorhamilton, Co Leitrim - appeared in the Central Criminal Court to go on trial for the murder of Elliott Colin Double, otherwise known as Elliott Robertson, at a campsite on the mountainside at Boihy, Co Leitrim on October 6 1998.

All three initially pleaded not guilty to the murder, but in the opening stages of the trial, first Barber, and then Roche and Cooper, successfully entered pleas of not guilty to murder but guilty of manslaughter. The pleas were accepted by the DPP and the three were due to be sentenced today.

In the first week of August, Mark Francis Barber was found dead in a caravan on the mountainside campsite. His mother, Sheena McKerrell Barber blames the trauma he had been through in connection with the murder charge for his suicide.

As Roche and Cooper appeared for sentencing before Mr Justice Diarmuid O'Donovan yesterday, Keith Cooper attempted to withdraw his plea.

Representing himself in court after his legal team, led by Anthony Sammon SC, with Michael Staines solicitors, withdrew from the case, Cooper told the judge that he was in shock at the time he entered a plea of guilty to manslaughter and now, he did not think he had made the right decision.

In the three months since, he said, he had found new evidence that changed his case, including "medical evidence" and "falsified statements".

Mr Cooper said that medical reports from Sligo General Hospital were not included in the book of evidence, and that that material – which included the results of catscans and an ultrasound – showed less injuries on Mr Robertson's body than those recorded in the post-mortem report.

Asked what the import of the claimed new evidence was, he said it showed "Garda corruption" and suggested that the alleged extra injuries were inflicted after Mr Robertson was hospitalised.

The hospital reports showed that the deceased had less significant injuries than those recorded in the post-mortem, he claimed.

"There's also statements falsified, including one of my own statements", he alleged.

Cross-examined by George Bermingham, SC for the DPP, Keith Cooper accepted that he was involved in a confrontation with Elliot Robertson in which weapons were used and that Robertson was struck a number of times. But he said that since June, he had become "firmer in the view" that the injuries to Robertson were not as serious as the post-mortem suggested.

Mark Barber's mother, Ms Sheena McKerrell Barber intervened during the court hearing to tell the judge that the hospital records contradicted the post-mortem report. "Unfortunately, Mr Cooper was never supplied with the hospital reports", she said.

After submissions, Mr Justice O'Donovan strongly advised Cooper to seek fresh legal advice and gave him a week to assemble the alleged new evidence and present it in affidavit. He adjourned the case to October 22. There was no objection to continuing bail.

In the case of Mr Roche, the judge also adjourned sentencing to October 22.

In the course of a sentence hearing, Detective Sergeant Gerry Forde described the deceased man, Elliot Robertson as one of a gang of "anti-social criminals" who descended on the Leitrim campsite in the year of the killing and brought scenes of "drunken debauchery", "wild parties", larceny, car ramming and illegal drug syringes with them.

The confrontation that led to Robertson's death arose from attempts by the more "peaceable new age travellers" to get him and his friends to leave the area.

In her post-mortem examination, the deputy state pathologist, Dr Marie Cassidy found that Robertson died from a multiplicity of blows to the body but that no single blow could be isolated as the cause of death.

The blows caused blunt force trauma, which in turned caused fatty embolisms to enter the blood stream. These ultimately congregated in the lung area, where within a short space of time they brought about a heart attack, because Mr Robertson could not breathe.

His father, Ralph Robertson told the hearing that his son "wasn't what people are making out". He said he visited his son in July of the year of his death and everything seemed "hunky dory" on the campsite.

But he accepted an apology for the killing of his son from Andrew Roche, voiced on his behalf by his counsel, Mr Michael O'Higgins SC. "It should never have got that far," Ralph Robertson said.