Garda threatened woman with 14 years in jail, tribunal told

A Donegal woman was threatened with a 14-year jail term for protecting a relation believed to have killed a local cattle dealer, it was claimed today.

Edel Quinn told the Morris Tribunal gardai investigating the death of hit-and-run victim Richie Barron Gardai told her she would go to Mountjoy Prison for being an accessory after the fact to his alleged murder.

Ms Quinn – one of 12 people quizzed in the botched death – called her 12-hour detention at Lifford Garda Station on December 4, 1996, where she was interviewed four times “a nightmare”.

Gardaí accused her of covering up for her brother-in-law Mark McConnell, who was wrongly suspected of killing Mr Barron on October 14.

Ms Quinn claims she was classed as bad as the motorbike driver in the Veronica Guerin murder, was told she had been followed and photographed by officers for six weeks prior to her arrest, and with Garda Pauline Golden threatening a 14-year jail sentence.

Detectives are also accused of asking if she wanted to see post mortem pictures, alleging her sister had already confessed they both knew the truth, asked if she had gone to confession and was made to swear the truth on a bible twice, which she later discovered was an ordinary book.

The allegations were today denied emphatically by Conor Connelly, senior counsel for the force and named Gardai including Garda Golden.

“I was brought up to respect the Gardaí,” said Ms Quinn. “That they were the people there to protect us, but we’ve found out now that’s not true.

“That’s how my mother and father brought us up, to have respect for An Garda Siochana and to tell them the truth.

“I definitely would have co-operated with them if I knew anything. There is no way I could keep it to myself. They were suggesting I knew who actually done it.

“At the end of the day they done the harm to us. We ended up having to spend a Christmas with Roisin in a psychiatric unit over what they done. Her baby was a year and nine months, and we had to sit and play with him in a psychiatric ward.”

The tribunal is currently examining claims those arrested – many related to the McBrearty family – were interrogated, intimidated or abused during their detention.

Two gardaí previously admitted subjecting Ms Quinn’s sisters Katrina Brolly and Roisin McConnell to hours of verbal and psychological torture in Letterkenny Garda Station on the same day.

Ms Quinn told detectives she and a friend met the McConnells in a nightclub in Raphoe at 1.30am, half an hour after Mr Barron’s body was found on a roadside.

She said it would have been impossible for McConnell who was a large man to run from a pub where he had been drinking, kill Mr Barron, and run back to the nightclub with no sweat on him.

“They wanted to know the truth and I didn’t know nothing,” she continued. “I believe they knew I knew nothing because they would stare and stare into my eyes and I would stare back.

“I was told I was going to Mountjoy for 14 years for accessory after the fact, that would be the sentence I would be getting.

“They asked about my father, what age he was when he died, and about me being at confessions. I took it they must have thought I went and confessed and got it all off my chest. That whatever guilt that I had I passed it on to the priest and felt grand then.”

The tribunal heard that following their arrests the family endured a torrent of hatred in the town. Ms Quinn, who now lives in Dublin, was threatened and assaulted in work, was in fear every time she met a Garda and said neighbours would no longer look her in the eye.

Despite not making a complaint at the station, she later tried to see a solicitor regarding her treatment.

“He told me not to do it because I wouldn’t have the living of a dog if I did because the gardaí would arrest me,” she added.