Bid to frame Travellers followed by cover-up and lies

Seven Travellers were arrested in May 1998 after gardaí raided a halting site on the outskirts of Burnfoot on the Inishowen peninsula.

Officers had been dispatched to the site to search for a firearm. An old double barrelled sawn-off shotgun was found hidden in a hold-all bag and ammunition was recovered from a shed on the site.

The raid was purported to have been part of investigations into the unsolved murder of pensioner Edward Fitzmaurice in his home in Charlestown, Co Mayo days before.

He was found tied to a chair, dead, after being attacked during a violent burglary.

Det Sgt John White, who briefed a 25-strong garda team ahead of the raid, claimed they were acting on information from a confidential source.

He said he had been told by an informer that four men staying at the halting site where involved in the Fitzmaurice killing.

The theft of a number of trailers from Det Sgt White’s home in Ballybofey in the spring of 1998 was also linked to the operation.

Seven Travellers were arrested – Thomas Collins, Michael McCann, Bernard Christopher Power, John McCann, David Power, John Casey and Timothy Collins - and they were questioned over the gun and the Fitzmaurice murder.

Detective Garda Thomas Kilcoyne, a key figure in the operation, claimed the events played on his mind and later made a statement claiming he, along with Det Sgt White, planted the gun on the camp.

Det Sgt White was last month cleared by a jury of any part in the incident.

Findings:

Detective Sergeant John White, currently suspended from the force, deliberately planted a gun at the halting site.

He did it to secure the arrests of seven Travellers.

Det Sgt Thomas Kilcoyne accompanied Det Sgt White to plant the gun. He came clean about the incident in June 2001.

Gda Martin Leonard, Sergeant Jack Conaty and Gda Padraig Mulligan formed a conspiracy and concocted a cover story to provide a defence for Det Sgt White when he was charged with planting the gun.

The trio attempted to fabricate evidence to back up the story. They did this by implicating two innocent members of the force, Gda Eamon McConigley and Gda Tony Moran.

Sgt Conaty, and his wife Carmel, were found to have deliberately lied to the tribunal.

Gda Leonard was found to have lied to the tribunal and he was also found to have used his position in the Garda Representative Association as chief mischief maker.

The judge said the primary motivations in their conduct was to help Det Sgt White escape the criminal charge.

The report said: “Instead of serving the force and the people of Ireland they were determined to make trouble at every hand’s turn and to create as much black mischief through lies as would defeat any legitimate enquiry for truth or any attempt to bring order to the chaotic discipline situation which prevailed among certain sections of An Garda Siochana in the Donegal division.”