Gardaí investigating killing told suspect 'you’ll be next', court hears

A then 20-year-old man being questioned over the death of Una Lynskey in 1971 was shown a photograph of another suspect “lying in a ditch, dead” by gardaí investigating her killing, a court has heard today.

Martin Conmey told the Court of Criminal Appeal today that detectives said “ up there” after they informed him that the body of his friend Martin Kerrigan had been found in the Dublin Mountains.

Mr Kerrigan was abducted and killed, and his body left in a ditch at Trabraken, 10 days after the discovery of Ms Lynskey’s body in the same area on December 10, 1971.

He was suspected of having been involved in her disappearance two months earlier, when she vanished while returning to her family home at Porterstown Lane, Ratoath in County Meath.

The CCA of Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman presiding, sitting with Mr Justice Declan Budd and Mr Justice Eamon De Valera was hearing testimony from Mr Conmey (aged 59), who is attempting to clear his name over the woman’s killing.

A post mortem examination failed to establish how the 19-year-old civil servant died. She had no broken bones and there were no signs she was strangled.

In 1972, Martin Conmey, of Porterstown Lane, Ratoath, and another local man, Dick Donnelly, were convicted of Una Lynskey’s manslaughter. A year later, both men appealed and Donnelly’s conviction was overturned, but Mr Conmey served three years in prison for the offence.

Today was the fourth day of the hearing of Mr Conmey’s application, being brought under Section 2 of the Criminal Procedure Act 1993, which is part of his attempt to have his case declared a miscarriage of justice.

Martin Conmey told the three-judge court that on December 20, 1971 a number of gardaí arrived at his work in Clondalkin and brought him to Rathfarmham garda station.

On the journey there he said he was informed Martin Kerrigan was dead and told “you’ll be next up there”.

He said he was called a “black b*****d”, and alleges he was “ill-treated” while being detained at the Garda station, and was “punched, anywhere and everywhere”.

He was shown a “picture” of Martin Kerrigan, “lying in a ditch, dead”, the showing of which, the court heard “was not in dispute”.

Lawyers for Martin Conmey are arguing that “newly discovered facts” will prove he was not responsible for Una Lynskey’s death in 1971.

These include the existence of “earlier” contradictory statements from key witnesses and a previously unknown allegation of violence and “oppression” by investigating Gardai against one of these.

Under cross-examination from lawyers for the State, Mr Conmey said he “never” told “a key witness” in the prosecution’s case against him about Una Lynskey being hit by a car on the evening she disappeared.

He told Mr Brendan Grehan SC, for the State, Thomas Mangan “never told the truth” when he said Mr Conmey had told him, Ms Lynskey was hit “by the front of a car” being driven “Dick Donnelly”, and that her body was left “inside a ditch, near a mountain”.

Mr Mangan was a “room mate” of Mr Conmey at accommodation in Dublin, with the disputed conversation said to have taken place in November 1971, a month before Ms Lynskey’s body was found.

Today, the court heard the success of the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six, “sparked” Mr Conmey to attempt to overturn his conviction. He said he no longer wanted to live with something he “didn’t do”, and later retained a private detective.

Mr Hugh Harnett SC and Mr Michael O’Higgins SC are representing Martin Conmey.

The hearing continues later tomorrow.