Ian Watson: Child killer and one of Ireland's longest serving prisoners dies behind bars

The death of Ian Watson revives questions about a brutal 1984 murder and a justice system once shrouded in silence

Murderer Ian Watson died in the Midlands Prison on Tuesday of this week, approaching his 42nd year in custody.

Ian Gerard Watson was a chameleon. A very violent man who could hoodwink people into thinking he wouldn’t hurt a fly. 

He hid in plain sight. By the time he targeted and murdered 12-year-old Conor McCabe he was well known to Scottish police, but not to gardaí.

Watson lived a transient life, moving from town to town, country to country. He had good reason to leave his native Scotland. He’d racked many convictions, mostly in Edinburgh.

Ian Watson was born in Lennoxtown, north of Glasgow on July 5, 1954. He grew up in foster homes but soon began a life of crime. 

His first conviction was aged 11, when in 1966 he was bound to the peace for 12 months. Four years later he was given a three-month sentence for housebreaking. Two years after that he was given six months for theft.

By the age of 19, he was jailed for seven months for possessing cannabis, and further short jail terms followed for more housebreaking, theft, and drugs.

Watson decided to move to Ireland where nobody knew his background, nobody knew the danger he posed. He travelled to Co. Mayo in the mid-1970s, settling for a time in Westport, later moving to Athboy in Co. Meath, and then to Dublin, living at Grove Park in Rathmines. 

He then moved to Portland Street, on the capital’s northside, close to Croke Park. Ian Watson was moving around a lot. 

He was by now injecting heroin and drinking heavily, but he wasn’t visibly unstable. He also spent time in various parts of Co. Wicklow, living for a time in Ashford, and later in Arklow, where he committed a most shocking murder.

Murder in Arklow

Conor McCabe was the youngest of four children. He had only turned 12 three months before he was targeted by 29-year-old Watson. 

Conor was a member of the local scout club, and he was in sixth class in primary school. He came from a loving family, well known in the community.

Neither Conor’s family, nor local gardaí had any idea that the Scottish man who had recently moved to Arklow was a criminal. 

Ian Watson seemed to be somewhat of a layabout but passed himself off as a birdwatcher, a harmless character who played the guitar. Local people had no idea this recent arrival had a propensity for extreme violence. 

Nobody knew that, just months earlier, Ian Watson had attacked a person in a pub in East Wall in Dublin, leaving the victim requiring 17 stitches to their face. That victim had been too afraid to make a statement to gardaí.

Nobody knew Ian Watson was also breaking into houses. In hindsight, one woman in Ashford was lucky she wasn’t murdered by him. 

While living in Dublin, Ian Watson had travelled to Ashford and broken into a house, putting a pillow case over his head as he confronted a woman who lived alone and had just got into bed. 

Watson tied the woman up, and stole £50 from a cupboard. He then stole the woman’s car, thankfully leaving her alive. 

When he got back to Dublin he abandoned the vehicle and rang 999 anonymously to alert gardaí that a woman was tied up in Ashford. 

It was the following year that Ian Watson murdered Conor McCabe. On the evening Conor vanished, he had his dinner at home just after 5.30pm and he then went outside. 

He was not seen alive again. It was two days later that Conor’s body was found during a planned search by gardaí at a property at Ferrybank, in a residential area of Arklow, north of the river Slaney. 

The court case

Ian Watson was found in another property nearby, hiding under a bed. When Watson eventually pleaded guilty to murdering Conor McCabe, no detail of the crime was given in open court. 

That was the norm of the time. Justice was not really administered in public. There was no outline of the case given to the judge, no victim impact statements from the family. It was a system entirely different to today's.

Ian Watson pleaded guilty to murder, was given the automatic life sentence, and the court proceedings were over within minutes. 

The dramatic story was rightly featured on the front page of the next day’s Irish Examiner, but only merited two sentences. 

The scarcity of detail about the case was a direct result of a court system which wasn’t interested in informing the public.

The sentencing judge was never told how, in the moments after being arrested by gardaí, Watson freely admitted murdering Conor, with one garda recording that Watson asked officers:

What will happen to me?.... I should be hanged. 

The court was never told that when arrested Watson’s denim jeans had blood on them, and he had a fresh scar on his hand from the attack on Conor.

The court was never told that, just a short time before gardaí caught him, Ian Watson had confessed the murder to a local man. 

Similarly the court was not informed of an intriguing and troubling comment from Watson to this same man on a previous occasion that he had done some other “horrible thing” which he “could never share with anybody”. 

It’s a thought I’ve had for a long time. Is there another victim of Ian Watson that has never been linked to the killer? Did he target someone else in Ireland or in Scotland in a case that has never been solved?

Watson in prison

Very little has been reported about Ian Watson in the four decades since he murdered that innocent 12-year-old boy in Co. Wicklow. 

Watson initially found it difficult to adapt to long-term prison life, and spent time in isolation and in a padded cell. Some people who encountered him in prison later told me that he was moody and unpredictable.

In 2001, I learned Watson had applied to be repatriated to Scotland. He was by then into his 16th year of a life sentence, the general public knew very little about him, and I wondered if he would be allowed to 'go home' to Scotland. 

However, I soon learned that his application had been refused. Ian Watson would never be allowed to ‘go home’, and he was never let out of jail. 

Despite justifiable criticism of the way justice was administered ‘behind closed doors’ in the 1980s, with no evidence being given when someone admitted to murder, longer term the Irish State did right by Conor McCabe. 

Barry Cummins: 'The scarcity of detail about the case was a direct result of a court system which wasn’t interested in informing the public.'

Successive parole boards and ministers for justice ensured a man who took the life of a young boy, in circumstances which have never been publicly outlined, never saw the outside of a prison.

One of the gardaí who was present on the day Conor’s body was found in April 1984 told me long ago this was a case where life imprisonment should mean life. 

“This was a savage murder of a young boy. Watson should never be let out of prison.” 

Murderer Ian Watson died in the Midlands Prison on Tuesday of this week, approaching his 42nd year in custody. That is some measure of justice for an unspeakable crime, but nothing changes the loss of a much-loved boy. 

Conor McCabe would now be 54-years-old.