In a report on how Lyons came to be charged with two murders that he did not commit, George Birmingham, the barrister who chaired a commission of investigation into the case, says that the five gardai still deny being warned and it is “apparent [that] the conflict remains to this day”.
An internal inquiry overseen by Noel Conroy, the garda commissioner, discovered that the five officers, all with a rank of superintendent or above, had been told by juniors that Lyons was a Walter Mitty character and his confession to killing two women could not be trusted.
The five officers were challenged in 2000 by Conroy and James McHugh, the assistant commissioner he appointed to investigate Lyons’s confession, but the discrepancy is coming to light only now.
Detectives Dominic Cox and Alan Bailey and Sergeant Matt Mulhall say they complained that Lyons’s confession was unbelievable and that further evidence should be found before he was charged. Yet Lyons was charged with double murder later that day.
Four other junior officers corroborated their story but the five senior officers deny concerns were raised with them.
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In his report, Birmingham reveals that Cox and Bailey say they were reprimanded by one of the five, Detective Superintendent Cormac Gordon, now head of the drugs squad, when they continued to raise doubts afterwards. Gordon allegedly told them they were “undermining the investigation”. He denied this to Birmingham. The scenario is similar to denials by senior officers in the Donegal garda corruption scandal investigated by the Morris tribunal. Conroy also oversaw an internal investigation into garda conduct in that affair.
Lyons, a drug addict, confessed to the murder of Sylvia Shiels and Mary Callinan in Grangegorman, Dublin, in March 1997. Charges against him were dropped in 1998 after another man, Mark Nash, admitted to the murders and it was discovered that Lyons could not have committed them. Yet his confession to gardai contained details of the killings he could not possibly have known.
McHugh was asked to investigate whether there had been any wrongdoing or failure by investigating officers. He questioned all the gardai involved in the interviews of Lyons in Bridewell garda station. Conroy wrote to the most senior of the five officers, former Chief Superintendent Richard Kelly, demanding they explain their denial that doubts were raised about the confession.
Kelly replied that “there was no conflict between any members present in the conference room at the Bridewell on July 26 1997 . . . however I do accept the facts as presented in McHugh’s report suggest otherwise”. McHugh was not satisfied by Kelly’s response and wrote to Conroy to say so, adding that he would forward his file to the DPP.
Birmingham’s report says that McHugh interviewed all five senior officers together in his office. McHugh left the room “giving the five officers an opportunity to discuss and consider the position among themselves . . . after some time he was called back and it was indicated that there was no change and that all of the officers involved were maintaining their position that no reservations had been expressed”.