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An appeal by Tipperary farmer Patrick Quirke against his conviction for the murder of Bobby Ryan, a DJ known as ‘Mr Moonlight’, is due to begin today.
Quirke was convicted of murdering his 52-year-old “love rival” after a 15-week trial last year. He had denied any involvement in the murder.
Mr. Ryan disappeared on June 3, 2011 after leaving his girlfriend Mary Lowry’s home early in the morning. His badly decomposed body was discovered in an underground tank on April 30, 2013.
At trial, Quirke killed the DJ so that he could resume an affair with Mrs. Lowry.
His relationship with Ms. Lowry was briefly rekindled after Ryan’s death.
The prosecution said it was later under pressure and arranged for the body to be discovered when Lowry said he was ending the lease on his farm.
The case was based on circumstantial evidence. The prosecution could not say the exact time or place of the murder and had not identified a murder weapon. There was no forensic evidence from the scene.
However, attorneys for the prosecution said the evidence, which included notes and computer searches on the decomposition, established motive, timing, and Quirke’s mental state.
The defense had argued at the end of the prosecution’s evidence that the absence of hard evidence against Quirke should make the case unsafe to present to the jury for consideration.
They said the garda investigation was “suboptimal.”
Last Friday, the Court of Appeal was informed that more than 5,000 pages of trial transcripts were being prepared for the appeal, which is expected to last up to four days.
In a lawsuit that gripped the nation last year, the jury heard that searches were conducted after Ryan’s car was found near a wooded area some distance from Lowry’s farm.
Her daughter noticed that the car was open with her DJ equipment inside. It was parked in gear and the driver’s seat was not in its usual position.
However, the case was treated only as a missing person investigation at the time and did not escalate to a murder investigation until his body was found almost two years later, just feet from where he was last seen alive. .
Prosecutor Michael Bowman told the court that Quirke had the motive and the opportunity to murder Mr. Ryan.
He said that the only person who could have put the body in the disused runoff tank was a person who knew of its existence and suggested it was Quirke.
Only a handful of people knew about the tank, he said.
Bowman said the prosecution’s case was that he had gotten rid of his love rival and resumed his relationship with Ms. Lowry after Ryan had left.
In April 2013, almost two years after Ryan’s disappearance, Quirke told Gardaí that he was pumping water from the disused tank when he discovered the body.
The decomposed body of Mr. Ryan had been stripped and left in the tank, covered with a concrete slab.
A post-mortem examination showed that he had died from blunt trauma. He had multiple fractures to his skull, ribs and leg.
The prosecution said Quirke had arranged the discovery of the body because time was running out on his lease on the farm.
He said he wanted to remain in control and after organizing the discovery of the body began a “narrative” directed against Ms. Lowry in which he questioned her knowledge of the circumstances of Mr. Ryan’s disappearance.
Prosecutors suggested that Quirke had a script prepared to work on in his interviews with the Garda.
They said that a sheet of A4 paper found during a search at her home contained evidence of indentations from another page on which she appeared to have written various things, including questions about Ms. Lowry and statements about the removal of evidence.
It also contained the words “what the guards will know.”
Gardaí also found evidence that a home computer had been used to look up the decomposition rate of human remains in the water.
The prosecution said this “could not be explained” and that it would be an affront to common sense to find him not guilty.
The defense had argued that the case against Quirke was based on a theory and not on any solid evidence.
He had warned the jury not to take a shortcut to conviction based on circumstantial evidence.
Senior attorney Bernard Condon said the case was forensic and the investigation “suboptimal.”
He said that there was not an iota of evidence as to what actually happened to Mr. Ryan on June 3, 2011.
The defense had argued at the end of the prosecution’s evidence that the absence of hard evidence against Quirke should make the case unsafe to present to the jury for consideration.
“The essential issue in this case is what happened to Bobby Ryan … and on that essential issue there is really no evidence, good, bad or indifferent,” Mr. Condon presented to the court.
Judge Eileen Creedon had rejected the defense’s request to stop the trial.
Quirke was convicted by a 10: 2 majority verdict and was sentenced to life in prison.
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