Gardaí admit original file on Troubles murder of INLA leader's wife Mary McGlinchey ‘cannot be located'
The force had previously told the family it was 'in possession of a copy of the investigation file'.
It has now 'clarified' to Mary McGlinchey's family that the document on file is an 'incomplete' copy and that original investigative paperwork, such as witness statements and house-to-house inquiries, cannot be located.
The clarification came after Pat Marry, one of the force's most high-profile former detectives, swore in an affidavit for Dominic Óg McGlinchey's legal team that the investigation file was missing, and as a result he had to abandon a planned review of Ms McGlinchey's case.
Mary McGlinchey's murder in 1987 happened at the height of the Troubles, at a time of vicious republican feuding.
She was shot dead while she bathed her two children in the upstairs bathroom of their home
Dominic McGlinchey, known as 'Mad Dog', was responsible for a campaign of bombings and assassinations of informers and loyalists. He claimed in a newspaper interview that he had killed 30 people and was involved in 200 bombings and shootings.
Mary McGlinchey, who was also active in the INLA, had been cleared of kidnap charges the year before she was murdered.
She was shot dead while she bathed her two children, Declan and Dominic Óg, in the upstairs bathroom of their home in Dundalk, Co Louth. Seven years later, Dominic Óg witnessed the shooting of his father at a phone box in Drogheda, a murder that also remains unsolved.
The McGlinchey family met gardaí in 2012 to seek a review of the two killings.
Mr Marry, a former inspector who was stationed in Dundalk at the time, was assigned to review the investigation files, to bring them up to standard and identify new lines of inquiry.
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He later told the Sunday Independent that he spent two months searching for the original file on Mary McGlinchey's murder, but all he could find was a copy of a covering report in the National Archives.
Dominic Óg McGlinchey's lawyers wanted to cross-examine gardaí on what they said were 'irreconcilable differences' between the force's statement that it was 'in possession of a copy of the investigation file' and Mr Marry's position that it could not be located.
In response, Inspector Liam Archbold provided a more detailed affidavit in which he accepted there was 'an omission' in his previous statement, regarding 'the completeness of the file'.
He confirmed that the Mary McGlinchey murder file was a 'copy' that includes a covering report and typed statements. The original investigative paperwork that included original statements, reports, house-to-house questionnaires and photo albums is missing, he said.
This was not a complete file 'by modern standards', and some documents that would be expected to be on file are not, Inspector Archbold's statement said.
He also confirmed that Mary McGlinchey's clothes, post-mortem samples and the bath in which she had been bathing her children were missing.
However, he said the incomplete file will not 'hinder an investigation' should new information come to light.
It is inconceivable that any serious criminal investigation file can vanish into thin air
The inspector also said he did not know why the McGlinchey family were told there were no arrests for either of the murders, when in fact one person was arrested, but later released without charge.
In court papers, Dominic Óg McGlinchey acknowledged his parents' involvement in 'conflict' and that 'unimaginable things happened', but said he was taking legal action in 'pursuit of truth' and 'closure'.
His solicitor, Ciaran Mulholland, said: 'It is inconceivable that any serious criminal investigation file can vanish into thin air without any explanation. But that a murder file of one of the most gruesome killings during the Troubles, along with the main exhibits, can disappear, is shocking.
'The State has shown utter contempt and disregard in how it deals with survivors of our troubled past.'
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