Mick Clifford: Liam Farrell's family united in grief and suspicion

Irish Examiner

2 days ago

Liam Farrell was full of life, belying his 87 years. He was in good health, a daily communicant, keeping active. He lived in the townland of Aughamore, outside the village of Rooskey, Co Roscommon.
He'd been in the same house since 1947. His death in the early hours of Janaury 12, 2020, left his family shocked, but also highly suspicious. The circumstances of his last hours have haunted them since and they are still looking for answers.
Liam had lived alone since his wife died in 2002. Two of his adult children lived within 10 miles or so of the family home. Another son lived in Donegal and two other sons were exiled in the US. The family remains close and, since Liam's death, united in grief and suspicion.
On the evening of Saturday, January 11, he walked the 400m from his home into the village AT around 9.30pm. This was his routine, a chance for some socialising more than actually drinking.
He went first to Peter Reynolds pub. Once inside the door he spotted Ann Vaughan whom he'd known for 30 years. Ann's sister had recently died and Liam went over and sympathised as he had only heard of the bereavement the previous day.
Then he sat at the bar and slowly nursed a pint. Ann noticed somebody she described as a stranger sit in beside him.
'I had never seen him in a pub before,' Anne later said in a deposition. This stranger was wearing a dark suit and a black hat.
She said she didn't like the look of this man, who was about 60, she reckoned. She didn't hear the conversation between the pair of them so she couldn't say where he was from.
'He had whitish hair and was plain-shaven. Himself and Liam was having a good conversation at the bar and I commented to my daughter that Liam must know this man.
"The stranger was drinking a bottle of Coke. I watched as Liam ordered the second pint of Guinness. Liam drank down his pint and he said to the man he was going.'
As he left, Liam turned to Ann and her daughter and said, 'I'll see ye, folks'. He was en route across the road to the village's other pub, the Weir Lodge.
Ten or 15 minutes later, the stranger left. Ann was 'a bit unsure about the look of him'.
A minute later she followed him out of the pub but there was no sign of him.
'He didn't cross the bridge [the Shannon flows through Rooskey] nor head up towards Liam's house because I would have seen him walking if he did. I don't know, nor can I be sure, where this guy went.
"I came back into the pub and a few minutes later I went out again and I went up as far as the Weir Lodge to see if Liam Farrell went in there.
I opened the door and just looked in and I saw Liam Farrell was sitting at the counter but he looked fine. I'm not sure who he was sitting with. There was a few at the bar around him.
With that, she went back to Reynolds, any concern she had washed away.
'That was the last time I saw Liam alive,' she said.
Liam Farrell's family considers the interaction with the stranger and what Ann Vaughan witnessed as highly relevant to what would happen their father. There is no other supporting evidence to provide further ballast to this theory.
Liam had a dog at home, Marley, who was usually kept outside the house. At around 11pm that night, while Liam was still in the Weir Lodge, a neighbour who lives across the road heard a dog barking.
Michael McLoughlin was watching the movie My Left Foot on TV. From his house he has a good view of the Farrell home.
'I heard a dog barking from Liam's residence,' he said in a deposition. 'At this point I took a look out my window at the Farrells' house.'
He saw the front window lights were on which, he believed, was unusual.
'I didn't see anyone or anything at Liam Farrell's house at that point,' he said.
Liam Farrell was a hard-working, humble man who had great faith.
Liam left the Weir Lodge around midnight. He walked back home, a straight run at the side of the road, no big deal to a man like him. He arrived home, but what exactly happened thereafter has not been fully established.
At 3.30pm the following afternoon, Liam's daughter Ann Carroll drove over from her home in Longford to check on him. They had been speaking on the phone the previous day but couldn't get a response on the Sunday.
Entering the driveway, she noticed that the light in the front porch was on, which was unusual. Marley approached her when she pulled up at the gable end of the house.
She got out of the Ford Mondeo and took with her a packet of sweets, a little something to satisfy her father's sweet tooth.
She walked around to the rear of house. Habitually, everybody used the back door, including her father. When she turned the corner she saw her father lying on the ground. He was barefoot, his shoes and socks scattered nearby. There was a lot of blood on her father's shirt.
His left eye was black from bruising. He was lying on his back, his head underneath the kitchen window. There were two coats near him, his red tie was also nearby, still knotted.
Ann noticed the mop bucket near her father, the water in it turned red with blood. The mop was lying against the back wall. Then she saw her father's watch on the ground, part of it damaged.
She got down now beside her father.
'Daddy, what happened you?' Ann said. 'Did you fall? Can you hear me? Wake up.' She touched her father's chest and his face and both felt cold.
She rang her brother Brendan, told him what she'd found. He said he'd ring for an ambulance.
'I did not feel happy with the situation,' she would later say. 'I rang 999 and I asked for the guards.'
At around 3.45pm, gardaí Brian O'Connor and Brendan Cafferky arrived at the scene from Carrick-On-Shannon station. By then, Brendan's wife Bernadette was there and her husband on his way.
'I made my way to the rear of the house where I viewed several items of clothing on the ground,' Garda O'Connor said.
'I viewed there was a pair of shoes, socks, and a jacket there. I also noticed that there was a €20 note and a €5 note that was in half. I also noticed that there was a wrist watch on the ground. I noticed that there was blood on the back door handle.'
Within minutes, the gardaí also found Liam Farrell's house keys. They were on the ground at the entrance to the property, just in off the road and they were stained with blood.
There were attempts to revive Mr Farrell but it was much too late for that. His body was taken away in an ambulance to Sligo hospital.
Crime scene
Before 5pm, detectives from Carrick had arrived at the house and the area was declared a crime scene.
An investigation was conducted into Liam Farrell's death in the months that followed. This was at a time of covid, the lockdowns, the effective stilling of much work. Up to 100 interviews were conducted by the gardaí. Nobody was arrested. No suspect of a possible assault on the night Mr Farrell died was identified.
During the investigation, the state pathologist Linda Mulligan was contacted and she compiled a report.
Crucially, any investigation was compromised because Mr Farrell's body was examined by a hospital pathologist, rather than a forensic pathologist like Ms Mulligan.
Ordinarily in this country, a hospital pathologist will perform an autopsy on a body where there are no suspicious circumstances surrounding the death.
The state pathologist — forensic by training — will conduct the process where there are suspicious circumstances and any outcome can dictate the direction of an investigation into the death and relevant evidence.
The autopsy on Liam Farrell was conducted by pathologist Paul Hatel in Sligo. He determined that the cause of death was, in layman's terms, a heart attack. While there would be subsequent dispute over the circumstances of Mr Farrell's death, his conclusions on causation were not disputed.
Inquest
The inquest into Liam Farrell's death didn't take place until September 11, 2024 and was conducted in Carrick-on-Shannon. The main point of dispute in the proceedings were around the circumstances of Mr Farrell's death. This centred on the evidence of three different pathologists.
Mr Hatel was asked about the cause of death and then whether he had concluded anything about the external injuries to Mr Farrell, particularly the bruising around the deceased's left eye. He said it would be inappropriate for him to speculate on it.
'The presumption is, when a deceased body is brought to my morgue for me to perform an autopsy, that any consideration of foul play has been ruled out,' he told the coroner.
'So I would be operating under that presumption. If the body was felt to be in a death scene of suspicious circumstances, that would be a state pathologist case and that would go to the state pathologist. I would never see that body.'
He said he was aware that a forensic pathologist acting for the Farrell family had criticism of his work but he rejected this. By any stretch, Mr Hatel had acted entirely professionally and reached a conclusion on the cause of death that was not disputed.
The state pathologist Linda Mulligan, who had been called in by the gardaí at a later stage, concluded that the black eye could have suffered as a result of a fall or an assault. The totality of the evidence, including that found at the scene, led her to two possible scenarios, she told the coroner.
'One, the deceased suffered a heart attack, which we know he definitely did, and did not immediately collapse but attempted to gain entry to his house while confused and in pain.
'This resulted in a fall or falls, explaining the injuries and possibly an element of hypothermia,' she said.
'The second scenario is that another party was involved in the deceased sustaining the injuries, which led to a stress-induced heart attack.'
The finding of Liam Farrell's keys at the entrance to the property could fit into either scenario. While there was blood stains on the keys, there was no trail of blood from there on to the house, and around the side to the back door area where Mr Farrell was found.
The late Liam Farrell.
If somebody had assaulted him at the entrance and brought him around the back, an issue could have arisen over the assailant demanding the keys but Liam showing he didn't have them any longer.
Equally, if he suffered some form of cardiac event at the entrance, he may have fallen and injured himself and the keys may have fallen on the ground if he was in a disorientated state.
His confusion could have been exacerbated at the back door when he realised he no longer had the keys. Liam Farrell had a mobile phone but he kept it in the house and hadn't brought it with him that evening.
The third pathologist to give evidence was Jack Crane, former state pathologist for Northern Ireland. He was retained by the Farrell family, and concluded that Mr Farrell had been confronted by an intruder outside his home.
'He had clearly been assaulted by being struck a number of times in the face, possibly causing him to fall to the ground,' Mr Crane told the court.
'Whilst on the ground, he may have attempted to defend or protect himself against further attack resulting in injuries to his hands.
'It would appear that he had attempted to make his way back into his home but had eventually succumbed to the effects of his coronary artery disease exacerbated by the strain of the physical assault.'
The last witness at the inquest was Liam's son, Peter Farrell, who now lives in Texas. He told of an encounter with a neighbour a few weeks after the funeral just before he was due to fly home.
The neighbour intimated that there was something more to Liam Farrell's death than was believed to be the case. This neighbour did not give evidence. The coroner's court was told he was approached by gardaí for a statement but declined to give one.
The jury returned an open verdict on the death of Liam Farrell. They recommended that if the house is declared a crime scene a forensic pathologist should attend.
Investigation review
Following the inquest, Garda commissioner Drew Harris ordered a review of the investigation.
In April this year, senior gardaí met with the Farrell family in Carrick-On-Shannon to discuss the outcome of the review, which had made 23 recommendations.
One of the recommendations was reported to be to consult an expert in labrador behaviour to assess whether Marley could have removed Mr Farrell's socks and shoes before his death.
The family now wants their father's body exhumed because a forensic autopsy was not conducted.
'We want that done,' Peter Farrell says. 'That was denied our father.'
He says that he and his siblings found the briefing with the gardaí after the review to unsatisfactory. They were briefed by one of the detectives involved in the original investigation, even though a senior investigating officer from another division had been appointed to conduct the review.
'It was all non specific,' he says. 'When we asked questions about the recommendations and about the gardaí involved we were told that was a matter for the commissioner,.'
The family's solicitor, Frank Buttimer, has written to the Garda commissioner seeking a meeting where the Farrells' questions can be properly addressed.
'This family is in pursuit of justice on behalf of their late father and they continue to seek answers to issues that are clearly of obvious concern. I have written to the commissioner asking for a meeting.
'The family is aware of the confidentiality that attaches to Garda investigations and they respect that but they are equally concerned that some matters remain unaddressed.'
A statement from the Garda press office confirmed that the review had been carried out and an update provided to the family.
The recommendations have been 'supplied to the investigation team who are actioning them'.
The statement adds that a full investigation was carried out, a file submitted to the DPP and no prosecution was recommended.
'A peer review is not a re-opening or a re-start of any criminal investigation,' the statement said.
Read More