The Cold Case Files (22 page)

Gerry and Kelly and the rest of the family have set up a Facebook page to appeal for information about Stephen’s killer. It is a permanent and publicly accessible tribute to a young life
taken in the most brutal of circumstances. The family urge people to please take the time to log on to www.facebook.com and go to the page link for the Support-the-justice-4-stephen-campaign.

To mark the tenth anniversary of Stephen’s death, Gardaí in Tallaght issued a fresh appeal on 1 September 2011. The appeal reminded people that the unsolved
killing had featured on a
Crimeline
programme and had been re-examined by cold-case detectives who had made an arrest in 2006. The appeal stated that a suspect, who is now in his fifties,
was not prosecuted after a file was sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions. “I am confident that there are people out there who know what happened that night, or who may have been
confided in afterwards,” said Superintendent Eamon Dolan. Liz Hughes also took part in the appeal, and pleaded with anyone who knows what happened that night to contact Gardaí.
“It would be a comfort to know what happened to Stephen, even after all these years,” she said. Anyone with information was urged to contact Tallaght Garda station, or the Garda
Confidential Line at 1800 666 111, or any Garda station.

In February 2012, Gardaí from Tallaght station arrested a 52-year-old man for questioning in connection with the case. The man was arrested on the northside of Dublin and held for a
number of hours under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act before being released. The arrest came as a result of the ongoing investigation carried out by Tallaght-based detectives since the appeal
for information was made on the tenth anniversary of Stephen’s killing.

The reward for information to help solve this killing is also still available. Contact Crimestoppers on 1800 25 00 25. Callers can keep their anonymity and still claim the reward if their
information leads to the killer being brought to justice.

Liz tells me she thinks it is fear which has stopped people coming forward with information. She is urging people to find the courage to do the right thing. “Don’t be afraid anymore.
It’s gone on too long.”

T
he establishment of the Garda Cold Case Unit came far too late for the case of Tommy Powell. The five-and-a-half-year-old boy was found beaten to
death in a disused graveyard in Dublin’s south inner city on 21 June 1961. Tommy’s killer or killers were never identified and never brought to justice. Tommy met his death just a short
walk from where the Cold Case Unit is based. At the back of Harcourt Street Garda complex lies Camden Street, and one of the side streets off this is Camden Row, which runs at the back of what is
now Kevin Street
DIT
, close to the old Meath Hospital. Nestled off Camden Row is an old church ruin and graveyard. The last burial here was around the time of the Easter
Rising in 1916. In June 1961 it was overgrown with grass and weeds, and a place where children from the local area would often play. Tommy Powell didn’t play there though, he had never been
in the graveyard before he met his death there.

Tommy lived with his family in a flat at Cuffe Street just around the corner. He was a pupil at the national school on Clarendon Street and was a well-liked young boy. On the afternoon of
Tuesday 20 June 1961 Tommy finished school as normal and was collected by his mother. They headed home and Tommy played outside with other children at Mercer House flats. But when his mother went
to call him for tea he wasn’t there. She began looking around everywhere but there was no sign.

An 11-year-old girl later told Gardaí that she saw Tommy walking along Wexford Street towards Camden Street between 4.15 p.m. and 4.30 p.m. The girl knew Tommy and saw that he was walking
alone near the De Luxe Cinema. The girl continued walking on and when she came to the junction of Kevin Street and Cuffe Street she looked back up the street but couldn’t see Tommy.

All that Tuesday night Tommy’s mother and father and neighbours searched for him. His father called into the Gardaí and reported Tommy missing. All Garda stations and the Central
Detective Unit at Dublin Castle were alerted. At the time of Tommy’s disappearance Ireland was basking in positive international headlines. Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco were on
a four-day official state visit, and Dublin was hosting the Congress of the Patrician Year, a Catholic event celebrating the fifteenth centenary of the death of St Patrick. Tens of thousands of
people were on the streets of Dublin to greet the Papal Legate, Cardinal Agagianian.

Tommy’s body was found by two young men just before 1 p.m. the following day. The two had got over the wall of the disused graveyard and had walked into the church ruin, which was situated
in a corner of the old cemetery. The two were looking at headstones in this area when they suddenly saw Tommy’s body at one end of the church ruin. Tommy lay partly covered with long grass.
He had suffered a number of visible injuries to his head consistent with a sustained attack. The two men ran to Kevin Street Garda station where Garda Francis Mulderrig was on duty. He raced back
with the youths to the cemetery and when he saw Tommy’s body he immediately sealed off the scene.

State Pathologist Dr Maurice Hickey found that Tommy died as a result of gross brain damage resulting from head injuries. A jury later certified that Tommy was murdered by a person or persons
unknown on the night of 20 June 1961. A major criminal investigation was carried out at the time headed by detectives from Kevin Street. No clear motive was ever established for Tommy’s
shocking death. He was fully clothed when his body was found.

Detectives searched the full cemetery, which measured almost 200 square feet. They found blood on the church wall close to where Tommy’s body was found, and they also found blood on
surrounding grass. Gardaí quickly came to the conclusion that Tommy had been killed where his body was found. But they never found the person or persons responsible for the murder of this
five-and-a-half-year-old boy. A number of children who would play in the old cemetery spoke with Gardaí but none had ever seen Tommy Powell playing there. Detectives considered the theory
that Tommy had been enticed to the cemetery, perhaps by older children, and that a row had simply gone too far. A brick was found embedded in the ground under where Tommy’s body had been
discovered. Perhaps he had struck his head on this stone while being attacked by someone or some people and those responsible had panicked and fled the scene. Officers considered how Tommy had
actually got into the cemetery. The large iron gates were locked, but children often got over a six-foot-high wall at Liberty Lane. Tommy might well have willingly got over the cemetery wall,
perhaps with other children. But no-one ever came forward to say they had been in Tommy’s company or had even seen him after he was sighted by the 11-year-old girl walking on nearby Wexford
Street on the afternoon that he vanished.

Tommy’s murder caused huge concern not only in Dublin but right across the country. There was a real fear that the uncaptured child-killer would strike again. But no similar murder would
ever occur. Whoever murdered Tommy Powell did not strike again, or certainly not in the same way. As neighbours continued to comfort Tommy’s family and do everything they could for them, the
Garda investigation eventually ground to a halt and the case would never be solved.

Two months before Tommy Powell was murdered, another killing occurred in Dublin where the killer or killers would never be brought to justice. Sixty-eight-year-old bachelor Harry Cahill was
working alone at the Iona Garage in Glasnevin in the early hours of Friday 7 April 1961 when he was struck on the head by someone in what was most likely an attempted robbery. The alarm was raised
when someone called to the garage shortly before 3 a.m. and found Harry Cahill stumbling towards him, covered in blood. Mr Cahill was rushed to the Mater Hospital and Gardaí were first
alerted when a reporter from the overnight desk at the
Irish Press
newspaper rang Mountjoy station looking for information about the incident. When Gardaí went to the Mater Hospital
they were told that when Harry Cahill had arrived by ambulance he had been conscious, but he was now semi-conscious and as well as being treated for his head injuries he was suffering from severe
shock. Gardaí asked if they could speak with him but medical staff said they simply couldn’t allow it at that time. Harry Cahill soon fell unconscious and was moved to St
Laurence’s Hospital for specialist treatment and an operation, but he never regained consciousness and he died on the Saturday night.

State Pathologist Dr Maurice Hickey found that Harry Cahill’s brain substance had been extensively torn and bruised on his left side, and the main brain was also extensively torn. Death
was due to brain damage resulting from multiple blunt force injuries to the head. The pathologist declared that the injuries were not caused by a fall.

Gardaí examined the garage and found pools of blood. Sergeant Edward Geraghty and Garda Thomas Fahy were the first officers to enter the premises, which was sited close to the Royal
Canal. They saw three pools of blood on the garage floor at the entrance to the office. There was blood on the woodwork surrounding the office door and it seemed that this general area was where
Harry Cahill had been attacked. Although he had been conscious when he was first found, he had been unable to say what had happened to him. He did tell one of the medical staff that he had fallen,
but it seems that this was an effect of the gross head injuries he had received in the course of an attack.

A large murder investigation was begun with detectives from right across Dublin drafted in to catch Harry Cahill’s killer or killers. One line of enquiry was that he might have fallen
victim to a group of criminals from the Finglas area. It was suspected that particular criminals had been in the area in the early hours of that morning. Detectives had established that the garage
takings had been removed by the person who had been on the shift before Harry Cahill and left at the home of the garage owner. This would have meant there was very little except the float left in
the garage during the early hours. Was it possible that a thief or thieves had set upon Harry Cahill when they realised that there was very little money to be found on the premises? Ultimately that
question would remain unanswered and Harry Cahill’s murderer would never be brought to justice. The Iona Garage is no longer there. A popular pub is now sited at the location where Harry
Cahill began a fateful overnight workshift on 7 April 1961.

Twenty-one-year-old Cecilia McEvoy was on her way to the pictures when somebody strangled her to death in Co. Laois on the evening of Monday 5 November 1962. Cecilia had left her home at Grange,
near Stradbally, to head to Port Laoise. She never made it to the cinema. It was the following morning that two men found Cecilia’s body while they were driving through an open expanse of
land known as The Heath, three miles north of Port Laoise. It was clear from the marks on Cecilia’s neck that she had been strangled. She was still wearing her red-and-white dress and fawn
cardigan. Her green overcoat was covering most of her body—it had apparently been draped sideways over Cecilia by her killer. Cecilia’s brown shoes were missing as was her brown handbag
and her scarf. Those items would never be found and Cecilia’s murderer would never be identified.

While the murders of Tommy Powell, Harry Cahill and Cecilia McEvoy were three crimes from the early 1960s which would never be solved, in subsequent decades there would be hundreds more cases of
innocent people murdered and their killers never brought to justice. Less than ten years after Tommy Powell was beaten to death in Dublin, another child was murdered and the killer was never
caught. Ten-year-old Bernadette Connolly had gone cycling on a quick errand for her mother when she was abducted and murdered in Co. Sligo on 17 April 1970. It was the middle of a Friday afternoon
when a killer abducted Bernadette from a country road and put her bike up on an embankment above the road. The bike was found later that evening during a search for Bernadette, but there was no
sign of the little girl.

The investigation into Bernadette’s disappearance took place as a major investigation was continuing in Dublin after Garda Dick Fallon was shot dead on 3 April. The unarmed Garda was
murdered by bank raiders at Arran Quay. His murder would also not be solved and in recent years his family has been in contact with the Cold Case Unit as part of efforts to seek justice for a man
who gave his life for the State.

On Thursday 6 August, three and a half months after Bernadette Connolly disappeared, her body was found by a woman loading turf at Limnagh on the Roscommon/Sligo border. Where Bernadette’s
body was found was fifteen miles from the quiet lane where she had been abducted. She was still wearing her white vest with three religious medals pinned to it. She was also wearing her brown
anorak, blue blouse and pinafore dress.

In recent years Bernadette’s family has repeatedly asked Gardaí to do everything they can to try and solve this most distressing case. A fresh investigation has now been undertaken
under the direction of an Assistant Commissioner. The family has asked Gardaí to locate the three medals which Bernadette was wearing when her body was found. Those medals were taken by
Gardaí for forensic examination in 1970. Some years ago the family was told that the medals could not be found, nor could Bernadette’s bike, which Gardaí had also taken to
Dublin for forensic examination over forty years ago.