A Government-appointed commission of investigation has found that homeless drug abuser Dean Lyons falsely admitted to the murder of two women as a result of leading questions being asked by gardaí, write Martin Wall and Conor Lally
In its report, published yesterday, the commission found that Dean Lyons acquired detailed information on the murders of Mary Callinan and Sylvia Sheils from the questions he was asked.
The sole member of the commission, George Birmingham SC, said Mr Lyons had proved highly adept at acquiring information from the way in which the questions were formulated. He said this information had been communicated inadvertently to Mr Lyons. He had not been ill treated by gardaí and there had been no attempt to frame him.
However, the commission criticised gardaí over keeping incomplete interview records, which, it said, could have led to a miscarriage of justice.
Ms Callinan and Ms Sheils were murdered while living in sheltered accommodation in Grangegorman in March 1997. Charges against Mr Lyons were dropped in 1998 shortly after another man, Mark Nash, admitted to the murders.
Nash, who was imprisoned for the murder of a couple in Roscommon in August 1997, later withdrew his confession to the Grangegorman murders, and has never been charged.
The commission report said a number of gardaí had expressed misgivings about Mr Lyons's admissions. If the Director of Public Prosecutions had been informed of the different views among gardaí on the reliability of the admissions, no charges would have been laid against Mr Lyons, the report stated.
The report was published just hours after Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy made his first public comments on the three latest Morris tribunal reports. He said he was "hurt" by the reports, which he believed had damaged the force in the eyes of the public.