McGRATH TRIAL:IN 2007, when a Garda cold case review team was established, the disappearance of Brendan McGrath was close to the top of a list of some 200 unsolved cases re-examined.
Veronica McGrath met Colin Pinder in England in 1987 and fell pregnant almost immediately. They decided to marry in her native Westmeath when she was just 18 and Pinder, from Liverpool, was 24.
In mid-February 1987, they landed in Ireland and went to stay with her parents, Vera and Brendan McGrath, in Lower Coole near Castlepollard in Co Westmeath. The bride and groom- to-be stayed in a caravan next to the family home but their visit wasn’t a happy one.
Their peace was constantly disturbed by the sound of Veronica’s parents arguing in the family home.
Veronica told the High Court during the six-week double murder trial that her mother had said during that time in 1987 that she wished her husband was dead.
She said Vera McGrath told Pinder he “wouldn’t be man enough” to kill her husband.
According to Veronica McGrath’s evidence, the man she was due to marry just weeks later took up the challenge.
She told the High Court: “He said he had the very thing and produced a spanner. He said one blow of this would be enough.”
Later that night Veronica McGrath said Pinder hit her father hard on the head with the long spanner just outside the back door of the McGrath family home in Coole.
She said her mother then came out of the house with an array of tools, including a lump hammer and slash hook.
She told the High Court that Pinder used the slash hook to finish off her father while Vera McGrath hit him on the head with the lump hammer.
Veronica McGrath said her father’s pleas for mercy were ignored. She said her father’s body was then buried in a shallow grave in the garden before being dug up some weeks later, burned and the fragments of bones hidden in different places; a septic tank, buried in a field and the family garden or put into the range in the kitchen.
In 1993, by which time she had split from Colin Pinder, Veronica McGrath went to gardaí, telling them about her father’s murder and showing them the spot in the garden of the family home where some of the bones were buried.
It was not until that point that Brendan McGrath was even officially reported missing.
The Garda conducted an investigation during which Vera McGrath and Colin Pinder were interviewed. They both admitted a role in the killing of Brendan McGrath.
Pinder, who is mixed race, said in his 1993 statement that he hit Brendan McGrath when he used racial abuse towards him and then had “stupidly” agreed to a suggestion by Vera McGrath not to ring the Garda.
Pinder told gardaí in 1993 that immediately after the killing he felt “awful”. “I just wanted to give him a good hiding. I’m in bits since this.”
Vera McGrath, in her 1993 statement to gardaí, admitted saying she wished her husband was dead; details were given in court in recent weeks suggesting Brendan McGrath was violent towards his family.
She said Pinder produced a long spanner.
“Colin then said we’d all have to agree on it before he’d do it,” her 1993 statement said.
She claimed that Pinder told her she would have to join the attack, suggesting the attack was started and led by Pinder.
In 1993 gardaí sent a file to the DPP with the statements of all three included. However, because the burned fragments of bone could not be confirmed as the remains of Brendan McGrath, the investigation went no further.
In 2007, when a new Garda cold case review team was established, the disappearance and presumed murder of Brendan McGrath was close to the top of a list of some 200 unsolved cases that were re-examined.
The charred half-bucket of bones of Brendan McGrath found in 1993 underwent new DNA- based testing and were confirmed as those of the missing man.
In February of last year, Pinder came from his home in Liverpool to face the music in Ireland. He was arrested and charged with the murder of Brendan McGrath between March 16th, 1987, and April 18th, 1987.
A picture of him was painted during his trial of a man crippled with remorse – a depressed epileptic who had become agoraphobic, confined to his flat in Liverpool.
He pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter, saying he hadn’t planned to kill and only did so when provoked. The State would not accept his guilty manslaughter plea. However, the jury believed him, clearing him of murder but last Friday convicting him of manslaughter.
In May 2009, Vera McGrath, now aged 61 years, was charged with her husband’s murder. She went on trial with Pinder and pleaded not guilty to the murder charge when the trial began in the middle of last month.
In her evidence during the High Court trial over the past six weeks, she admitted saying in 1987 she wished her husband was dead. But from that point she said it was Pinder who took control of the situation, starting and leading the attack that ended in her husband’s murder.
The jury did not believe her and last night convicted her of her husband’s 1987 murder. This means a mandatory life sentence; it remains to be seen if she will appeal the murder conviction.