The family of murdered Co Louth man Seamus Ludlow tonight said evidence given by gardai at the fresh inquest into the loyalist shooting strengthens their case for a public inquiry after a jury returned a verdict of unlawful killing at the end of the second inquest into the murder of 47-year-old forestry worker.
Retired garda John Courtney, who was part of the garda murder squad, told the inquest officers from the RUC gave him four names of the murder suspects, who were connected with the Ulster Defence Association, in February of 1979.
However, after the information was passed on to Garda headquarters in Dublin, Mr Courtney said the subversive section did not issue a direction for any further investigation into the men.
"Evidence of former chief superintendent John Courtney was the first public admission that we have that the gardai had this information and never acted upon it. So I think it alone strengthens our case for a public inquiry," said Jimmy Sharkey, a nephew of Mr Ludlow, who was speaking after the inquest.
"This is a first step, we are glad that this is over, it is a chapter out of the way." Almost 30 years after Mr Ludlow's death, the jury at the fresh inquest, which was ordered by the attorney general, passed a verdict of unlawful killing.
The Dundalk Coroners Court heard evidence the body of the 47-year-old sawmills operator was discovered at 3.10pm on May 2nd, 1976, with three shot wounds to the chest, dumped over a ditch at a lane at Culfore near Dundalk - around 450 yards from his home.
Mr Ludlow was last spotted alive walking over the Newry Road bridge on the outskirts of the Co Louth town thumbing a lift home from a pub at around midnight on May 1st, 1976.
Earlier the inquest heard that over two decades after the shooting of Mr Ludlow the four loyalist murder suspects gave information on their involvement in the shooting for the first time.
Retired garda chief superintendent Ted Murphy said two of the four men named as suspects in the murder as early as 1979 gave accounts of a killing that corroborated information relating to Mr Ludlow's death during interviews with Northern Ireland police officers in 1998.
Mr Murphy, who was brought in by the Garda Commissioner in 1996 to review the investigation into Mr Ludlow's murder, said the men were arrested for questioning in Northern Ireland under the Prevention of Terrorism Act as part of the review.
However, the inquest into Mr Ludlow's death heard the Director of Public Prosecutions in Northern Ireland directed that no charge be made. During the suspects' interviews in Castlereagh Detention Centre, they gave information that the shooting took place in a car and the man's body was then placed on a hedge in a lane.
"Two of the four suspects gave that account, they had no knowledge they were going to be interviewed so there was no collusion," Mr Murphy said. "It seems he was extremely unlucky, four people came down from the north of Ireland with the intention of killing someone," he said. "Any other man walking there, it would have been them other than Mr Ludlow.
There was no motive other than it was a random incident." On the rumours in Dundalk town that Mr Ludlow was killed by the IRA as he was an informer, Mr Murphy said there was no evidence from the investigation to back it up.
However, Kevin Ludlow, a brother of the deceased, said he was told by retired detective sergeant Jim Gannon on around four occasions in the 20 years following the death that the IRA were involved. Mr Gannon, who took the identification from Mr Ludlow's brother at the scene in 1976, said: "At the outset I repeated the rumour that the IRA were supposedly involved.
"At the early stage I said that," he said. "Kevin Ludlow is a shrewd man, why would I go on saying that when there was not an ounce of evidence to back it up."
On the fact the family were not present at the first inquest, Mr Murphy said there were no documents in the original file relating to which garda was supposed to inform them of the inquest. Despite extensive searches, Mr Murphy also said the only hard evidence he could find in relation to the case was one of the three bullets.