Residents of Dartmouth Square in Dublin have reopened the public park in the middle of the square by removing locked chains placed on the gates earlier this week by the Athlone man who now claims to own it.
Prof Kevin B Nowlan, a long-time resident of the square, said the chains had been broken "and people are now using the park freely again". He added that residents were using bicycle chains to lock it at night, for security reasons.
Dublin City Council has confirmed that it received a solicitors' letter on behalf of Noel O'Gara, of Ballinahowen, Athlone, claiming that he owned the freehold title and that it was now negotiating with him to secure the park's future.
Responding to a call from local Green Party TD John Gormley that the council should verify the land ownership status of all public parks in its charge, a spokesman said it was "confident that this issue doesn't arise in other areas".
Mr O'Gara - who told residents he was involved in a granite and marble business - is the author of a book claiming that most of the Yorkshire Ripper's murders in the 1970s were carried out by someone else. In the book, The Real Yorkshire Ripper, Mr O'Gara insisted that Peter Sutcliffe was a "copycat ripper", responsible for only four of the 13 murders to which he had confessed, and that the other man was still at large.
"The police knew that two men were involved in the bizarre series of murders, but tactical blunders made it expedient to make a deal with the copycat killer, who was offered 10 years in a luxury mental home for his 'confessions' to everything".
In a blurb for his self-published book on the internet, Mr O'Gara claims that he had once knew the "real Yorkshire Ripper" and gained an insight into the police investigation of the murders "from none other than the Ripper himself". He claims this had enabled him "to piece together the police handling of the investigation and their framing of the mentally disturbed Sutcliffe, who was in fact merely a copycat killer responsible for only four of the murders".
Mr O'Gara's blurb for his "sensational and true story", says "police reluctance to look at their mistakes left the author no other avenue other than to record the story . . .".
Attempts by The Irish Times to contact Mr O'Gara have been unsuccessful. His website, www.iol.ie/ littlebug/ripper, is inactive.
