A schoolboy who discovered the body of a stabbed baby girl was so traumatised that for years he couldn't revisit the scene, an inquest today heard.
Uinsionn MacDubhghaill, now in his mid 40s, was just a schoolboy when along with a friend he found the child's body in a plastic bag on April 4, 1973.
He told Dublin County Coroner's Court he could not go back to the spot at Lee's lane Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin, where the baby girl, known as Noleen, had been left. Cynthia Owen came forward over a decade ago claiming to be the mother of the child, telling gardai she saw the infant being stabbed to death.
The woman, who is now in her 40s, said the baby is one of two she gave birth to due to sexual abuse.
The inquest was reopened by Dublin County Coroner Dr Kieran Geraghty following representations by Ms Owen's solicitors. However, the hearing was told the majority of gardai involved in the case were now deceased.
"It was very distressing," Mr MacDubhghaill said of the grim discovery. "For years I never travelled through the lane.
For years I never discussed it with anybody. "It was in the aftermath of it my mother had to give me sleeping pills."
Mr MacDubhghaill recalled that when he gave evidence at the opening of the inquest in 1973 he was terrified he would be put in prison because he felt he had done something wrong.
At the first hearing State Pathologist Dr Maurice Hickey said the infant, who had been stabbed 40 times with a blunt implement in the head, neck and chest, died from haemorrhaging from blood vessels in the neck due to stab wounds.
The pathologist said the baby, who was around five and a half pounds in weight, had been less than 24 hours old when she was killed and had been dead for less then three days when found. Ms Owen, who claims gardai did not fully investigate the case, insists her own late mother should have been charged with murder.
In a statement written in 1973, Superintendent Jacob Lawlor - now deceased - said door-to-door enquiries were carried out in the area, with gardai also visiting maternity hospitals, hospitals, nursing homes, convents and other institutions as well as speaking to members of the clergy.
All new mothers in the locality were visited, as well as itinerant camps.
He said gardai also searched the plastic bag, which was used for rubbish and laundry, and found a Dublin company had distributed 25,000 of them.
"While public co-operation was forthcoming, no useful results accrued," he said. "To date the identification of the mother of the infant has not been established. Our inquiries are ongoing."
An application lodged this morning by a legal team representing members of Ms Owens family - including her father Peter Murphy Snr and sisters Esther Roberts, Margaret Stokes and Catherine Stevenson - to stop the inquest was rejected by the coroner.
Justice Minister Michael McDowell has previously refused a request to exhume the body of the baby girl from a communal Little Angels plot in Glasnevin Cemetery as she had been buried alongside hundreds of other babies.
PA