VINCENT Connell is a man of contradictions and conflicts, and many who have met him will hazard an assessment of his character. But their views will be as irreconcilable as they are definitive. For Vincent Connell evokes passion, for good or for bad.

Connell's odyssey through the justice system ended, subject to further appeal, two days ago when he walked from the Central Criminal Court, the last of the charges against him resulting in a 12 year suspended sentence.

But the conclusion of the legal process settled little. And with so many questions unanswered, few could be happy with the outcome.

Not Vincent Connell, who was in prison for five years - for a murder he always claimed he did not commit - before his conviction was quashed by the Court of Criminal Appeal a year ago.

Not the family of Patricia Furlong, whose young life was extinguished in a moment of brutality 14 years ago. They must long for the day her killer is found and brought to justice.

Not the four women seriously assaulted by Connell and, according to court testimony, still haunted by fear of him.

Not the veteran Garda officers with determinedly pursued the Furlong murder inquiry over several years. Connell was cleared of the offence by the Appeal Court which ruled that he had been deprived of his rights while in custody.

AND not the wider community, left to wonder at how it all happened and to reflect on the truism that justice delayed is justice denied.

But how did a murder, committed on a summer night in 1982, give rise to such a tangled web?

Patricia Furlong from Dundrum, Dublin was 20 years old when her body was found on July 24th, 1982, near Johnny Fox's pub, in Glencullen, where she had attended the Fraughan Festival. She had been strangled with her blouse. Hundreds of people were at the event, and in the days that followed about 1,500 statements were made to the Garda investigation team.

Among those to do so was Vincent Connell, who had been at the festival with his then fiancee, Mary Creedon, who provided him with an alibi. There were angry exchanges when gardai visited him and requested him to make a second statement after the first had been lost. But that was the end of Connell's involvement in the case for some time.

He had worked for Sunshine and Big D radio stations in Dublin and in August 1982 he moved to Liverpool with Ms Creedon, where he joined Radio City as a presenter. He was subsequently involved in an unfair dismissal case involving the station in 1983.

Ms Creedon had returned to Dublin, and inquiries made by the radio station with her in preparation for that case resulted in her making a new statement to gardai in 1984. She alleged that she had been separated from Connell for 45 minutes on the night of the murder. By this time Connell had moved to South Africa.

He made a further statement to gardai in Dublin in 1987 during a visit home. He returned permanently from South Africa in 1989 and was interviewed again. Connell always vehemently denied any involvement in the killing, and matters rested there. He joined Capital Radio in Dublin.

But in November 1991 negotiations were made about Connell by his then girlfriend, Barbara Rooney. As outlined in the Central Criminal Court this week, Connell threatened to strike Ms Rooney when they returned from a pub to the flat they shared in Fairview. When she said she would scream, he took a sharp knife from a kitchen drawer and threatened to stick it in her. He put his hands around her neck and she passed out.

She reported the incident to gardai and, as a result, the name Vincent Connell began to circulate in Garda circles again. Further inquiries followed. Other complaints of violence were made by former girlfriends.

Connell arranged to meet detectives in the Fleet Bar in central Dublin on May 20th, 1990. He was arrested in connection with an alleged arson attack, on the home of another girlfriend, Gillian Kane, on May 15th, 1982, and taken to Tallaght Garda station.

Within 48 hours, he was charged with the murder of Patricia Furlong after signing a written confession, the sole evidence against him. When his trial opened on October 21st, 1991, he denied the charge. He claimed the confession had been made under duress, that he had been beaten and screamed at and his face had been plunged into a sink of water. The allegations were strenuously denied by a series of Garda witnesses.

BY the time the trial ended 42 days later - with a unanimous guilty verdict - it held the record (since surpassed), of being the longest murder trial in the history of the State.

Escorted out of the Four Courts after the late night verdict, Connell again protested, his innocence. "I didn't kill this woman. Please believe me, I didn't kill her. I swear to God. I never met her in my life," he roared.

Yet, while another prisoner might have bowed under the weight of a life sentence, Connell threw himself into preparations for his appeal, compiling detailed files enlisting the services of experts in fields such as ligature strangulation and bombarding journalists with information about his case.

Significantly, he pointed to transcripts of evidence which suggested that he had left the Fraughan Festival at least an hour before Patricia Furlong was last seen alive.

In the event, the Court of Criminal Appeal quashed the conviction on April 3rd last year after ruling that his inculpatory statement should not have been admitted at his trial. Mr Justice Egan said, that Connell might have avoided making the statement had he received advice from his solicitor. The judge also referred to "false information"

that Connell had seen his solicitor.

The court also heard that Garda custody regulations had been breached because Connell was interrogated in the Garda station beyond the authorised four hour period.

But during his period in prison, to charges relating to Connell's treatment of his former girlfriends remained live, a safety net for the State. They included three of attempted murder, involving Mary Creedon, Agnes Long and Barbara Rooney. With these proceedings pending, Connell was granted bail on condition that he stay in a Franciscan monastery in Co Donegal.

Back in the Central Criminal Court this week, Connell pleaded guilty to assaulting four of his former girlfriends, causing them actual bodily harm. Two of the attempted murder charges had been dropped last May and on Wednesday a nolle prosequi was entered in respect of the four outstanding counts: the attempted murder of Ms Rooney, two counts of arson and one of common assault.

Connell received a 12 year suspended sentence. But the magnetic character of the former disc jockey who fostered relationships with numerous women and ultimately found a South African wife who separated from him amid allegations of violence was called into question again.

In court to raise those questions was Det Sgt Gerry O'Carroll, one of the gardai who was at the forefront of the case against Connell. A former member of the now defunct Garda Murder Squad, O'Carroll played an important role in the arrest and successful conviction of this State's first real serial killers, Geoffrey Evans and John Shaw, in 1976. He also featured in the controversial case of the Kerry Babies.

He told the court that Mary Creedon was "severely traumatised" by Connell. "In all my years as a garda I never met a person with such a residual, an almost primeval, fear of another human being. It is an almost supernatural fear of him. She believes he is the embodiment of evil".

Barbara Rooney did not feel safe from him anywhere; Gillian Kane's fear was "remorseless, never ending, traumatic. It is a fear that never leaves her... like a bogeyman." In a strange Svengali way, Connell could reach out from the past and take control, of Agnes Long's present life, he said. It's a fear I share, for their safety," Carroll added.

Connell, in turn, left the court claiming that he had pleaded guilty to the assault charges only to avoid, another lengthy trial.

Conflict and contradictions to the last. The wheels of justice had turned, but to the satisfaction of nobody.