The last letters of Ann Lovett and her sister Trisha

I am sitting in Belinda Lee’s kitchen, the door open to the early summer sunshine, her dog Ruby stretched out asleep in the yard. On a nearby shelf is a photograph of Ann Lovett and another of her sister Patricia Lovett – known as Trisha – and Belinda, their arms around each other. On the countertop between us are scattered piles of colourful cards, notes and letters, the paper now limp with age. Some of these notes, cards and letters are dated.

This is the carefully preserved correspondence from sisters Ann and Trisha to Belinda and her sister, Caroline Lee, known as Carrie. For almost 40 years the Lee sisters have treasured these pieces of paper, the letters written on foolscap pages torn from school notebooks; the notelets illustrated with animal characters; the Christmas and birthday cards; the drawings and notes and names of 1980s bands written on scraps of paper; the pages taken from school homework diaries when no other paper was available; the envelopes with “Friends Forever” and “everybody needs a friend” written in blue biro on their flaps.

They are piercingly poignant remnants of long-ago friendships with two sisters who both died in the most tragic of circumstances within three months of each other in 1984.

Ann and Trisha Lovett were close friends of Belinda and Carrie. In the early 1980s, the Lees and the Lovetts lived a few minutes away from each other in Granard, Co Longford. The Lees lived on Tromra Road, and the Lovetts lived over the family pub, the Copper Pot, on Main Street.

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On the afternoon of January 31st, 1984, Ann Lovett gave birth to a stillborn son, Patrick, at the Marian grotto beside St Mary’s Catholic church in Granard. She died later that evening in Mullingar Hospital. She was 15. The identity of the baby’s father has never been known.

Ann Lovett’s death was not only a personal tragedy for her family but also an infamous public scandal in 1980s Ireland, a scandal that continues to resound to this day.

In the early hours of Easter Sunday, April 22nd, 1984, Patricia Lovett died at her home on Main Street after taking an overdose of her father’s prescription pills. She was 14.

This is not the first time Belinda Lee has spoken to The Irish Times about events in Granard in 1984. In 2018, when this reporter interviewed Richard “Ricky” McDonnell, Ann Lovett’s former boyfriend, both Lee sisters also contributed to the article. Ricky McDonnell is a cousin of the Lees.

However, Belinda and Carrie Lee chose then to be anonymous sources, and their quotes in that story were attributed to “Fiona” and “Róisín” respectively. The Irish Times is publishing a more complete version of their story close to 40 years after the events, because Belinda wants to put her account on the record and because the sisters have for the first time shared the documents containing Ann and Trisha’s own words. They also shared the first photographs of Trisha to be published.

Why did Belinda and Carrie not want their names in the public domain in the past?

“My mam had just passed away, and when Ricky’s story was going to be coming out, Mam was actually in her coffin. We were preparing for her funeral and it was a very, very difficult time for everything,” Belinda explains now. “We just hoped that Ricky would understand that we couldn’t do much at that time, because we had to focus on Dad and the family and getting through losing our mam.”

Why does she now want to tell her story of being a close teenage friend of the Lovett sisters, and of what she observed of their lives in Granard during their years-long friendship?

“I’m ready,” Belinda says. “We were told all my teenage years not to discuss it. And this is my time to discuss it all and get it out there.” Then she says: “I don’t know why people in Granard never wanted to talk about it over the years. I know it hurt the town at the time. But for the youngsters that were left after such a horrific thing to happen, it was like we were just left to get on with it.”

Carrie Lee preferred not to be interviewed, but wishes to support her sister by going public with her own name in relation to her part in this story.

The Ramblers Rest

Trisha Lovett was 12 years old when her family moved from Co Cavan to Granard in 1981. Belinda Lee met her for the first time when Trisha walked into the Ramblers Rest, a takeaway on Main Street, owned by her uncle, Connie Lee. The Lee sisters worked there on Saturdays for pocket money. Belinda was sitting at the counter, doing her homework.

“She came in looking around; ordered a bag of chips. I said if you want chips, you’ll have to go and get them yourself. I was just joking, because I was doing my homework.

“I think I might have said to her, ‘Are you new? Where do you live?’ And she said, ‘I’m living here now. We came from Cavan; we just moved here. My name is Trisha.’ And then she started drawing all over my homework.

“She sat and pulled up a tall stool and sat at the opposite side of the counter and we were just chatting in general. She got the pen and started doodling and writing on the back of my copy and I knew from then on we were going to be friends. I knew. Something clicked. You know when you meet somebody for the first time and you just know you are going to get along with that person.”

Trisha Lovett had dark brown hair, a snub nose and a big smile. “She was so bubbly. Great fun. She could be very deep sometimes. Sometimes she would just sit and stare into space and you’d have to like click your fingers to bring her back.”

The Lovett sisters attended the Cnoc Mhuire Convent of Mercy, and the Lees attended Ardscoil Phádraig, the town’s tech. How did they keep up their friendship when they spent their days in schools at opposite ends of Granard?

“Writing letters to each other when we had a free class,” Belinda says. “And we’d write to each other at night and tell each other about our day and what happened, or if someone got on our nerves.”

“We’d always meet after school at the Poolroom, and we’d pass the letters and the notes to each other. And you’d be delighted when you’d get one.” They saved the notes to read later, when they were home in bed.

The Poolroom was a gathering point for young people of the town. It had a pool table, a jukebox, a Space Invaders machine, and a Pac-Man game. It was next door to Phil Smith’s pub, also a popular meeting place. “It was 10p a song on the jukebox. I liked punk music. Toyah. Siouxsie and the Banshees’ Dear Prudence. Trisha liked The Police.”

The girls had nicknames for each other, borrowed from their favourite bands of the time. Belinda’s was from the drummer of the band Kajagoogoo, Jez Strode. “Trisha used always call me Jez, because I liked him. She liked to be called Sid after Sid Vicious.”

By then, the Lee sisters had also befriended Ann. At that time, Trisha was 12, Belinda and Ann both 13, and Carrie was 15.

“So we all started hanging around together. We used to do each other’s hair and swap clothes and talk. Always talking. They were happy times. We had finally found two people we really connected with and we knew we were going to be lifelong friends.

“Back at that time, the crimped [hair] look was all in. We didn’t own a crimper, so we’d tie each other’s hair in tiny, tiny little plaits. We’d spend all day doing plaits. You’d put about 200 plaits in, and you’d sleep on them, and then when you took them out the next day, your hair was all crimped. We would nearly always do that at my house.”

Both sets of sisters shared a bedroom in their respective homes. “We’d go into their house and we’d make tea. And they had a tape recorder, and back then we used to listen to Radio Luxembourg. They used to do the Top 100 every Sunday night, so we’d be taping songs from that; songs we liked. We’d go to their room then and we’d sit or lie on the bed. It was a small enough room, with two single beds.”

[ Ann Lovett: Death of a ‘strong, kick-ass girl’ ]

The room had a wooden partition wall, on Ann’s side, which was unpainted. Ann had covered this bare wood with pictures in charcoal she’d drawn directly on to its surface. One the other side of the partition wall was the Lovetts’ parents’ bedroom.

Ann was the third youngest of the family and Trisha the second youngest. Their parents were Diarmuid and Patricia. At that time, three of the Lovett sons were still living at home; the other three and their eldest daughter had already left home.

Belinda and Carrie Lee were two of six children, and the only girls. Their parents were Pat and Mary. They saw Ann and Trisha “all the time”.

“They were always down in our house. In later times I did see Trisha more, because Ann started having a relationship with Ricky.”

Several months before Ann died – Belinda thinks it may have been as long as a year, but definitely several months – Ann and Trisha stopped talking. It was Ann who initiated the silence between the sisters, Belinda says.

“First I thought it was a sister thing; that they had words, but that they would get on with it and get over it and it would be grand,” says Belinda. They did not get over it. “It was just very difficult because we didn’t know why. We asked why they weren’t speaking but we never got a reason.”

Looking back, does Belinda now think that the sisters stopped talking about the time Ann discovered she was pregnant?

“I don’t know. I couldn’t surmise. Neither of them disclosed to us why they had fallen out.”

One evening in mid-December 1983, Belinda ran into Ann on the street outside Phil Smith’s pub. Belinda did not know it, but Ann was then 7½ months pregnant.

“I noticed that Ann was lame in walking. I kind of laughed and said ‘Did you fall?’

“So she brought me into the ladies’ toilet in Phil Smith’s and sat up on the sink. She said: ‘I have to show you something.’ She was wearing yellow baggy trousers and she rolled up the legs of them. And the back of her legs were destroyed with marks.”

From what Belinda could see, Ann’s calves were covered densely with sore-looking red welts.

“I was shocked when I saw them, because I knew then she didn’t fall, and I asked her what had happened to her. She told me her father had done it with a lead pipe. I was just horrified. My father was a good man and he had never raised his hand to any of us kids, and I couldn’t understand how a father could do that to a young girl.

“When I asked her why, she said: ‘He’s a thick bastard and I hate him.’

“I asked her did she tell her mam; did her mam know? She said there was no point.”

“She asked me not to say anything.”

Asked why she did not tell anyone, Belinda said: “At the time, Ann and Trisha were not speaking and I felt I would be betraying Ann’s confidence if I said anything to Trisha. Ann had confided in me. It was only after both girls were dead that I confided this information [about the marks on Ann’s legs] to anyone else.” After the death of both girls, Belinda confided in her sister, Carrie, and her mother, Mary.

This was not the first time Diarmuid Lovett is alleged to have physically assaulted his second-youngest daughter. Another of her peers has described to this reporter a similar incident, which resulted in visible marks on Ann.

That Christmas of 1983, the girls exchanged cards. Trisha’s card to Belinda carried these words: “To Jez. Here’s to another year of playing space invaders, dieing [sic] for a fag, rowing, getting thick and making up. Roll on ‘84. Lots’a luv, Sid.”

Sometime that December, Ann wrote a note to Belinda. “I hope you do well in the Xmas exams and we’ll prove to everyone that we can do it…We’ll go to the Fountain [the Fountain Blue, a nightclub in Longford town] at Christmas and enjoy ourselves. Roll on ‘84. And we’ll enjoy it anyway – that’s for sure. Lots a luv, Ann.”

Both Ann and Trisha would be dead not four months into 1984.

‘I never noticed a thing’

On Saturday January 28th, 1984, three days before Ann died, she came to the Lee home in Tromra Road so Belinda could plait her hair. Belinda still had no idea her friend was pregnant, now nine months.

“I never noticed a thing. She wore baggy clothes, baggy cardigans. And I never noticed.”

This was the last time Belinda saw Ann alive.

On Tuesday, January 31st, sometime around 5.15pm, Trisha Lovett arrived at Belinda’s house in a state of high distress.

“I opened the door to her and she said, ‘Will you get Carrie, I have something to tell ye, but I don’t want your mother to hear.’ We brought her up to our bedroom.”

At this point, the Lee sisters knew nothing of the events that had unfolded that afternoon at the grotto, or that Ann was now en route to Mullingar Hospital in an ambulance, her stillborn son beside her. They could scarcely comprehend what they were now being told about their friend.

“Trisha said, ‘Ann has had a baby in the grotto,’ and I remember saying to her, well how did that happen, and is she okay? What do you mean, a baby?’

“She was very upset, she was crying. She said that the ambulance had come, they had moved Ann from the grotto down to where they were living. They had Ann lying on one of the seats and the baby on the other and they were waiting for the ambulance to come. She said she got into the ambulance and held her hand, and she told her it was her, and she loved her so much.

“She [Trisha] asked me, ‘Do you think she knew it was me? Did she know I was there holding her hand?’ And I said, ‘Of course.’ And she said, ‘But we weren’t speaking, we hadn’t spoken for a year.’

“That’s when she told me Ann had been up during the night crying and crawling round the floor in pain. She was in her bedroom, on the floor, crawling around on her hands and knees. She was groaning and groaning. That’s what woke Trisha. Trisha asked her, ‘What’s wrong, are you okay?’ and Ann said, ‘I’m fine, go back to sleep.’ So we knew then that Ann must have been in labour that night.

“The three of us came down to the kitchen. I said to Mam, ‘Trisha has something to tell you.’ My mam was very approachable about stuff, when it came to my friends. My mam absolutely adored the two girls. She treated them like they were her own daughters.

“So we all sat around the table and Trisha told her what was after happening. And Mam hugged her, and said, ‘Everything will be alright. You’re not to worry. Ann will be okay, and when she’s home, that baby is going to be loved, and we’ll all support Ann. We’ll all be there for her, and for you, and everything will be okay’, and we all hugged it out in our kitchen.”

The Lee sisters walked Trisha back up towards her home, along Main Street. Before they reached the Copper Pot, they saw a crowd of people around the steps of Maguire’s shop, on the main street. These people had heard the news that Ann Lovett was dead. In the ensuing melee, when Trisha was spotted, she was surrounded by people and taken up to the Maguire kitchen, where someone – Belinda is not sure who – told her that her sister and the baby were dead.

Belinda recalls that evening as a blur of shock and disbelief.

“She was 15. To die in those circumstances, having a baby alone. It was a winter’s evening, and the rain and the wind was unbelievable. And I knew then that things were never, ever going to be the same again. Everything changed that day for me, Carrie, for Ricky in particular and for an awful lot of people in that town. Everything changed.”

Ann Lovett’s final note

Ann had written one final note to Belinda. It was dated Monday, the day before she died, and found in her schoolbag that she had brought to the grotto. Some days after the funeral, Ann’s mother gave the note to Belinda. She told her it had been wet, and she had dried it out.

This final note is on a piece of paper torn from a lined A5 notebook, written in Ann’s distinctive looping writing, with tiny, consistent, circles over the i’s. It’s dated “¼ past 3, Monday”. The note begins: “Hi Belinda, I’ve just dodged PE, and I’m sitting in the library on top of the heater – roasting myself – I was f**ken frozen. Anyway, what’s the crack like at your end. I’m pretty pissed off here. Just one more class to go – Home Economics, then freedom.

“This is my third free class this evening. Is it any wonder I’m bored.”

She went on to discuss plans for the following Saturday night: “Well at least I’ve got me night out set for Saturday night – but knowing me I probably won’t go.”

Belinda says: “The skipping PE was a regular thing for months. She was dodging PE. It was on purpose, when you look back now.

“I absolutely believe that some nuns in the convent and some of the teachers knew Ann was pregnant. How did she keep skipping PE all the time? Every week missing PE? Wouldn’t there be questions asked?” A statement from the school at the time said no one on the staff knew.

In the 1980s there was none of the support and counselling available to schoolchildren who have experienced trauma, or suddenly deceased schoolfriends, that exists today. When they returned to school, “Nobody mentioned it,” Belinda says. “There was no help available.”

Recently, Belinda met one of the three then boys who had found Ann at the grotto after she had given birth.

“He told me he held her, told her who he was. He held her hand. I guess she was in and out of consciousness. Her last words to him were: ‘Tell the girls I’m sorry.’”

Trisha was very depressed. She was crying all the time, constantly talking about Ann

—  Belinda Lee

The Lee sisters could see Trisha was struggling after her sister’s death.

“Trisha was very depressed. She was crying all the time, constantly talking about Ann,” says Belinda. “We went for long walks. We used to leave the Poolroom some evenings and we’d go up to the motte [a mound which is the remains of a motte-and-bailey castle] and the two of us would sit up there looking out over the town and she said to me one evening: ‘I curse this town and everyone in it.’”

Trisha Lovett missed her sister terribly, and grieved deeply for her. The Lee sisters regularly walked with her after school to visit Ann’s grave at Granardkille Cemetery, a mile or so out of town.

“She used to lie down on the grave beside her. Crying. Angry with herself. Always asking the same questions: ‘Do you think she knew it was me in the ambulance? Do you think she knew it was me holding her hand?’ It was very hard to watch.

“She could not deal with the fact that Ann and her hadn’t spoken for a year. And that Ann had died in those circumstances and Trisha felt so alone. Hating herself for not getting out of the bed that night, when Ann was on the floor. For not doing something; trying to help.

“This went on for months with Trisha. The crying. But we did think she was getting support at home and being spoken to and helped. The girls loved their brothers, and I know they would have helped Trisha. I am sure they were looking out for her in their own way.”

Extracts from Trisha’s four-page letter

In a four-page foolscap letter to Carrie during this time, Trisha Lovett wrote: “Your lucky [sic] you don’t have to go to bed in an empty room with a wall full of fantastic drawings beside you…You know most of the time I cry for Ann and I cry for myself ‘cause I miss her so much but she’s happy now and I’m not, and nor are a lot of people over her.

“I’m crying because she didn’t give me a chance to love her before she died I tryed [sic] I really did you know that and I didn’t try because I knew she was going to die but ‘cause I needed her I need her now. I used to lie in bed when she was alive and I used to cry because I needed her I used to say to myself I’m going to talk to her tomorrow...

“Now I lie in bed knowing I need her and knowing I can’t talk to her Oh, I can talk to her, but I can’t see her or it’s hard to explain. But when I cry in bed now, nothing, nothing is there but an `empty bed’ and Snoopy clutched in my arms.”

In a notelet Trisha sent to Belinda during those weeks, she wrote: “It’s 12.55am. I’m sitting in bed eating an apple ... I wish you were there. I’d love a good chat with ya ... That’s one thing I’m looking forward to when I go back to school, stopping in the Poolroom at 4.30 and passing letters. But maybe things won’t be the same when we go back...”

She signed off several times.

“It’s nice to know there’s someone listening especially when it’s YOU. THANKS.”

“Friends for always.”

“Luv ya cause you’re the best.”

“Thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks for being my friend.”

“Friends forever.”

“Luv always, Sid.”

On what would have been Ann Lovett’s 16th birthday, April 6th, 1984, Trisha, Belinda, Carrie and other friends from the Poolroom gathered at her grave after school and stayed there until it got dark.

“We brought her flowers. We had our sneaky cigarettes that we weren’t supposed to be smoking at the time. I think we might have had a radio, or a cassette tape that day. We played all Ann’s favourite songs.”

The next day, a Saturday, they returned again and spent the entire day there.

Easter 1984

That year, Easter Sunday fell on April 22nd. Pat Lee, Belinda and Carrie’s father, played lead guitar in his spare time in a showband called The Hot Rods. The manager was Pat Lee’s brother, Connie Lee, who owned the takeaway where Belinda and Trisha had first met. He also managed a recently opened disco in Edgeworthstown, Co Longford, called the Mickey Mouse Club.

“I don’t know where they got the name from, but it was for over 18s,” she says. The Hot Rods were due to play there on Easter Saturday night; one of their regular gigs. Mary Lee also usually went to support the band and help with packing the gear, so the sisters took it in turns to go along: one had to stay behind to mind their two little brothers.

“We’d be so proud; hearing our own dad playing the guitar,” she says. “While my dad and the boys were getting ready to go on stage, myself or Carrie would spin a few records before they’d come on. We loved it. We thought we were great. Our uncle would have all the latest records for us to play.”

The night usually started with one of the girls doing DJ for about an hour from 9pm. The band came on about 10pm, and they played until midnight. There was background recorded music from that point, and a late bar. By the time the gear was packed and loaded in the van, it was usually about 3am or 3.30am.

That Saturday, it was Carrie’s turn to go. Trisha was due to come with them, having been given special permission from her parents. Trisha came to Tromra Road, all excited about her night out.

“She was in good form that night. Dad had said to Mam that because they’d be late getting home because of packing up the gear, and they might have a drink afterwards, that Trisha should probably arrange a lift home for earlier, so not to have to wait around for them till maybe three or four in the morning.”

Everyone travelling to Edgeworthstown got into the van, and Belinda went out to wave them off. Trisha told Belinda she wished she was coming with them.

“I said: ‘Ah sure you know I can’t go; I have to mind the boys.’ I said: ‘You’ll be okay and you’ll have a good night, and come down tomorrow and we’ll eat loads of Easter eggs and you can tell me about all your night, and she looked at me and she said, ‘Deffo. Deffo. I love ya’, and we hugged and that was it. She was gone.”

Over the course of that evening at the Mickey Mouse Club, both Carrie and Mary Lee discovered Trisha crying in the women’s toilet, at different times. Carrie found her crying behind the door. “She said: ‘Are you crying because of Ann?’ And she said: ‘Yeah’. My mam found her crying as well.”

When at the disco, Mary Lee arranged a lift home to Granard for Trisha with Fr John Quinn, the local Catholic curate. Fr Quinn was also giving a lift to Ricky McDonnell, who was staying with him at the time. Trisha was dropped off first.

She was my best friend, and I have her one minute and then a few hours later she’s gone

—  Belinda Lee

Back at Tromra Road, Belinda went to bed. Later that night, at some point after 4.30am, the Lees returned home. Carrie woke her sister up in a state of panic.

“She said: ‘Trisha is sick.’ And I said: ‘What’s wrong with her?’ She said: ‘We don’t know. We were driving down through Granard and her brother came out and stopped the van. He was looking for change for the phone to ring the doctor. He said Trisha was in the house and she was vomiting.”

The sisters, confused, stayed in their room for some time talking. At some point in the next 45 minutes or hour, a knock came to the front door. Belinda went out on to the landing to look down and see who was calling at such an hour.

“My mam opened the door, because they were still up, and Fr Quinn was standing there. I could hear my mam saying: ‘Don’t tell me the girl is dead.’”

Hysteria ensued at his answer. Belinda and Carrie were stupefied by the second loss of a close friend from the same family within three months. They could not process the news. “I was crying and screaming: ‘You’re all liars, you’re lying!’,” Belinda recalls. “‘She’s not dead! How can she be dead? She promised she’d be down to me tomorrow.’

“She was my best friend, and I have her one minute and then a few hours later she’s gone.”

Inquest

It was later stated during the inquest into Trisha Lovett’s death, which took place on July 16th, 1984, that Fr Quinn had dropped her home to the Copper Pot at 2.40am.

The inquest took 12 minutes and was conducted by a seven-person all-male jury. Patricia Lovett, the girls’ mother, was the only member of the family to give evidence: Diarmuid Lovett was in hospital, recovering from a heart attack.

Patricia Lovett’s statement was read by Inspector Tony Hynes.

“I went to bed around 12 midnight and my husband came to bed around 3am. Shortly after that, my husband woke me and said someone was running a tap in the kitchen. I dozed off asleep and was awakened later by my husband, who told me Patricia [Trisha] was crying.

“I went into her bedroom and found Patricia [Trisha] on the floor. She had vomited and was retching. I called my husband and we put her back into bed. She looked desperate and absolutely sick.”

Patricia Lovett dispatched one of her sons to call for a doctor, and went herself to the Garda station on the same mission, the inquest heard. By the time Dr Tom Donoghue arrived at the house, at 5.10am, Trisha had already died in her bedroom. He estimated she had been dead for some minutes. The ambulance arrived at 5.20am.

Pathologist Dr Kevin Cunnane had subsequently conducted the postmortem. At the inquest, he gave cause of death as an overdose of the tablets that had been prescribed for her father. He said death would have occurred within a hour of ingesting the tablets. He also stated that there was a bruise on the left side of her chin and an abrasion on her left cheek.

Mary Lee, Belinda and Carrie’s mother, also gave evidence at the inquest. When it had concluded, she went over to Patricia Lovett and gave her a hug.

“She told us Mrs Lovett put her hands up, and said: ‘Thank God the girls are gone from this cruel world’,” Belinda says now.

The deaths of the Lovett sisters has haunted the Lee sisters their whole life since. Belinda left Granard aged 16, after her Leaving Cert.

“Carrie had gone to college in Galway, Ricky was in the Army and I just didn’t want to be in Granard without them. Three years later I had to go home and tell my mam and dad I was pregnant. My child was born two months off my 19th birthday and I cried all the way through labour because all I could think of was Ann. I was convinced I was going to die, like Ann did, even though I had a team of nurses around me. I was terrified.”

At the time of Ann Lovett’s death, Nuala Fennell, then a minister of State with responsibilities for women’s affairs and family law, called for a public inquiry into the circumstances of her death, “regardless of whose sensibilities were hurt”.

The inquiry she called for never happened.

“I can’t understand why there wasn’t an inquiry,” Belinda says. “There are still so many questions to be asked and answered. This should never have happened. I will never stop looking for answers.

“For anyone reading this story, I would like them to take away one thing: to remember Trisha, Ann’s 14-year-old sister. When people remember Ann now, I hope they will remember Trisha too, because she has been the forgotten sister in all of this. But she will never be forgotten to us.”

Members of the Lovett family did not respond to invitations to comment.

• Rosita Boland can be contacted at rosita.boland@irishtimes.com