We will watch you ‘until you crack’, Lowry warned after Ryan disappeared – court

Mary Lowry received an anonymous text message accusing her of hiding something after her boyfriend Bobby Ryan went missing and saying that she would be watced until she cracked, the Central Criminal Court has heard.

Garda Tony O’Brien has been detailing to prosecution counsel David Humphries the call logs retrieved from phones linked to Mr Ryan and the man accused of his murder, Patrick Quirke.

Garda O’Brien also detailed phone records of Ms Lowry, the deceased’s son and daughter and the accused’s wife among others around the time of Mr Ryan’s disappearance in 2011 and the discovery of his body in 2013.

Speaking to defence counsel Edward Doocey BL, Garda O’Brien said that a text was retrieved from Ms Lowry’s phone in September 2011.

Written in text shorthand it said: “You think you are so cool out partying like Bobby never existed. We know you are hiding something and we are going to watch you until you crack.”

Garda O’Brien told Mr Doocey that gardaí investigated the source of the text but were unsuccessful.

Mr Quirke (50), of Breanshamore, Co Tipperary, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Mr Ryan, a part-time DJ known as ‘Mr Moonlight’. Mr Ryan went missing on June 3rd, 2011 after leaving his girlfriend Ms Lowry’s home at about 6.30am.

His body was found in an underground run-off tank on the farm owned by Ms Lowry and leased by the accused at Fawnagown in April 2013. The prosecution claims Mr Quirke murdered Mr Ryan so he could rekindle an affair with Ms Lowry (52).

CCTV footage

Mr Doocey also asked Garda O’Brien to bring the jury through CCTV footage taken from Ms Lowry’s home on the day Mr Ryan’s body was found. The footage showed Mr Quirke arriving shortly after midday in a truck followed about 40 minutes later by his wife Imelda.

Ms Lowry arrived a few minutes after that and the first Garda van arrived at 1.20pm following a phone call from Mrs Quirke to alert gardaí to the presence of the body in the tank.

Garda O’Brien also told Mr Humphries that records showed that on the day Mr Ryan’s body was recovered, Mr Quirke’s phone called his Mrs Quirke’s phone at 12.33pm, a call that lasted eight seconds. His phone then called a vet seconds later. Within a minute of that, the phone called voicemail and a minute later called Mr Quirke’s wife twice more. On the last occasion the call lasted for 36 seconds.

The last outgoing call made by Mr Ryan was at about 9pm on June 2nd to his son, Robert. The following day Robert sent a text to his dad at 9.44am asking if he was not working that day.

Radiologist Dr Anthony Ryan told Michael Bowman SC, prosecuting, that he carried out a CT scan of Mr Ryan’s body in May 2013. He discovered multiple fractures to the head, face and ribs and the femur bone in his leg.

He said the injuries were a result of at least four impacts and could have been caused by road traffic accident or blows with a blunt object. The injuries to the face were most likely from a direct frontal impact.

Hammer

He said that when he sees such injuries from a hammer he expects the face to be “depressed” but this injury was not like that, leading him to believe the injury was caused by an object larger than a hammer.

He added that Mr Ryan’s face could have hit a wall, the ground or a vehicle and that it was hit with “considerable force”.

The witness agreed with Lorcan Staines SC, defending, that the fracture to the femur, the strongest bone in the human body surrounded by tough muscle, would have required a “great degree of force”.

He said such fractures are usually caused by falls from a significant height or when a pedestrian is struck by a vehicle. The witness said he had seen hundreds of these type of injuries but had never seen them caused by anything other than a fall or a road traffic accident.

The trial continues.