Locals wake up in a murder scene

A QUIET neighbourhood became a murder scene yesterday morning.

By 8 a.m. gardai had sealed off the last house on Orchard View in north Dublin, a row of five terraced homes owned by St Brendan's Hospital across the road.

Stunned nursing staff stood outside, some in tears, as they told investigating officers what they knew of the two women residents stabbed to death in their own rooms the previous night.

Four doors from the house, the other female occupant, who discovered the partially clothed and bloodied bodies less than two hours earlier, was being comforted by hospital workers.

Chief Supt Dick Kelly, of Fitzgibbon Street station, the leading investigating officer, described the attack as particularly gruesome. As the media arrived, he confirmed that there were no signs of robbery, although the downstairs kitchen window at the back of the house had been broken.

The house backs on to a Dublin Corporation services garage where workers were arriving for the morning shift. They pointed to an eight-foot wall at one end of the yard which an intruder to the house would have had to scale.

A further eight feet of protective wire and Perspex sheeting had been attached to the wall, said a garage supervisor, but had blown down during a recent storm.

Gardai inspected the garage area and looked with particular interest at a wooden plank which, leaning against a side wall, could have helped an intruder over.

Back on the main road, forensic experts searched bushes and shrubs for a murder weapon. Another group of gardai formed a line and combed the hospital grounds.

At 10 a.m. the crime scene tape was lowered for the arrival of the State Pathologist, Dr John Harbison. Surrounded by detectives, he put on his grimly familiar: white protective overalls before entering the house.

At the main entrance to St Brendan's, a group of hospital workers stood and stared in disbelief. One man who worked in the,five-house complex described the two murdered women as gentle and "very affectionate". They were just like normal old women that you'd see walking around the place. They were no different really," he said.

Another member of the hospital staff questioned the wisdom of the women living in sheltered accommodation. "No one gives a damn about psychiatric patients ... It's not right. They're too old. They're not able to defend themselves," she said.

Neighbours said the women "kept to themselves" and tended to mix only with the other patients' and nursing staff. "We wouldn't have any dealings with them at all," said one local woman.

By the time Dr Harbison left the scene, at about 12.40 p.m., the news had spread further afield. Workers from a nearby bakery gathered outside the house and remembered one of the murdered women who "would stand by the wall and say hello as you passed, on your way to work".

Despite Dr Harbison's examination, the full extent of the injuries had yet to established yesterday evening. That could not happen until the bodies were removed to, the City Morgue for a post-mortem. And only then could the local community, numbed by the savage double murder, begin to return to normal.