A MURDER inquiry has been launched following the discovery of the body of a 60-year-old man at his home.
The remains of Denis Brennan were found at his apartment in the Bow Bridge complex, Kilmainham, Dublin, on Tuesday morning. He had failed to keep a social appointment with a friend on Sunday night and when he did not make contact on Monday his friend called to the apartment on Tuesday morning and raised the alarm.
Mr Brennan's remains were found in the living room area. There were no signs of a break-in at the apartment. The remains were taken to the Dublin city morgue where a postmortem was carried out by Deputy State Pathologist Dr Michael Curtis.
While there were no initial signs of trauma injury, the postmortem revealed bruising to his upper body which is believed to have been inflicted manually and resulted in his death. Gardaí are satisfied no weapon was used during the incident.
The dead man was a father of three and had been separated from his wife for almost 20 years. Gardaí are not following a definite line of inquiry as to the identity of his killer.
However, they believe it is possible Mr Brennan was killed by a person he let into his home. He was last seen alive at about noon on Saturday in the local authority complex where he lived.
A number of people have contacted gardaí and have confirmed that Mr Brennan was in touch with them over the weekend by telephone. However, there are no confirmed sightings of him after midday on Saturday.
Supt Thady Muldoon of Kevin Street Garda station said gardaí wanted to talk to anybody who may have been around the Bow Bridge complex or Old Kilmainham between midday on Saturday and about 11.30am on Tuesday.
"We're doing house-to-house inquiries at the moment and a technical examination of the scene is also under way. There were CCTV cameras around the scene so we will be examining those."
The apartment complex where Mr Brennan's remains were found was built in the last seven or eight years and is described as modern and with a good security system.
Garda sources said a large volume of CCTV footage is available from the area around the Bow Bridge complex.
They are hopeful the footage will enable them to identify Mr Brennan's killer.
The dead man was not known to gardaí and had lived for a number of years at the complex. Garda sources said tenants had been well vetted by Dublin City Council and that the area was regarded as quiet.
Anyone with information is asked to contact gardaí at Kilmainham on (01) 6669750 or the Garda confidential line on 1800 666111.