Crerar may have raped and murdered other women
JIM CUSACK and RITA O'REILLY
'I don't believe he did it once and then stopped,' says DNA expert detective
JOHN Crerar, the former army sergeant convicted after almost 23 years of the murder of Phyllis Murphy, may never be questioned about the unsolved murder of a young Kildare townswoman in 1972.
The Sunday Independent has learned that inquiries are continuing into the whereabouts of material evidence connected with the case but that gardai are doubtful that anything survives that could be used in DNA analysis. The absence of material evidence means that suspicions about the possible involvement of John Crerar in the murder can never be put to the test.
But advancing DNA science may yet solve two of the State's most high-profile unsolved murder cases, those of Sophie Toscan du Plantier in 1996 and the murder of two middle-aged women at the Grangegorman Psychiatric Hospital in 1997.
Advanced DNA profiling known as "Low Cell Number" (LCN) DNA technology is being used to see if matches can be found to link suspects to both murders. Gardai are also awaiting results on another woman's murder in Dublin in the past decade.
The Kildare case is that of cinema receptionist Kathleen Farrell who was abducted as she cycled home to Blackmiller Hill in March 1972. She had been manually strangled and her body was dumped in the Curragh.
A short time afterwards, an ex-soldier, who was staying without authority in the Curragh camp at the time of his arrest, was charged with the murder. But the suspect, a native of Mullingar, was never returned for trial. A district judge found there was insufficient evidence against him and discharged him from court. Some months after he was freed, he took his own life.
The retired head of the Murder Squad, Det Supt John Courtney, told the Sunday Independent that the man was charged on the basis of admissions made in custody. The man was also able to give details about the victim that could only have been given by someone who saw the body where it was found, he said.
At the time of Kathleen Farrell's death, John Crerar was a 24-year-old soldier stationed at McGee Barracks in Kildare. He had joined the army in June 1966, doing his initial training in the Curragh. He married in 1971.
The ballistics officer whose research into DNA led to the breakthrough in the Phyllis Murphy case, Det Insp Brendan McArdle, confirmed that he has looked for further information on the Farrell case. McArdle told the Sunday Independent that he believes that the abduction and rape of Phyllis Murphy by John Crerar was not a once-off crime.
"I don't believe that he did it once and then stopped," he said.
He also confirmed that gardai are currently reviewing two other "cold" cases, believed to be unconnected to John Crerar. Neither of the two go back as far as 1979/80, but one is described as "well-known". It is understood that a partial DNA profile has turned up in one of the cases and that samples recently received in Phoenix Park could lead to a breakthrough in the other.
Following Crerar's conviction, the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, agreed that it was time for the Garda to follow other police forces around the world and establish a DNA database. It has been learned that in the case of the Grangegorman murders, in which Sylvia Shields and Mary Callinan were stabbed and mutilated, the gardai have recently submitted new samples to a UK-based laboratory for analysis. If LCN DNA works on the latest sample from the Grangegorman murders, it could provide a conclusion for one of the most controversial murder cases in Garda history.
The Grangegorman case has been a source of continuing embarrassment for the gardai as they originally arrested and charged an innocent man, Dean Lyons, before Mark Nash committed another two horrific murders and then admitted to the Grangegorman killings.
A solution to the case of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, the 38-year-old Parisian who was beaten to death at her holiday home in Schull, Co Cork, in December 1996, has continued to elude gardai. Sources close to the two cases say there is an outside chance of a breakthrough in the Du Plantier investigation and slightly more hope in the Grangegorman case.
Gardai are also hopeful that a third case under reinvestigation involving the murder of a woman almost 10 years ago will be successfully solved. Details are being withheld while the investigation is under way.
