No cause of death has been established following postmortems on the bodies of a man and woman discovered dead in a Co Limerick farmhouse. They are are believed to have died several weeks ago.
They have been named locally as Julia Holmes (63) and her partner Thomas Ruttle (56) though a Garda spokesman said the remains have not yet been officially identified.
Ms Holmes has been the subject of PSNI and FBI police investigations. The bodies were discovered in the upstairs bedroom of a house in an area known as Boolaglass, between Askeaton and Rathkeale.
The alarm was raised at 3am on Monday after their badly decomposed bodies were found in the renovated farmhouse.
It is understood the couple, who had been renovating the house, had not been seen in the area since the middle of March after Ms Holmes featured in a number of newspaper reports and television documentaries about alleged fraudulent activities.
Gardaí said they were investigating a number of lines of enquiry including that the deaths may have been the result of a murder suicide.
A spokesman for the Garda Press Office said “further tests need to be carried out” to find how both died.
Gardaí are trying to establish whether a firearm found in the house was connected to the deaths of the couple, who were found lying side by side.
According to investigating officers, Mr Ruttle (56), who worked as a mechanic, had a licence for a number of legally held firearms.
Born and reared in the farmhouse where the bodies were found, he came from a well-known and respected local family. He met Ms Holmes a number of years ago and she became joint owner of his property in 2012.
Convicted fraudster
Originally from Co Tyrone, she was a convicted fraudster who went by a number of aliases and had been on the run from the PSNI since 2011 when she fled Northern Ireland after being charged in relation to an £18,000 fraud.
She was deported from the US in 2006 after she was arrested in connection with a $500,000 property scam in Texas which involved seeking investments for non-existent Irish properties.
A company she set up, Irish Bee Sensations, was successful in recent times after it won various awards, including three at last year’s Blas na hÉireann Irish Food Awards.
It is understood she set herself up under the names Julia Ruttle and Croen Ruttle in Co Limerick in recent years.
She referred to Thomas Ruttle as her husband, but she never divorced her first husband in Northern Ireland.
Ms Holmes is understood to have owed local builders €75,000 following work carried out at the farmhouse property after claiming she was unable to pay due to illness.
‘Very convincing’
“She was very convincing and conned a lot of people out of money,” said one local man.
It is believed difficulties arose when the couple were trying to sell the house last Christmas and Ms Holmes was unable to produce a PPS number.
The house is located on the side of the R518.
It is believed the house was in complete darkness when gardaí arrived at the scene on Monday morning and detectives are trying to establish why there was no electricity at the property.
The traditional two-storey farmhouse was recently renovated and reroofed.
A 03-L-registered Peugeot van remained parked in the gravel-covered yard. The rear of the house was littered with pieces of scrap.
Net curtains were drawn across all the windows, while a yellow and black sign warning of 24-hour CCTV was visible in an upstairs window.
“This comes as a real shock in the community. It’s a very tranquil part of Askeaton with a large number of respectable families and farms in the area,” said local Independent councillor Emmet O’Brien.