Dean Lyons, the heroin addict gardai accused wrongly of murdering two women stabbed to death in Grangegorman psychiatric hospital in 1997, has died aged 27. Mr Lyons's family were informed of his death yesterday evening at their home in Tallaght, Co Dublin.
Mr Lyons moved to England last year after completing a treatment course for his heroin addiction imposed as part of a sentence for a syringe robbery in Dublin in 1997.
He had been living until recently in a residential care unit in Rochdale. However, it is understood he had started using heroin again this year and was arrested for a shop-lifting offence in Manchester. He was in prison when he died yesterday. The cause of death was not known.
Mr Lyons spent nine months in Mountjoy Prison after he was wrongly accused of murdering Ms Sylvia Shields (59) and Ms Mary Callinan (61), who were mutilated and stabbed to death at their house in the grounds of Grangegorman hospital on March 6th, 1997.
The murders were particularly brutal, and a forensic psychiatrist assisting gardai warned that the killer would probably strike again.
Dean Lyons, who was living rough in the Grangegorman area at the time, was arrested on July 25th and taken to the Bridewell Garda station. After hours of questioning detectives produced a number of statements and on the basis of these the DPP charged Mr Lyons with the murders.
Mr Lyons suffered psychiatric problems which caused him to fear authority figures and to admit things he had not done.
On August 16th 1997, while he was still in Mountjoy Prison, a young Roscommon couple, Catherine and Carl Doyle, were stabbed to death in a similarly brutal fashion to the murder of Ms Shields and Ms Callinan.
The man who killed the Doyles, Mark Nash, was quickly arrested by gardai in Galway. While admitting the murder of the Doyles, he also made four separate and voluntary admissions to the Grangegorman murders. His statements, which have been seen by The Irish Times, contain accurate detail about the Grangegorman murders, including descriptions of the interior of the house and the way both women were killed.
Despite this admission Mr Lyons remained in prison for a further seven months before the Chief State Solicitor finally withdrew the murder charges against him. An internal Garda inquiry was held but there has yet to be any outcome. No charges have been brought against Nash in respect of the Grangegorman murders. He is serving life imprisonment for murdering the Doyles.
There has also been no explanation of how accurate information concerning the Grangegorman murders came to be in statements alleged to have been made by Mr Lyons in the Bridewell station.
Mr Lyons's family said he left Dublin after being released from his treatment course because he was afraid of the Garda.