A Garda inspector has told a jury how he became suspicious that the body of a missing farmer was at the bottom of a well across the road from his farmyard.
It was the third day of the trial of Mr Sean Daly (74), who denies murdering his brother Patrick Daly (69), on January 18th, 1996, at the 105-acre farm owned by Paddy and run in partnership with an his brother at Dooneen, Kil cummin, Killarney, Co Kerry.
Dublin's Central Criminal Court heard that on January 20th, 1996, Insp Michael O'Donovan, then a sergeant in Killarney, asked three civil defence volunteers to remove the concrete cap covering the well and saw it was filled almost to the top with dry raked sand.
When he returned to the farm on January 23rd, after questioning Mr Sean Daly and his three sons in Paddy's house, he went straight across the farmyard to the well. "I was suspicious of the well,", he told Mr John Edwards SC, prosecuting. "I had the cover moved back again. I noticed that the sand was different in that it had been filled to the very top, flush with the concrete and it was wet."
Minutes later, "Sean Daly arrived down to the well and he had a bar of iron in his hand and I had said that it was my intention to dig out the well. Sean Daly lifted the iron bar and stuck it down into the sand and said `there's nothing down there but stones'. "
Mr Sean Daly was not with them when it was being excavated, "but at one stage when I looked up the farmyard, he was standing there, holding a pike, a fork. He was looking down at us and he was shaking his head." The body was taken from the well at about 1.30 p.m. on January 24th. an Daly at Paddy's house told him earlier that day, Sean said that "Paddy had a good wallet of money with him" prior before prior to his disappearance. The garda said He noticed that Paddy's house, and "particularly his bedroom", had been tidied up. Insp O'Donovan told Mr Patrick MacEntee SC, defending, he had written his opinion of Mr Sean Daly at the bottom of a questionnaire when he interviewed him the next day. The note read: "Tough, stubborn, said very little. Everything had to be dragged out of him. Seemed to be letting on that he was confused."
Mr MacEntee suggested these were "snide remarks", but the inspector said that was his opinion. an was "a robust, strong man", the garda said, but he agreed that he was now thinner and physically changed.
Asked why gardai brought each of the Daly family into the back of a patrol car to answer questions for the questionnaire, Insp O'Donovan said he thought it was better to do it there than in the house. The Dalys would always "come out to meet me and they would conduct their business outside or just at the door", he told Mr Justice Barr.
Earlier, gardai were accused of trying to let Mr Sean Daly know from the start of their investigation "who was boss". Mr MacEntee suggested that in taking a statement from the accused over almost three hours in the back of an unmarked patrol car on January 30th, gardai were not acting in manner befitting "servants of the people".
Mr MacEntee said Mr Sean Daly's daughter, Margaret, told him that when Sgt Nugent and Det Garda Henry Purcell arrived to question her father, she had asked would it not be better to do the interview in the house, but one of the gardai had told her, "No, it will be more private in the car."
He also alleged that Det Garda Purcell had bolted the door on the outside as Mr Sean Daly left for the patrol car, thus preventing Ms Daly from leaving by that door.
Sgt Margaret Nugent of Killarney Garda station said she could not recall if Ms Daly was there at the time. She said neither of the gardai made such a comment, nor had she seen the door bolted. As they stood at the door to the house, she was waiting to be invited in but there was a "period of silence" after Mr Daly agreed to talk to them and she realised they weren't going to be asked in.
To invite herself into his home would be to invade his privacy, she felt, so she asked him out to the car. "I wasn't invited into the house and it was better than standing in the door in the month of January," she told counsel. She agreed that the house, "in hindsight, probably would have been a better place to take a statement".
Mr MacEntee he said he was not suggesting hindsight, but foresight.
The trial continues.