A MAN HAS been jailed for nine years for killing his fiancee’s father in Co Westmeath 23 years ago.
Colin Pinder (47) is the second person to be sentenced as a result of a rare “cold-case” Garda investigation, when the file was reopened going back over two decades.
Mr Justice John Edwards described the killing of Bernard Brian McGrath (43) by Pinder and the victim’s wife as “callous and vicious”. Vera McGrath was sentenced to life in prison in July after being found guilty of her husband’s murder.
A Central Criminal Court jury found Pinder not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter, to which he had pleaded guilty.
The killing took place between March 10th and April 18th, 1987, at the victim’s home in Lower Coole, Westmeath.
The trial heard various versions of events of the killing, including that McGrath asked Pinder to kill her husband and that Pinder flipped when Mr McGrath used offensive racist terms. He comes from Liverpool.
Gardaí involved in the case spoke outside court yesterday, saying that they were satisfied that convictions had been secured despite the substantial delay.
The result was a success from a cold-case point of view and had to affect the other cold cases before the Director of Public Prosecutions, they said.
Mostly, however, they said it was a victory for the victim’s three sons, who had wanted a clearing- up of the facts after more than 20 years.
Mr Justice Edwards described as “savage, depraved and barbaric” the manner in which Mr McGrath’s body was desecrated after the killing.
Mr McGrath was initially buried in a shallow grave in his back garden. His body was exhumed days later and burned on what the judge described as a homemade funeral pyre.
Great effort was made to conceal the body, noted the judge, with the ashes scattered and any remaining bones splintered and put into drains and a septic tank.
The remains lay undiscovered until 1993 when Pinder’s former fiancee, Veronica McGrath, reported what had happened to her father.
The judge said this had caused much distress to the victim’s family, excluding Vera and Veronica McGrath, whom the court treated as an accessory after the fact. Mr Justice Edwards said the distress was felt by Mr McGrath’s three sons, who were children at the time.
It is understood that Brian, Andrew and Edward McGrath were led to believe that they had been abandoned by their father, whom they remembered as being kind, hard-working and intelligent.
The judge described the victim impact statement they gave last month as poignant.
They said that the way their father’s life had been taken was barbaric and left them numb with shock.
They had been unable to grieve and mourn in a natural way and had been deprived of a father figure in their life.
The judge regarded the effect the crime had on Mr McGrath’s sons as an aggravating factor. However he said there were also considerable mitigating circumstances. These included Pinder’s guilty plea and lack of a serious criminal record.
He said that although there was no indication of remorse for some years, Pinder admitted his involvement as soon as he was confronted in 1993.
Pinder co-operated again two years ago when the cold-case review team reopened the matter, even voluntarily flying to Dublin to be interviewed by gardaí.
He also took into consideration Pinder’s relatively young age and the “significant amount of adversity” he had in life, including limited education, no skills or training and a number of medical problems.
Pinder had epilepsy, agoraphobia and depression and had been suicidal, but much of it was linked to his involvement in the killing, he said.
“You were significantly active in the callous disposal of the body,” he said, not accepting Pinder’s arguments that he was under the duress of Vera and Veronica McGrath, whom he married weeks later and from whom he separated within a year.
“The manner in which he was killed was extraordinarily vicious. He was bludgeoned to death,” the judge said. “You weren’t the primary participant. Mrs McGrath rendered most of the blows, but when he fell you threw a concrete mould at his head.
“The fact you were involved in such a way weighed heavily upon you. You have realised the horror of what you were involved in and it has caused you suffering,” he added. “The fact it occurred belatedly is unfortunate. It should not have taken you as long as it did to come forward.”