The Dublin City Coroner, Dr Brian J. Farrell, has asked Mark Nash to attend the inquest tomorrow into the deaths of Sylvia Shields and Mary Callinan.
The two women were both patients at Grangegorman psychiatric hospital Dublin, when they were brutally murdered on March 6th, 1997. The inquest has been adjourned until now because there was a live Garda investigation.
An inquest is held to establish the facts and medical causes of deaths. It cannot apportion responsibility or blame. A coroner may issue a summons asking any person who has information relating to the death to be present and to give evidence.
A spokesman for the coroner told The Irish Times yesterday that it would be a matter for the inquest and the coroner whether Nash would be asked to give evidence.
When the deaths of the women were discovered, there was nothing to link Nash to them nor has he been questioned or charged in relation to them. Four months after their murder, a homeless heroin addict, Dean Lyons, was arrested and questioned about their murder, to which he later confessed.
This confession was controversial, as the video of his questioning showed him confused and incoherent, while his purported confession statement contained a chronologically correct account of the murders, with a detailed description of the interior of the house.
He was charged with the murders and held in custody.
Three weeks after his arrest, a young couple, Catherine and Carl Doyle, were brutally stabbed to death at their home in Roscommon. Catherine Doyle's sister's English boyfriend was Nash, and the couple had been staying with the Doyles that weekend. Nash was arrested in Galway the next day, charged and eventually convicted of murdering the Doyles. While he was in Garda custody in Galway, he started talking about the Grangegorman murders, describing them in great detail.
Eight months after he was charged with the murders, Mr Lyons was released without any reason being given to him or his family. He went to England and entered a rehabilitation hostel. He later resumed using heroin and in 1999, died of an apparent drug overdose.The fact that Mr Lyons died without his confession being formally thrown out by any court means that it is still on the record and he is not alive to dispute it.
If Nash were to be questioned about the Grangegorman murders, his defence lawyers could, theoretically, resurrect the Lyons confession and say someone else had confessed to them, without anyone being able to contest that. That is, unless the gardaí involved in the Lyons interrogation came forward and cast doubt on its authenticity.