Chapter 21: Under Arrest

Tony Muggivan

After word had come in that Brendan had been captured and that Fiona Sampson was safe, I went to where the arrest had been made and was told that a senior officer wanted to talk tome. When I found him, he asked me to go to Loughrea barracks because there was a possibility that Brendan would talk to me and give me information about the mother, the child, and the priest. He offered to bring me to Loughrea, which was about fifteen miles away, in a squad car. I decided to travel in my own car. I was brought to see Brendan very soon after I arrived in Loughrea. This was only a short time after his arrest. I hadn’t seen him in about two years, except briefly in a passing car a few weeks earlier. I was left alone with him in a room on the second level of the building. We shook hands and I started talking to him very calmly. One of the first things he asked me was if I could get a gun in to him. He asked me if I had been searched coming in. I told him I had been searched and there was no way I could get him a gun. I asked him what he would want a gun for. He replied that he could take a couple of the cunts — meaning guards — with him in a shoot-out. I said, ‘Brendan, there is no chance. Look out the window — there’s an armed soldier right outside.’ I asked him about the missing people and he said that he had nothing to do with them but there was a gang up around there and they had them. He went on to say that he could have shot Fiona Sampson if he had wanted to. He said that ‘the little cunt only held him up and never stopped complaining’. He went on and on about the gun, saying that it wasn’t worth a fuck since it was only a single shot. He told me that his feet were sore and hurting him and that he needed a basin of warm water to soak them. He had no shoes or socks and his feet looked bloodless. I noticed that he had no scratches on his face, hands, or anywhere I could see. I asked for approval to call my brother in New Orleans and was taken to a room where several officers were sitting around a table talking. I gave JJ a description of Brendan and told him how he

had responded to me.

I told him how Brendan would talk about everything but the missing people — for example, another gang, his feet, the guards and how they were out to get him. He saw himself as the victim, and not the missing people.

JJ told me that if I talked to Brendan again to address him as if he had multiple personalities — even though he didn’t — and to watch for signs in his eyes or on his face of what he was hiding when I asked certain questions. He told me that he would have a unique response if I asked him a direct question close to the truth. The plan was to state my belief that the people were dead and that it was wrong to keep the bodies from the families.

Brendan started talking about the guards, and how they were out to get him, and he kept talking about them and cursing them. I got impatient and angry and I shouted, ‘Fuck the fucking guards. What do they have to do with the missing people?’

The guards outside the door heard my shouting and one of them looked in. He left and closed the door. Whenever I tried to get him talking about the missing people, Brendan would only talk about how the guards were out to get him.

I realised that I wasn’t going to get the information I was looking for by pleading. I finally ignored his explanations about who was holding the missing people, and about gangs in the area.

I suddenly said to him, catching him off guard, ‘I don’t want you to tell me where they are. I know where they are. They’re in Cregg Forest and I will find them”

He was startled by the suddenness of my statement and, before he had time to think, he said, ‘No, they’re not.’ I asked him if they were alive, and he said he had nothing to do with them.

limmediately knew that I had the answer — the bodies were in Cregg Forest. I noticed that he did not say that the people were alive, but said, instead, he had nothing to do with them.

I did not press him any further and he became quiet. A solicitor came in and I left. I told a guard about his request for a basin of water. Before I left, I asked Brendan if there was anyone he wanted to talk to.

I told him that there was a guard from Clare downstairs and he said he would like to talk to him. I passed this information on.

I left the room and met the guard from Clare. His name was G.T. Kelly. Our conversation was about returning to Cregg Forest and arranging the search for the missing people. I told Garda Kelly that Brendan’s response to my statement that I knew the missing people were in Cregg Forest confirmed what we had concluded from the tyre marks on the Cregg Forest road and on the dead tree.

I agreed to meet them at a particular place near Cregg Forest at three o’clock. With that, another officer gave us a cup of tea and some biscuits. I thanked her as I hadn’t eaten since seven o’clock that morning — it felt like a week since then.

I had run and walked so much that my clothes were stuck to me with sweat and my feet were sore as there had been water in my shoes since early in the morning.

I left the Loughrea barracks by the back door. A guard told me that there was a big crowd at the front entrance, and many reporters. I went down a side road and as I had a cousin living nearby, and as I had some time before the meeting with the guards back in Clare, I went to visit her for a few minutes. I chatted with my cousin who also knew Brendan as she had met him several times while visiting my home.

She made some tea and sandwiches for me and after I had eaten them, I started for home about twenty-seven miles away. I arrived home at about two o’clock and changed my clothes. Mary was relieved at the news that Brendan had been caught and told me that the Killaloe guards had been calling her regularly prior to the arrest, advising her to be watchful.

I left for the meeting at Cregg at about 2.30 p.m. as I wanted to visit my wife’s uncle, Son O’Donnell, for a few minutes. He was very agitated over the missing people having known Imelda Riney well as she lived only a very short distance from his house.

When I got there, he started to cry and said, ‘They’re all dead.’ I tried to calm him as he had a very bad heart and was in very bad health. He told me about having met Brendan about a week

before Imelda and her child went missing and having told him to stay away from her and her children.

When I got to Cregg Forest, there was a crowd of people spread out searching the area. I recognised many of my neighbours and family members — Patsy Donnellan, John Donnellan, Brendan Muggivan, Vera O’Rourke, Joe O’Rourke and Liam Pearl, the man who eventually found the Rineys.

I would have preferred to have started searching where the two guards and I had found the tyre marks the previous evening. However, I said nothing as I thought we could goin a line and reach that area fairly quickly. I suggested we look up into the trees. I didn’t know what to expect but was thinking that Brendan was capable of using a rope and pulling his victims up into the trees. I believed he wouldn’t have had a shovel to bury them.

After a while, I got off on my own and ran into very dense forest with a lot of low-lying bramble. I remembered that Brendan had had no marks on his hands or face and realised that he, more than likely, had not come this way. I came out on another road in the forest and made my way back to the central point of activity. When I got there, I was asked to take some guards to some empty houses some miles away. I said I would but I asked that two men who were very familiar with the forest, Joe Duffy and Denis Woods, be contacted and asked to join in the search of the forest. Cregg Wood, like all forests planted by Coillte, the state forestry agency, had been planted to a plan. As Denis had worked at the forest for many years and Joe Duffy was an inspector with Coillte, both had an excellent knowledge of the area.

I left in a squad car and we searched some empty houses. On our way back through the village of Mountshannon, Joe O’Rourke stopped us and told us that Fr Walsh’s body had been found. We drove on to Cregg and I was surprised how close Garda Meehan, Garda Higgins and I had been to his body when we found the tyre marks.

Denis Woods, who had found Fr Walsh’s body, came over to me and said, ‘It’s going to be the same for Imelda Riney and her child.’

I came home and told my wife and family the news. I called JJ in New Orleans and we both wondered why all the bodies had not been found together. However, we both felt that the other bodies must be nearby.

My wife, my family and I talked into the night, remembering all that had happened over the previous five years and how we had been unable to get the necessary help which might have prevented such a tragedy.

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The guards had arranged to return to the search for Imelda Riney and her child next morning, Sunday morning. I joined a group of one guard and seven or eight locals. I was waiting to go into the forest near where Fr Walsh’s body had been found. We didn’t have long to wait. A search party coming from another direction found the bodies of Imelda Riney and her son.

Sean Donnellan and his wife, Patsy, and Liam Pearl and his son started searching from a point northwest of where Fr Walsh’s body had been found. They found the mother and child about a quarter of a mile north of where Fr Walsh had been found and much further into the forest.

Because of where the mother and child had been found it was easy to see why Brendan might not have found his way back there when he brought Fr Walsh to the forest. It would have been

especially difficult to find this location at night.