“Why didn’t you mind my son?” asked Dessie Fox, the father of Det Supt Colm Fox, when a senior garda visited the family home following his son’s suicide in 2018.
Colm’s brother-in-law, Fr Sean Donohoe, recalled the encounter on Monday at an inquest into the garda’s death. “Looking back over Colm’s career, I thought it was the most profound statement I ever heard,” he told Dublin District Coroner Dr Myra Cullinane.
Dessie, who was in his mid 80s at the time, has since died but his question hung like a shadow over the first day of the inquest.
“This is going to be difficult few days for you,” the coroner told the Fox family, who had gathered to give evidence of the pressure Colm was under in the lead-up to his death on February 10th, 2018.
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Most, if not all, of that pressure related to his role as the head of the investigation into the Regency Hotel attack two years previously, the most audacious and consequential gangland murder in State history.
The murder of David Byrne at a boxing weigh-in in the hotel by gunmen dressed as gardaí caused severe embarrassment for the government and An Garda Síochána and triggered an escalation in the Hutch-Kinahan feud, which would claim up to 20 lives.
“At the outset of the Regency investigation, he was under pressure to progress the investigation quicker,” Colm’s widow, Edel, said.
But he still had to fight for resources. During a rare break at a hotel in Kilkenny, he was constantly on the phone trying to secure cars for the investigators working on the case, Edel recalled.
Various family members remembered thinking Colm looked tired, drained and under pressure in the weeks before his death.
“Everything was normal, but my dad wasn’t sleeping,” his eldest daughter Rebecca said. She remembered him telling her one morning: “I’m so stressed Rebecca.”
As well as being the senior officer on the Regency case, he was also effectively in charge of two districts, Donohoe said. “He had the job of three people.”
As a serious crime investigator in Blanchardstown, Colm was used to pressure, though he rarely let it show. It was a welcome relief to Edel when he was promoted to superintendent and transferred to Swinford, Co Mayo in 2013. “There, he saw a different pace of policing. That was good for him. I think gangland crimes had taken their toll on him,” Edel said.
After 15 months, he was transferred back to Dublin and to the fraud squad, work he found fulfilling and enjoyable.
So he was “devastated” when he was moved to Ballymun and back to the world of violent and organised crime, said his widow.
The pressure only increased after the start of the Regency trial. Colm was worried about the process used to identify the accused, Patrick Hutch, as one of the alleged gunmen. He felt helpless as the defence lawyers “tore his lads apart” on the stand over the issue, the inquest heard.
The week before his death, he was throwing up and unable to sleep, Edel recalled. “He said something to me like ‘I may have made a mistake’,” said Edel.
Over the week, his mood seemed to improve. On the day of his death, Colm had plans to see a film with Edel after work.
Garda Martin Ryan recalled meeting him in Ballymun Garda station that day. “If I was to do this all over again, I would do things differently,” Colm told the garda. Ryan was confused by the comment as, by then, the judges had decided to admit the identification evidence. The Regency investigation “was in a positive place”, he said.
By that stage, Colm had already checked out a firearm from the station’s armoury, telling the sergeant in charge he was going to the firing range.
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