An attempt to exhume the remains of the Raphoe cattle dealer, Mr Richie Barron, in 1997 was aborted when the disgraced former superintendent, Mr Kevin Lennon, asked officials in the Department of Justice Equality and Law Reform to put the application "on hold", the Morris tribunal heard yesterday.
Mr Séamus Hanrahan told the tribunal he received a phone call in October 1997 from the former superintendent asking that the exhumation order be "put on hold until further notice".
Mr Hanrahan passed this message on and was transferred to a different division shortly afterwards and so could not say if there was any follow-up.
"With the benefit of hindsight I can say the process shouldn't have just been parked," he said. "I was having doubts about his death and the confession of Frank McBrearty," Mr Kevin Lennon told the tribunal.
Mr McBrearty has always denied that he made the alleged confession, which will be the subject of another module.
Mr Lennon said he met with former State pathologist, Dr John Harbison, before making the exhumation request. "Dr Harbison was of the view that an exhumation was the best course to do." But on October 15th, 1997, Mr Lennon was directed by his boss, Chief Supt Denis Fitzpatrick, to cancel the exhumation. "I did request you to put it on hold and I didn't give you a reason, because down the road I believed CS Fitzpatrick would change his mind because he was frustrating my investigation into the death," Mr Lennon told the witness.
Earlier, Ms Nora Ní Dhomhnaill, a civil servant in the Department of Justice, was asked by Mr McBrearty, who appears at the tribunal without legal representation, if she knew anything about Garda requests for phone records relating to his family and friends. Ms Ní Dhomhnaill said there was a file called the Richie Barron file in the Department, but she did not know its contents.
The chairman adjourned the tribunal to see if this file had been handed over in the discovery process, and the tribunal was later told by Mr Fergal Foley, for the Department of Justice, that the file had been identified and disclosed to the tribunal.
Ms Ní Dhomhnaill said she knew no more about the case than what was in the newspapers. She told the chairman she could not say if there were any references to phone records in the file. "To be honest with you I don't know what's in the file. I know it exists," she said. Later, Mr McBrearty questioned Det Sgt Hugh Smith, who worked on the investigation. The chairman intervened several times during the questioning, asking Mr McBrearty to be less "aggressive".
"This was the witness who was largely instrumental in establishing that the first witness statement implicating you was false," Mr Justice Morris said. "I would have thought that this man was on your side."
In 1997, Det Sgt Smith was one of the detectives who took a statement from a Raphoe man, Mr Noel McBride, withdrawing allegations that placed Mr McBrearty near the spot where Mr Barron was found.