Until the tragic events of April and May 1994, Brendan O'Don nell's disturbed life had been a series of petty crimes followed by short prison sentences and occasional psychiatric assessments.
By 1992, when he was still only 18, he had developed a markedly more violent streak. And when he returned to his native east Clare from England in late March
1994, after yet another spell in detention, his neighbours had good reason to fear him.
Living rough in the area, he embarked on a spree of violent activity over several weeks that culminated in the triple murder and raised far-reaching questions about the response of the State's medical and psychiatric services and the criminal justice system.
During this period, he attacked an elderly man, slicing his ear with a hatchet. He stole and burned cars and robbed and ransacked houses. He was reported to be armed and dangerous.
On April 27th, shortly before Ms Imelda Riney and her three-year-old son,
Liam, were killed, two gardai tried to arrest him at a caravan near
Mountshannon, Co Clare. He escaped, taking to the woods with a .22 rifle stolen from a local farmer.
Ms Riney and her son were taken from their home on the morning of April 29th, but gardai did not learn of their disappearance for two days. Ms Riney's former husband, Mr Val Ballance, visited her but had no reason to worry when she left the house without telling him. Growing anxious, however, he contacted the Garda on May 1st and reported her missing.
There was also some delay before Father Joe Walsh's disappearance, several days later, was confirmed.
O'Donnell confronted him at his house in Eyrecourt, Co Galway, on the night of May 3rd. His failure to celebrate Mass the following morning did cause concern but there were grounds for believing he might be making one of his frequent visits to a friend elsewhere in the county.
Two developments that day caused the Garda's inquiry to escalate into a full-
scale investigation. A taxi-driver reported seeing O'Donnell pushing Father
Walsh's car and, at around the same time, a car found burned out on April 30th was confirmed as Ms Riney's.
It had not been connected with her initially because the registration and chassis numbers were missing.
From Thursday onwards, a security cordon was thrown around the area and gardai called in the Air Corps and maritime search craft. But by then the three missing people were dead. O'Donnell later told the court he killed Ms Riney because she was "the devil's daughter" and the devil had told him to do it.
He said that on the day of her abduction he had made her drive to Cregg Wood where, after he told her he was going to shoot her, she tried to take the gun from him.
During the struggle, he claimed, he shot her in the eye, after which he "felt very happy, a lovely feeling". Then he brought Liam over to where his mother lay, because "I wanted them to be together". He could not look at the child's
"innocent face" and so shot him in the side of the head.
In other evidence during the trial, Ms Riney's sister and her former partner scotched O'Donnell's claims that he had had a relationship with the dead woman.
Both said she had never mentioned him in conversation and that she was a woman with no secrets.
Of O'Donnell's claims that Ms Riney had made him ham sandwiches, both said she was a strict vegetarian who never allowed meat in her house.
Of Father Walsh, O'Donnell had testified that a voice in his head told him to
"Kill Father Joe. He's trying to christen the devil's baby son". He went to the priest's house in Eyrecourt on the night of May 3rd/4th, 1994, and spent several hours there while Father Walsh attempted to talk him out of it, giving him money and a watch.
In the morning, he forced the priest to drive to Cregg Wood where, in a clearing, he made him kneel down so he wouldn't fall and "get hurt". He shot him in the head and, when the wounded man went into convulsions, he "felt sorry for him" and shot him again "so he wouldn't go through any pain".
On May 6th, Father Walsh's car was found burned out on the shores of Lough
Derg, and gardai publicly named O'Donnell as somebody they wanted to question as a "possible witness" to Ms Riney's disappearance.
The following day, O'Donnell was arrested between Woodford and Whitegate after a three-hour chase through forests and mountains, during which he abducted a young woman and an older man. The body of Father Walsh was found in
Cregg Wood the same day and the day afterwards, May 8th, the bodies of Ms Riney and her son were found 150 metres away, in a single shallow grave.
Between then and the trial, O'Donnell underwent a series of apparent mental and physical breakdowns. In August 1994, a judge ruled he was mentally fit to be tried. But, later that year, while awaiting trial, he went on hunger strike and was removed to the Mater Hospital. The protest ended after 29 days.
In January 1995, he cut his wrists and, in August, the Eastern Health Board denied newspaper reports that a fellow patient at the Central Mental Hospital had tried to strangle him. The trial finally began in January 1996 but had to be adjourned later that month when he again became ill. In March, he made what was described as a "serious suicide attempt" when he tried to strangle himself at the Central Mental Hospital. He told a doctor he had done this after seeing
Imelda Riney in his room, crying.
The 53-day case, the longest criminal trial in the history of the State, finally ended on April 2nd, 1996, when a jury decided by a 10-2 verdict that he was guilty of the murders. The dissenting jurors had favoured a guilty-but-
insane verdict.
After the trial there were reports that he had told gardai he learned to feign the symptoms of insanity from conversations with a fellow Central Mental
Hospital inmate, John Gallagher. Gallagher was found guilty but insane following the 1988 murders of his former girlfriend and her mother.
Of the expert witnesses who gave evidence at his trial, three said he was schizophrenic and three said he was not. His former school principal said he was
"the most disturbed child I would have had in 22 years of teaching".