The Cold Case Files (20 page)

The loss suffered by Stephen’s family has been compounded by the failure to see the person who set the fire brought to justice. A major investigation was undertaken by Gardaí in
Tallaght in the weeks and months after Stephen’s shocking death. A total of 1,190 ‘jobs’ were assigned to officers to follow up on various lines of enquiry. A total of 450 witness
statements were taken. The video camera footage clearly showed the arsonist walking back within the Rossfield estate along Rossfield Avenue after setting the fire. This is the same journey the man
had taken ten minutes previously after he had first approached the den while a dog wandered beside him.

Gardaí received a great response from the local public who were appalled at what had happened in their midst. But the first investigation did not lead to any significant breakthrough.
Then in 2006, following pressure from Stephen’s family, a fresh investigation was undertaken. A team of detectives based themselves at Lucan in west Dublin to carry out the cold-case review.
Among the lead detectives was Christy Mangan, who now heads up the Garda Cold Case Unit. It would be 2007 before that Unit was officially established, and Mangan and his colleagues used the same
investigative principles on Stephen’s case. They carried out a full review of all original witness statements and carried out fresh interviews. The cold-case review led to the arrest of a man
and woman in April 2006. The woman was arrested in the Tallaght area and the man was arrested in Ballyfermot. A file was later sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions but no charges were
brought.

The fact that the cold-case review led to some apparent progress is what heartens but also frustrates Stephen’s family. The arrests in April 2006 were the first to be conducted in the
case. It’s believed the woman was questioned on suspicion of withholding information while the man was questioned on suspicion of having set the fire at the den. The fact that a file was sent
to the
DPP
was also significant, but when it was later decided that no charges be brought, Stephen’s family were left back at square one. Sitting with the family in
their home they tell me that they believe the cold-case review of 2006 should form the basis for a new re-investigation.

Amid many tears Liz tells me of the horrific moments she discovered her eldest child was dead.

Stephen’s friend did everything he could to save him. Both boys had been asleep in the den when the fire took hold. Both boys woke up terror-stricken. Stephen’s friend, who was two
years older, managed to get up onto the top of the den. He went to pull Stephen up, but Stephen collapsed from smoke inhalation. “When you look at that video and see that man walking up to
the hut and walking away with the flames behind him,” begins Liz, as she shakes her head in anger and bewilderment. “To think that Stephen and his friend were in there asleep. To think
of those two little boys asleep. Imagine the fear they felt waking up. You couldn’t begin to think about it. And to think that someone could do that and that it doesn’t affect them, or
that they haven’t given themselves up.”

Liz last saw her son alive on the previous evening. There was a carnival in nearby Fettercairn and she brought the three children over. Stephen arranged to stay over in a house in the nearby
Brookview estate, and Liz agreed as long as he was back home early the next day. Liz was due in work at 9 a.m. and wanted to bring Stephen with her. They said goodbye and Liz and the rest of the
family headed home, leaving Stephen with some of his cousins. Later on it appears Stephen changed his mind and headed for home instead. But as he passed by the den at the entrance to the Rossfield
estate he saw a number of his friends ‘camping out’, and he decided to go into the den. It was a normal ‘adventure’ for a 12-year-old boy. He was just a few hundred yards
from home, and Stephen probably thought he’d be back at his house bright and early, in plenty of time to go with his Mam to her work.

At around 10.30 p.m. on Friday 31 August 2001 the owner of 4 Rossfield Avenue pressed the record button on a video camera he had set up in the front bedroom. The video was trained out the window
and angled slightly left so that it focused on the front garden below, and the main road nearby. The owner of number 4 no longer lived at the house, but he still had some vehicles which he kept in
the front driveway. On this night he had a van parked in the drive. He had previously been the victim of criminal damage caused to one of his vehicles as it was parked outside. The man wanted to
catch whoever it was, and decided to record through the night. He had a 24-hour tape which he placed in the machine. By sheer chance the video was also focusing on the entrance to the disused
property next door where wooden pallets had been assembled by local children to make a den. When the owner of number 4 pressed record he then locked up the house and headed home, completely unaware
that his actions were to prove crucial in launching what is an ongoing criminal investigation.

If the video camera had not been recording next door, we might never have known that 12-year-old Stephen Hughes Connors was killed by an arsonist. The cause of the fire might never have been
determined. In the initial hour or two after the fire broke out, it was considered a possibility that the fire might have begun accidentally. It was initially speculated that maybe a candle had
been lighting in the hut and it had fallen over. But once the video tape which was found in the house next door was analysed the truth emerged.

Stephen’s sister Kelly was just eleven years old when her older brother was killed. They used to walk to school together. They had gone to St Mark’s Primary School in the Springfield
estate a mile or two away. They had actually been in the same class and made their First Holy Communion together. Stephen had been kept back a year in school. He was diagnosed with dyslexia and
later moved to St Thomas’ Primary School in Jobstown. Stephen would have been due to start sixth class just two days after his death. His four-year-old brother Gerry was due to start Junior
Infants in nearby St Brigid’s.

“I have loads of memories of Stephen,” Kelly smiles as she tells me. “We had a shed out the back and he used to bring out an extension lead and would listen to the radio with
his friends out there. He was a messer, always joking, always making people laugh. He had red hair and freckles and a cheeky smile. His friends used to slag him because I was the same size as him
even though he was a year and three months older. I went to counselling after Stephen was killed. All Stephen’s friends went too. He knew everyone. He would hang around with girls who were a
few years older than him too.”

Liz also smiles and agrees. “The older girls would have thought he was cute and they would ‘mother’ him. He didn’t play sports but he was into music and animals. He loved
listening to Bob Marley. He loved horses and dogs. He was always bringing home stray animals, and buckets of frogs!”

Sergeant Ian Lackey was on duty at Tallaght Garda station in the early hours of Saturday 1 September 2001. At 5.20 a.m. he received an emergency phone call from a man living in the Rossfield
estate. The man said he had seen smoke coming from a boarded-up house at the entrance to Rossfield Avenue. Immediately Sergeant Lackey logged the call on the Command and Control System. Fire
services were now en route to the scene. Two uniformed Gardaí—Brian Sourke and David Kennedy—who were in a patrol car in the area also raced to the scene. The two Gardaí
arrived at Rossfield Avenue at 5.23 a.m. followed three minutes later by the fire-brigade.

Two fire tenders,
D
71 and
D
72, attended the scene of the fire. Fire officers from the local fire station on the Belgard Road were assisted by
colleagues from Dolphins Barn. Stephen’s friend was by now being cared for by a number of neighbours. He told Garda Brian Sourke that his friend Stephen was still inside the makeshift
hut.

It took the fire service ten minutes to fully extinguish the fire. Two firefighters went into the hut to completely extinguish the blaze. The team was led by Chief Fire Officer Michael
McGoldrick. At 5.45 a.m. the Chief Fire Officer told Gardaí the fire service had discovered the body of a young boy at the back of the hut.

Sergeant Ian Lackey had by now arrived at the scene. He instructed Gardaí Brian Sourke and David Kennedy to immediately preserve the scene. Quite quickly, Sergeant Lackey was told there
appeared to be a video camera set up in the house next door. Fire officers had earlier forced open the door of number 4 as part of their efforts to fight the nearby fire. Sergeant Lackey located
the camera which led to a video cassette recorder. He removed the video cassette and kept it safely, later giving it to Detective Sergeant Colm Featherstone. Right from the start, Gardaí
were following best practice in sealing off the scene and preserving any evidence which would indicate how the fire had started. It would soon become apparent that the fire at the hut was the work
of an arsonist and a criminal investigation would begin.

It was later that day that Stephen’s body was removed from the scene. The crucial work of a forensic analysis at the scene meant it was some seven hours after his body was discovered
before Stephen could be taken from the hut. At 12.30 p.m., as investigating Gardaí and fire officers stopped their work and watched in silence, Stephen’s body was removed from the hut
at Rossfield Avenue. Stephen was taken to the mortuary at Tallaght Hospital and State Pathologist Dr John Harbison would later determine that Stephen died as a result of inhalation of fumes and
smoke caused by fire.

Gardaí looked at the video tape which they had taken possession of from number 4 Rossfield Avenue. The time display on the tape was out-of-synch by close to 13 hours. Where the tape
display showed a date and time for 31 August, in real-time the tape was recording events in the early hours of 1 September. This was quickly established by looking at the images of the fire
services and Gardaí arriving at the scene of the fire, and then working back from that.

The tape showed that just after 5 a.m. that morning a man walked quickly from the direction of within the Rossfield estate and turned left into the disused driveway which housed the makeshift
hut. A dog was with the man but it didn’t enter the driveway. The makeshift den was out of vision, but the video footage showed the man leaving again about a minute later, and apparently
beckoning to the dog to come with him. The dog quickly follows the man who walks back within the Rossfield estate. About ten minutes later the man returns. This time the dog is not with him, and he
seems to be carrying something in his right hand. It’s very difficult to see, but perhaps this was some type of device to start the fire, or some form of accelerant. The man again walks up to
the hut and is out of vision for about a minute. He then comes into vision and is halfway down the driveway when the light of the fire taking hold clearly illuminates the back of his jacket. He
again turns to the right and heads back within the Rossfield estate. He turns back to look at the den, and he would have clearly seen that the fire had very quickly taken hold.

The tape also shows that at around 4.52 a.m. two girls went up to the den. They don’t stay very long and are seen heading across the road within the Rossfield estate. These girls had gone
to see who was in the den and “hang out” but when they realised that Stephen and his friend were asleep they headed home. The two young girls are perhaps extremely lucky. They left the
hut less than ten minutes before the unidentified man first arrived there, and twenty minutes before the hut was actually set on fire.

Despite the early hour, the video footage shows there was quite a degree of activity in the area on the night Stephen was killed. Just as the fire takes hold and the arsonist quickly walks out
of vision, a car can be seen in the distance driving along Brookfield Road. Indeed, there were a number of people driving in the locality at that time, including delivery men who were starting
their early-morning rounds, and others who were heading home after finishing night shifts. “After Stephen was murdered I used to go out at that hour to see who was out at that time of the
morning,” says Liz. “I wanted to see how many people I’d meet, and I was amazed at the number of people who were out. So, how no-one saw anything that morning I don’t know,
I can’t understand.”

On the day Stephen was laid to rest Gardaí stopped the traffic all the way from the local St Aidan’s Church to Bohernabreena Cemetery. The church was packed, and Stephen’s
friends were invited to sit up at the altar. It was a cold day, but at one stage a ray of sunshine came out. Liz breaks down as she tells me Stephen was buried in a white coffin with white and
yellow flowers. “In the church I didn’t want them to take the coffin. I just wanted to keep him there beside me.”

At the time of Stephen’s killing the family were on a waiting list to be moved by South Dublin County Council. Stephen’s Dad, Billy, had suffered an injury 11 months previously and
at that time was in a wheelchair. The family needed a bigger house onto which they could build an extension. Five weeks after Stephen’s tragic death, the family were offered a new house in
the Bawnlea estate in Jobstown, about a mile from Rossfield, and they moved there.