The Cold Case Files (7 page)

On the afternoon of Saturday 12 September 1987, Dr John Harbison carried out a post-mortem examination on Nancy’s body. He saw that Nancy had suffered burn injuries all along the left side
of her body. Her left arm and leg were scorched and blistered, and her back and the left side of her head had also been damaged by the fire. However, Dr Harbison soon established that the burn
injuries to Nancy’s body had occurred when she was already dead.

When he studied the back of Nancy’s neck Dr Harbison found an intermittent thin pressure mark. It was a faint bruise which extended for three inches. On the front of her neck he found
further evidence of bruising across Nancy’s thyroid cartilage, or Adam’s apple. Dr Harbison also observed a bruise to the side of Nancy’s left eye and another bruise to the right
side of her head. As he continued the post-mortem, Dr Harbison found several injuries to Nancy’s thyroid cartilage. The right lower horn of the cartilage was fractured. Upon further
examination the pathologist established that there was no trace of soot in Nancy’s larynx or trachea.

Dr Harbison completed his examination at 7.30 p.m. and travelled to Kilkenny Garda station and took part in a conference chaired by Chief Superintendent Tom Sloyan, accompanied by Superintendent
Vincent Duff. The State Pathologist told the assembled Gardaí it was his view that Nancy Smyth had died from asphyxia due to strangulation. The nature of the internal injuries to
Nancy’s neck, coupled with the visible bruising to the front and back of her neck, led Dr Harbison to the view that it was more likely Nancy had been manually strangled rather than with a
ligature. Dr Harbison further stated that Nancy had also suffered two head injuries which were consistent with being punched or kicked. The death of Nancy Smyth was now officially a murder
investigation.

Soon after Nancy’s body had been removed from her home that Friday morning, her dog’s body was also found in the sitting room. The body of the small dog was taken to a vet on the
Hebron Road in Kilkenny, and when a post-mortem examination was carried out on the following day, it was established that the dog had died from smoke inhalation. It was a poignant scene to imagine.
The faithful dog had stayed beside Nancy as she lay dead on the ground, and as smoke filled the bungalow from the burning sofa beside them, the dog had eventually died.

Just a few hours before Nancy was murdered she had gone out for a social drink. She went into a pub on the eastern side of Kilkenny city at around 9 p.m. and chatted away with staff at the pub
and with other customers. The owner of the pub would later recall how Nancy had enjoyed a rum and blackcurrant, and a Paddy whiskey and white lemonade. Ever since her husband of 29 years had passed
away in October of the previous year, Nancy was coming to terms with living alone, and she was making the effort to get out of her home and socialise, as she and Dick had done as a couple. Nancy
was well known in the locality, she was a Kilkenny woman, though not from the city originally. The youngest of nine children, Nancy had grown up in Castlecomer and her parents had both died when
she was very young. Nancy had later moved to Bray in Co. Wicklow and Shankill in south Dublin to get work. She also spent time in England before returning to Co. Kilkenny and settling down for
good. She married local man Dick Smyth two days after Christmas Day of 1957. Although they had no children, the couple had many relatives and Dick’s interest in pigeons also opened up a wider
social circle in Kilkenny. The couple’s home at Wolfe Tone Street was one of the oldest buildings on the long road which linked the area around the local swimming pool and park with
John’s Green and the nearby train station off the Dublin road. The larger part of the historic city was over the River Nore a few minutes’ walk to the west.

The owner of the pub where Nancy socialised on the night of Thursday 10 September later dropped her home. Nancy had still been in the bar at closing time and the owner had offered her a lift. He
had seen that Nancy, although not very drunk, was a little merry and he rightly wanted to make sure she got home safely. It was sometime around 12.10 a.m. or 12.20 a.m. when he dropped Nancy home.
On the journey Nancy spoke about her late husband and asked after the driver’s family. The man made sure Nancy got in her door and when she was safely inside the hallway he bid her goodnight
and went back to his pub to help finish closing up.

It was about half an hour after the pub owner dropped Nancy home and headed on his way that a young man was both seen and heard banging on the window of Nancy’s house. Because a witness
also saw Nancy at her front porch remonstrating with this man we know that Nancy was certainly alive as it approached 1 a.m. The expert opinion of the fire service was that the fire in
Nancy’s home had been set quite some time before her body was found shortly after 5 a.m., so it is reasonable to assume that Nancy was strangled sometime closer to 1 a.m. than 5 a.m. Nancy
was still in her outdoor clothes when her body was found, so she had not had time to change for bed before her killer struck. It would also appear that her killer had pulled the front door shut as
he left the house after killing her. When the fire service had later broken down the front door with a sledgehammer to gain entry, the door had given way quickly. This implied that the inside bolt
had not been on. The logical conclusion was that the door had been pulled shut by someone going out the front door.

While we can assume that the killer brazenly walked out the front door, how he actually got into the house is still unresolved. It is possible that Nancy still had her front door open after
having words with the young man seen banging on her window shortly before 1 a.m. It is also possible that the killer had entered the house through the bedroom window which was slightly ajar.
Because Nancy’s home was on a curve in the road and set back from the footpath, with a small garden in front, people living in the nearby houses would not necessarily have seen any activity
at the front of Nancy’s home. While the angle of the house ordinarily gave Nancy some privacy, it also inadvertently gave a killer some measure of cover.

Detectives have long sought to establish a clear motive for the murder of 79-year-old Nancy Smyth. Two motives which have still not been ruled out are sexual assault and robbery. Thursday would
have been pension day and perhaps the killer wanted to steal Nancy’s money, which she would have collected earlier. Equally, the possibility that Nancy was the intended victim of a sexual
assault has also been actively considered by the Garda Cold Case Unit. Looking at all the circumstances of the case, and based on their intelligence, this is a motive which they cannot discount.
However, it is also possible that there was no clear motive, and that perhaps the killer simply wanted to cause hurt and inflict pain and he chose Nancy Smyth because she lived alone and was
defenceless.

It is the opinion of detectives who carried out the original investigation, and also the opinion of cold-case detectives, that Nancy’s killer was from Kilkenny. Gardaí do not
believe the killer lived on Wolfe Tone Street or any of the immediately surrounding streets, but it is felt, however, that the killer had to be from the wider Kilkenny environs. The logic of this
theory is that there were no reports of any suspicious vehicles in the area. It is assumed that the killer arrived at Nancy’s house on foot and also left on foot. If he was walking to the
safety of his own home after committing the murder it is perhaps less likely that the killer would have headed towards the busier main part of Kilkenny city to the west of the nearby river.
It’s more likely the killer stayed in the shadows and walked along quiet streets east of Wolfe Tone Street. Another possibility is that the killer may have returned to the scene to watch the
aftermath of the fire, when Gardaí had cordoned off the scene and news had broken in the media of the murder investigation.

As Gardaí began their investigations they considered if the murder might be linked to an incident on the far side of Kilkenny city. On the night of Thursday 10 September, just hours
before Nancy was murdered, a woman was attacked in her home by a masked man who stole £5. However, detectives eventually formed the view that the incidents were not linked in any way.

Detectives spoke with a young man who said he had been the person arguing with Nancy outside her home. He initially denied he had been anywhere near Wolfe Tone Street, but later he confirmed he
had walked down the street in the early hours of 11 September. He did not live anywhere near Wolfe Tone Street, but said he had been out drinking in a pub earlier that night and was later walking
by Nancy’s house and that she had been arguing to herself when he first came up Wolfe Tone Street. The young man said he had then argued with Nancy for up to a half an hour. He said she
opened and shut her front door at least three times. His explanation for arguing with Nancy was that if anyone argued with him he would argue back. He confirmed he had stood inside her front gate
but he said he did not go into Nancy’s home and that he had no physical contact with her. He confirmed that as he stood outside Nancy’s home he had asked a man who was passing by on the
other side of the road for a light for his cigarette. The young man told Gardaí he had later walked home at around 2 a.m. and that he did not meet anyone on his journey home.

The murder of Nancy Smyth was one of a number of killings of women in the Republic of Ireland in 1987 which would not be solved. The year saw a spike in the number of murders committed in
Ireland and it is purely coincidental but somewhat disturbing that a number of women were killed in 1987 and their killers were never brought to justice. The circumstances of each killing was
entirely unique, but little did anyone know at the time that all the murderers would get away scot free.

On 1 April 1987 a 76-year-old woman, Lilly Carrick, was beaten to death in a laneway off Gardiner Street in Dublin city. Lilly was a widow and was walking home after missing her bus. Her killer
beat her about the head, fracturing her skull.
DNA
was obtained from the crime scene but Lilly’s murderer has never been brought to justice. As detectives were
continuing to investigate this murder, 29-year-old mother-of-two Antoinette Smith vanished from Dublin on 11 July after earlier attending the David Bowie concert in Slane. It would be 3 April of
the following year before her body was found buried at Glendoo Mountain near Glencree in Co. Wicklow. It is believed she was the victim of a random killer or killers.

A number of murders as a result of the Troubles also stretched Garda resources in 1987. Mary McGlinchey was shot dead while bathing her two young sons at her home at Muirhevnamore in Dundalk on
the evening of 31 January 1987. Mary was the wife of
INLA
leader Dominic McGlinchey, who was in prison at the time of his wife’s murder. (He himself was shot dead in
Drogheda in 1994 and similarly his murder remains unsolved.) Two
INLA
members were shot dead during an ambush at a hotel in Drogheda on 20 January in what was an internal
feud. On 3 May a man disappeared after going to a funeral along the border. His body was found in December buried under the floor of a disused cow shed in Co. Monaghan. And a member of the
RUC
was also murdered in the Republic of Ireland in 1987. Samuel McClean, who was from Letterkenny and had almost 20 years’ service with the
RUC
, was shot dead by a two-man gang near his family’s property at Convoy in Co. Donegal on 2 June. Samuel was one of two
RUC
officers murdered in Co.
Donegal whose killers were never brought to justice. (Fellow officer Harold Keys was visiting his girlfriend in the county in January 1989 when they were ambushed and Harold was shot 23 times.)

Nineteen-eighty-seven was also the year that father-of-four Brian McGrath vanished from his home at Coole in Co. Westmeath. The 43-year-old’s body would not be found until November 1993,
when Gardaí excavated a field next to Brian’s house, after his daughter bravely came forward to give details of the murder she had witnessed six years before. However, it would be 2008
before advances in forensic science would confirm that the body was indeed missing man Brian McGrath. His wife Vera was later convicted of murder and is now serving a life sentence. A man was
convicted of manslaughter and jailed for nine years. The Brian McGrath case was the first major success for the Garda Cold Case Unit, and gave hope that other historic unsolved murders might see
similar advances. In Nancy Smyth’s case, there was a similar hope of a breakthrough. The circumstances of every case were different, but in Nancy’s case, just like the Brian McGrath
case, the feeling has always been that the person responsible is still alive and might still be brought to justice.

On Tuesday 15 September 1987, four days after Nancy’s body was discovered at her home in Kilkenny, Gardaí arrested a man in his mid-twenties. The arrest was made in Kilkenny and the
man was held at the local Garda station and questioned by teams of detectives. The man was questioned throughout Tuesday afternoon and into the late evening, and again the following day. With an
arrest having taken place so soon after the murder, people naturally wondered if there might be substantial progress in the case. However, after being held for two days the man was released. His
was the only arrest to be ever carried out in the murder enquiry.