Patrick Nugent's death at Bunratty Castle still shrouded in mystery 40 years on 

He was 23 when he died of internal injuries, deemed to have been brought about by violence of one sort or another. In the aftermath of his death another man was charged with manslaughter and ultimately acquitted.

An inquest ruled that he had been assaulted prior to his death. And in a highly unusual move, his local town of Sixmilebridge came together, holding a public meeting, with the express intention of seeking out justice for the deceased man and his bereaved family.

Yet there was no conclusive outcome or even an attempt to reach one. The violent death of a young man in highly controversial circumstances was simply ignored by those in power at the time. As far as the government and its agencies were concerned, due process had been followed and there was no more to be done.

Last Monday, the case featured on RTÉ’s Crimecall. An Garda Siochána are investigating the matter again, but is there any real prospect of discovering what happened, even using modern investigative techniques? And why has it taken so long to revisit an obvious case of a blatant injustice?

Pat Nugent was a catering manager in Bunratty Castle in Co Clare. He lived at home in the nearby village of Sixmilebridge with his parents and two brothers. He was reputed to have a serious work ethic and was considered to be going places in terms of his career.

On the night of February 11, 1984 the castle hosted an event to mark the 40th wedding anniversary of a local chef, William Ryan and his wife Chrissie.

Ryan was the executive chef at Shannon airport. Around 60 guests attended the function. It ended at 3am and most of those in attendance left then or soon after. An hour later there was still about a dozen people in the castle complex, including five staff members. Also present were William and Chrissie Ryan and two other guests, Detective Garda Eugene Quinlan and Garda Jim Cummins, both accompanied by their wives.

At around 4am, some of the staff in the kitchen heard a loud noise. One of them, Declan O’Neill, went out to see what had occurred. In the reception area, just inside the entrance, he found Pat Nugent on the ground, obviously distressed and seriously injured. O’Neill attempted to assist him.

He later said that Pat Nugent said to him, “he clocked me”. O’Neill related that the stricken man said this three times. O’Neill looked out through the front door and he could see William and Chrissie Ryan in their car, which had obvious signs of a collision. Pretty soon, the two off-duty gardaí were also assisting O’Neill in attempting to aid Pat Nugent. An ambulance was called. It arrived and brought Mr Nugent to Barrington’s hospital. Soon after admission, he was pronounced dead.

Later, Pat’s father Joe, told the current affairs programme Today Tonight about how the news was delivered to his family. 

Two guards came to tell us. They said it was a heart attack. I said somebody must have hit him and they said no, there was no marks on him.

Whatever happened to Pat Nugent occurred outside in the courtyard. He was then moved to just inside the door of the premises. What is known is that there was some form of a collision between William’s Ryan car and that of Jim Cummins in the courtyard. The two men had agreed they would sort out the matter between themselves.

A court would later hear forensic evidence from an expert employed by the Department of Justice that showed a smear of paint from Ryan’s car on Pat Nugent’s jacket and paint associated with Jim Cummins car also on Nugent’s clothes. The forensic scientist told the court that in her opinion Pat Nugent had been crushed against a wall after Ryan’s car had hit Cummins’ car.

Crucially, she was also of the opinion that Pat Nugent was near the ground when he was struck. Nobody gave any evidence as to how he came to be lying on the ground.

There was no clear narrative available from those who were closest to the events. At 5.15am a patrol car arrived on the scene. Garda John Talty asked his two off-duty colleagues what had occurred. Later Talty would say that garda Jim Cummins said something about Pat Nugent getting a heart attack.

He also said that Det Garda Eugene Quinlan told him there wasn’t a mark on the body. At one stage, Talty turned to the two men and said, “Come on, lads. What the fuck happened here? Do you think we’re idiots.”

Later there was a suggestion that Det Garda Quinlan and another guest Ger O’Connor were having a fight outside and Pat Nugent went over to break it up. Both men denied that they had any row that night. William Ryan said he saw a “ferocious argument” between the two men.

Det Garda Quinlan quickly retained a solicitor and senior counsel Paddy McEntee, the leading criminal defence barrister in the country. He did not give a formal statement until two weeks after the night in question.

Investigations

Within days, the head of the investigation section of the Garda Technical Bureau, Detective Superintendent John Courtney had arrived in Limerick to oversee the investigation.

Courtney was regarded as a top cop but also a controversial figure, who was associated with ‘the heavy gang’, a group reputed to frequently have assaulted suspects in custody to extract confessions. Three months after the Nugent investigation Courtney would oversee the Kerry Babies case, where a whole family admitted to complicity in a murder they couldn’t have committed.

Deputy garda commissioner John Paul McMahon also came to Bunratty, an indication of how seriously the force considered the case, particularly as two members were present at the incident.

A number of reconstructions of what may or could have occurred in the courtyard that night were staged. Nothing conclusive emerged from it all.

A month after the killing a public meeting was held in Sixmilebridge.

A packed hall was told that the community was there to support the Nugent family’s efforts to find out what had happened their son and brother. “We are here because we want to see the circumstances of what happened,” one of the organisers addressed the meeting from a stage.

“It is important that the community’s mind as well as the Nugent family’s mind be put at rest in respect of all the circumstances relating to Paddy’s death,” she said.

William Ryan was charged with manslaughter, dangerous driving, and failing to remain at the scene of an accident. In June 1985 he was found not guilty of all charges. No charges were pressed against the two gardaí who had been present, or anybody else. The trial of William Ryan threw little further light on what had actually occurred.

Later that year a three-day inquest was held. The Nugent family was represented by Sean McBride, Maud Gonne’s son and a founder of Amnesty International. The verdict from the jury was that the deceased man had died as result of being hit by a person or persons unknown causing him to fall, when he was then run over by William Ryan’s car. The eight-man jury also concluded that because of the “suppression of evidence” the justice minister should reopen the investigation into Pat Nugent’s death.

Like so many other highly controversial episodes in the 1980s — particularly in the area of criminal justice — this one simply gathered dust. There was initially huge support for the bereaved family, and much media comment and investigation. Yet nothing was done to further the matter. Over time it was forgotten by everybody except the dead man’s family and close friends for whom the injustice continued to burn down through the decades.

In 2014, a raft of controversies in An Garda Síochána led to the establishment of the ‘Independent Review Mechanism’, an effective review of complaints against the gardaí that had not been addressed. A total of around 320 case files were reviewed. Out of those just a handful reached what was considered a threshold for further investigation, one of which was the Nugent case.

Case reopens

In 2017, then justice minister Charlie Flanagan ordered an inquiry under Section 42 of the Garda Síochána Act. Retired district court judge Patrick Clyde was appointed to investigate the case.

William and Chrissie Ryan had both died in the interim, but Jim Cummins and Eugene Quinlan are still alive. The Irish Examiner understands that they and most of the others who were in attendance that night gave evidence to the Clyde inquiry.

Patrick Clyde completed his report and presented it to the minister — by then Helen McEntee — in 2021. Following consultation with the Attorney General a decision was taken not to publish the report. The Nugent family made representations about their right to see the report. Eventually, they were permitted to have sight of it but only if they signed a non disclosure agreement.

The minister subsequently said her decision not to publish was in order to ensure that it would not prejudice any further investigation. In 2022, Garda Commissioner Drew Harris ordered a full cold case review of the investigation. Initially, the Nugents refused to co-operate with the investigation, pointing out it was a case of gardaí investigating gardaí and they had no confidence in such a process.

In the end, however, they did meet with the cold case team and have been kept appraised of developments. The Irish Examiner understands the team is only now getting around to interviewing witnesses, although some who were there that night are now deceased.

The Crimecall programme last week included an interview with a detective inspector from Shannon Garda Station who is effectively running the investigation. He appealed for witnesses to come forward.

Pat Nugent’s surviving brothers John and Martin are continuing to hope that they can, as they see it, receive justice for their brother who died at such a young age. Their parents are now deceased, both having ended their days without ever finding out why their oldest son’s life was taken so cruelly.

Unfortunately, it will take a huge slice of luck for anything conclusive to emerge at this stage, certainly through a criminal investigation. The two major questions around the whole incident is how did Pat Nugent end up on the ground before he was apparently struck by William Ryan’s car, and who moved his stricken body from the courtyard to the reception area immediately after that incident.

“The cold case team began an investigation in early 2022,” John Nugent told the Irish Examiner. “They are carrying out this investigation as a fresh investigation, rather than carrying on from the one conducted in 1984. We have met with the investigating team on two occasions.”

He says he is very hopeful that this investigation will bring about the truth of what happened on the night Pat was killed. “I would urge anyone with any information, no matter how insignificant they think it is, to come forward and report it. Looking across the field at my brother’s grave is something we should never have had to do. I owe it to Pat and to my late parents to find out the truth and get justice for him. Somebody knows what happened and I am appealing to them to come forward so that my brother, Patrick Nugent can finally rest in peace.”

The Pat Nugent case is one of many dating from around that time that raised all sorts of questions about, in particular, how the cases which involved all sorts of individuals who were close to power were handled. The death of Father Niall Molloy in 1985 was in a similar vein. He died in controversial circumstances that were never fully explained and the manner in which the case was handled — right up to judicial decisions in a subsequent criminal trial — was never properly explored.

The Kerry Babies case in the spring of 1984 was another in which a garda investigation was highly controversial and led to a public tribunal of inquiry. In recent years that inquiry has been officially discredited for the conclusions it reached in respect of the evidence heard. In today’s Ireland such outcomes would, it might well be posited, be simply unsustainable, but different mores applied back then in what was a very different country.

For those who suffered injustices — such as the Nugent family — there have been efforts to retrospectively apply the standards of today to events that happened 40 years ago. The efforts are commendable but the passage of time has made the task of finding out what happened very difficult indeed.

This article was originally published on February 4, 2024.