The Cold Case Files

by Barry Cummins

  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.

  I remember I was in bed and I heard a hard knock at the door and it was my sister and she told me there was a fire at the old shop and everyone was saying that Stephen was in it. I said it couldn’t be Stephen because I knew where he was. He was supposed to be staying in a house in Brookview. We drove down to the front of Rossfield Avenue and there were fire-brigades there and two Gardaí and I got out of the car and I told them it couldn’t be my son. Everyone was saying it was but I knew where he was. I sat down on a wall and was wondering how this mix-up could be happening. Then Stephen’s friend came over to me. He had been in the den when it was set on fire and had managed to escape. He told me Stephen had been with him. I don’t remember anything after that.

  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, D71 and D72, 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 D
avid 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.

  Nine days after Stephen was killed, the terrorist attacks occurred at the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. Every other newsworthy story was swept away as much of the world focused on the unfolding story in the United States. The Garda Crimeline programme which had been due to be aired on the night of Tuesday 11 September was put back to the following night. Gardaí appeared on the rescheduled programme and on the following month’s programme appealing for information on the man who had set the fire. Detective Inspector Séamus Kane appealed to the man’s partner or mother or father or whoever was close to him to contact them. He also asked the man himself to come forward and explain his actions. A £5,000 reward was also offered by Crimestoppers for information which would solve the case.

  Stephen’s parents Billy and Liz didn’t have a Christmas tree that December. They didn’t do Christmas, they were too distraught. Two Gardaí from Tallaght visited the family on Christmas Day and brought some toys for Kelly and Gerry. Over the following years a number of Gardaí would provide help and advice to the family and Liz and Billy are grateful to all of those officers. One detective, Paul Connolly, went around with Liz to all the houses in Rossfield and helped to hand out leaflets appealing for people to come forward with information. In recent times Stephen’s family have been in contact with detectives John Stack and Tom McManus and Superintendent Eamon Dolan in Tallaght as efforts have continued to try and catch Stephen’s killer.

  Thirteen months to the day that Stephen was killed, Liz gave birth again. “Having Johnathan gave us a reason to get up in the morning,” Liz tells me. “We simply had to get up, and then we had a Christmas tree that year, in 2002. Jason was born a year later. It was our way of coping and carrying on.” Billy and Liz are together since 1987. Billy is from Clondalkin and Liz is from Fettercairn. They find strength in each other and in their four remaining children. Billy tells me Stephen is looking down on them all.

  On 4 April 2006 a woman in her early thirties was arrested in the Tallaght area by detectives carrying out a cold-case review of Stephen’s killing. The woman was questioned on suspicion of withholding information. She was subsequently released without charge. Almost a week later, a 45-year-old man was arrested in Ballyfermot and questioned on suspicion of having caused the fire at Rossfield Avenue which claimed Stephen’s life. Stephen’s family knew a review of the case had been going on, and they clearly remember getting a call shortly after 7 a.m. in April 2006 to say a man had been arrested in connection with the case. All that day the family waited for news, and then that evening came word that the man was being released and a file would be sent to the DPP. And so there followed more waiting, this time for weeks. “We were eventually told that there was not enough evidence to bring a case to court,” remembers Liz. “You think you are getting so close, you think this might be it, that all your questions will be answered, and then it’s taken from under you.”

  Until the person who started the fire at the makeshift den is brought to justice, we don’t know what his mindset was that night. Did he know there were children in the den? Why did he set the fire? Why did he go to the hut the first time, and then return to the hut and start the fire ten minutes later, having apparently left his dog somewhere nearby? Did he later confide in anyone about what he had
done? How many people are there who know more than they are saying?

  One question which remains to this day is what happened to the dog which was sighted on the video camera footage. Is it possible that Stephen’s killer later killed the dog and secretly buried it somewhere to try and hide his own identity?

  The Garda investigation also utilised the ViCLAS (Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System) computer system to assess if the crime had any similarities with other incidents. All information was fed into the computer to assess if the crime was the work of a pyromaniac. Detectives also arranged for the grainy video footage to be sent to an internationally renowned company in England to see if it could be enhanced. The advice was that it was not possible to improve the quality, but Stephen’s family believe this is an avenue which should be revisited as new technologies emerge. Liz has written to the FBI to ask if they might be able to assist, pointing out that tapes even from the time of the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy in 1963 have been enhanced in recent years.

  Over two years before Stephen died, there was an unrelated horrific arson incident in Tallaght. It was in July 1999 that Sergeant Andrew Callanan was on duty at Tallaght Garda Station when a man set fire to the public foyer. Sergeant Callanan bravely tried to use a fire extinguisher to stop the man, but he received fatal injuries as a result. A man was jailed for 15 years in July 2001 for arson, and was later given a concurrent 15-year sentence for the manslaughter of Sergeant Callanan.

  Another despicable case of arson caused horrific injuries to a young brother and sister in Moyross in Limerick in September 2006. The four-year-old and six-year-old were in their mother’s parked car when a group of youths set it alight. Three youths were later jailed for the attack. The two children have since shown remarkable strength and courage in recovering from their ordeal. A difference between this case and Stephen’s is that, not only did the children in Limerick survive, but those responsible were brought to justice.