Tessa Fleming

We want to earn your trust and are members of the Trust Project.

See our ethics policies at independent.ie forward slash our journalism.

And if you enjoy The Indo Daily, don't forget to follow and leave us a review.

Every time the 3rd of June comes around, Michelle Ryan marks the anniversary of her father's death in her own private way.

She stays away from his grave.

For Michelle, her dad simply isn't there.

On that fateful June morning in 2011, Bobby Ryan, a quarry worker and popular part-time DJ known as Mr. Moonlight, vanished from Tipperary without a trace.

Almost two years later, his body was discovered in an underground run-off tank near the farmhouse where he was last seen.

The trial that followed was one of the longest in the history of the Irish state.

By its conclusion, a love rivalry would be publicly exposed, a man would be jailed, and another man long buried.

I'm Tessa Fleming and today on the IndoDaily, I'm joined by Irish Independent Special Correspondent Catherine Fegan and by Bobby Ryan's daughter, Michelle Ryan, to look back at the murder of Mr Moonlight, 15 years on.

Catherine Fegan, the murder of Bobby Ryan resulted in a trial that really gripped the nation.

I remember it well.

Everyone was just glued in to what was happening during this trial.

So maybe just take us back.

There were three people involved in this particular story.

It was kind of a love triangle.

So set the scene for us because we had Bobby Ryan, we had Patrick Quirk and we had Mary Lowry.

So how did Patrick Quirk take the news of Mary's new relationship then with Bobby Ryan?

One of, I suppose, the most remarkable aspects from this kind of love triangle was a letter that Patrick Quirk wrote in February of 2011 to the agony aunt in the Sunday Independent discussing that very situation of the three of them.