Declan Flynn: Murder in the Park
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What events set the scene for the night Declan Flynn was attacked in Fairview Park?
The early hours of september tenth, nineteen eighty two are unseasonably warm for Dublin City. It is well into the high teens, despite the sun having set so many hours earlier. It is a Thursday night, and anyone who has been out earlier have begun to make their way home. On the north side of the city, most of the shops and businesses have closed up for the night. Along Annesley Bridge Road, Fairview Grill is still open. It doesn't close until around 4 a.m. The bright lights of the takeaway act as a beacon for late night revellers looking for a bag of chips or a burger before heading home. Across the road, Fairview Park lies in darkness. Beyond the trees that line the edge, the park stretches away eastwards, where it is eventually bisected by the Dublin Belfast railway line.
At its northern end, the park joins the Clonturf Road close to Merino Crescent, where, in eighteen forty seven, Bram Stoker, the famous author of Dracula, was born. Dracula, the legendary vampire that stalked the night looking for victims. Two men, John Sheridan and Colin McGrain, are walking home from the city centre, along the footpath opposite the park. They come upon a young man, a teenager. He's in an agitated state. He has blood on his hands. They ask him what's wrong, and the young man leads them into the park. It's just over there, the teenager says, as they reach the gate. Sheridan and McGraine spot a dark shape, a shadow on the ground, surrounded by empty bottles, heavy sticks, and blood. They're looking at the body of a man.
He's bleeding. His jacket partially covers his face. The man makes a gargling noise. And a teen runs off.
When someone is killed in Ireland, the Guardi call in a specialist unit of forensic crime scene examiners from the Guardian Technical Bureau. This is Ireland's real life version of CSI, but it's nothing like the movies or TV shows. For twenty five years I was one of the detectives on that team. My name is John Sweetman. My job as a guarded detective in the Technical Bureau was to read the evidence that could not speak for itself. I learned to see what others might miss, fingerprints smudged on the handle of a door, weapons disguised in everyday objects, handwritten notes that revealed more than the writer ever intended. The smallest traces often unraveled the bigger story, and now I'm here to tell you those stories.
In this podcast from Golud, I take you inside some of Ireland's most haunting investigations. This is Lines of Inquiry, a goal out original podcast that follows the evidence step by step and tries to uncover the real story behind the headlines. In this episode, the murder of thirty one year old Declan Flynn, a vulnerable man trying to live his life in a country where simply being yourself could be considered a crime. This is Lines of Inquiry The Murder of Declan Flynn.
Fairview Park lies in the northern inner suburb of Fairview in Dublin City. It was originally a tidal mud flat for the river Tolka. In the early nineteen hundreds it was used as a landfill. Incinerated rubbish was brought by the wagon load to be dumped in the area, which was sometimes referred to as Ash Park. Rubble from buildings destroyed during the Easter rising was said to have been dumped there as well. The place was full of refuse meters deep, with local residents often complaining about the foul odor. The first trees were planted in nineteen oh eight with further development during the nineteen twenties. Maple, birch, beech, horse chestnut, and flowering cherry trees were joined by flower beds, playing grounds, a bandstand, all surrounded by iron railings.
A statue commemorating Irish Republican and alleged Nazi Germany collaborator, Sean Russell, was erected in the park, near the bandstand in nineteen fifty one. Over the years it was vandalized a number of times. Its limbs and even its head were broken off, before the original stone construction was replaced with a bronze one in two thousand nine. More recently, in june twenty twenty, the base of the statue was painted temporarily, in the rainbow colours of the pride or LGBTQ movement.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What events set the scene for the night Declan Flynn was attacked in Fairview Park?
0:04–15:28
2
How did the Garda Technical Bureau’s forensic team respond to the discovery of the body?
15:28–22:53
3
What is the historical background of Fairview Park and its reputation as a cruising spot?
22:53–34:04
4
What previous assaults and gang activity foreshadowed the murder of Declan Flynn?
34:04–45:21
5
Who was Declan Flynn and what aspects of his personal life made him vulnerable?
45:21–1:03:47