14 – The Grangegorman Murders: A spree killing & a false confession

 
 
Dublin: 1997. Three women occupy number 1 Orchard View, an assisted living facility for former patients of the nearby St Brendan’s Psychiatric Hospital. On the night of March 6th of that year, two of the women, Sylvia Sheils and Mary Callanan, were brutally murdered in their rooms. They were discovered the next morning by their housemate Ann Murnagh, and a hunt for the killer began. The Gardai soon heard that a young heroin addict who slept rough in the Grangegorman area may be responsible for the heinous crimes. Dean Lyons was questioned by the Gardai and promptly confessed to the killings. But was this man capable of the horrible crimes he had confessed to, or did the Gardai have the wrong man? There would be two further murders before the case was solved….
 
 

 
 

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Sources:

Report of the Commission of Investigation (Dean Lyons Case) Dublin:Stationary office, 2006.

Alan Bailey, The Grangegorman Murders: Dean Lyons and Mark Nash (Dublin: Gill and MacMillan, 2015).
 
Ruaidhri Giblin “State scientists were ‘trying to do down’ serial killer Nash, appeals court heard” https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/mark-nash-found-guilty-of-cold-case-murder-672676.html 20 April 2015 7 November 2017
 
Ruaidhri Giblin, “ Serial Killer Mark Nash launches appeal agains double murder conviction” http://www.thejournal.ie/mark-nash-appeal-3682486-Nov2017/ 6 November 2017
 
Ruaidhri Giblin, “Court Reserves judgment on Serial killer Mark Nash’s appeal against conviction for ‘Grangegorman murders’” https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/court-reserves-judgment-on-serial-killer-mark-nashs-appeal-against-conviction-for-grangegorman-murders-36425100.html 20 December 2017