Patrick Quirke found guilty of Bobby Ryan's murder

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Patrick Quirke was found guilty of murdering Bobby Ryan. The proceedings were reported on 1 May 2019.

The jury did not hear evidence of recordings of Quirke being intimate with Mary Lowry. His defence argued that the recordings could prejudice the jury against him, and Justice Eileen Creedon agreed that their potential prejudice outweighed their evidential value.

One recording was played to the jury: a conversation between Lowry and her boyfriend Flor Cantillon. The defence had also opposed its admission, arguing that it would lead jurors to speculate about how the files came to be on Quirke's computer.

The jury was not told that Quirke's computer had been used to search for articles about notorious murders. Gardaí believed he was seeking information about how to get away with murder; the defence said the cases were famous and many people would have searched for information about them. Justice Creedon found the searches relevant but too prejudicial to admit.

Gardaí also reenacted what Quirke said he had seen inside a tank. The defence said no engineer had checked the reconstruction and that gardaí had made no measurements or accounted for lighting, time of day or time of year. Justice Creedon described the reenactment as “frail” and excluded it.