The defence has finished its closing arguments to the jury in Patrick Quirke’s murder trial.
The 50-year-old farmer from Breanshamore, Co Tipperary has pleaded not guilty to the murder of his love rival – local DJ Bobby ‘Mr Moonlight’ Ryan.
Over the course of three days in court, defence barrister Bernard Condon described the case against his client as one “based on theory with no hard evidence”.
He described Mr Quirke’s former lover Mary Lowry as an “unreliable and dangerous witness”.
She was in a relationship with Bobby Ryan when he went missing in June 2011.
It is the prosecution’s case that Mr Quirke murdered him in an attempt to rekindle an affair he had previously with her
Today, Mr Condon criticised the gardaí's initial Missing Person investigation and subsequent murder investigation after the accused found Mr Ryan’s body in an underground tank on Ms Lowry’s farm in 2013.
He said things should have been done differently.
He finished by asking the jurors to approach this case with some degree of fairness and to put themselves in Mr Quirke’s shoes.
Mr Condon suggested they’d say “this is not enough” if it were one of them or one of their loved ones in the dock.
The jurors in the trial have now heard from both legal teams for a final time and are expected to begin their deliberations next week.
The judge will address the jurors when they return next Tuesday and they’ll then be asked to retire to consider a verdict.
