MARY LOWRY: IT FELT LIKE I WAS ON TRIAL
Widow in Mr Moonlight trial conf irms she has a new partner
THE woman at the centre of the love triangle that led to the murder of parttime DJ Bobby Ryan has found love again, she told the Irish Mail on Sunday this week.
Mother-of-three Mary Lowry declined to say who her new boyfriend was, saying only that she wanted to get on with her life and be happy in the same way she would have been with Mr Ryan, whose stage name was Mr Moonlight.
Mrs Lowry told the MoS that the court case had been an ordeal and agreed that she felt she had been the one on trial.
She said, tearfully, that there were no winners in the trial that captured the country’s imagination. Speaking at her home in
Bansha, Tipperary, Mary told the MoS: ‘I am in a new relationship.’
With tears rolling down her face, she said: ‘I was a witness in a case and it’s over. I went to court and I told the truth. I’ve had enough of courts.
‘Pat Quirke killed someone and he is in jail now. Bobby Ryan was a lovely man.’
And, according to Mary, the longest-ever murder trial – which resulted in her brother-in-law being jailed for life – has taken its toll on Mr Ryan’s family, her own three sons and her late husband Martin’s sister Imelda Quirke, who accompanied her killer husband to court every day.
‘There are no winners here… this isn’t about winning. It’s going to take a long time [to get on with life]. I have three boys and their father died of cancer.
‘I just want to get on with my life and in the way I would have wanted to with Bobby Ryan.
‘I just want to be left alone… I want to be able to go out in my garden and enjoy it.’
Asked if she felt she had been the one on trial, she nodded and replied: ‘Yeah.’
Her comments followed similar sentiments expressed by her brother Eddie Quigley, who also testified during the trial.
Speaking at his home in Newport, Tipperary, he said: ‘I feel sorry for the Quirke children.’ He added that the case ‘went on so long it became about something it wasn’t about. It was forgotten what it was about’.
Meanwhile, friends have described Mary’s new partner as a handsome, fun-loving, affable man.
The pair have being dating for more than a year and have been spotted dancing at local country & western music sessions, and at the local pub in Mary’s home village of Bansha. Mary has introduced her new man to friends and it is believed the six-footer has a substantial farm holding of his own.
One friend said: ‘Mary is a lovely person but she is vulnerable… She and [he] have been going out together for a long time now. They are going out for well over a year and when you see them together they are really happy. They are content and Mary is happy out.’
Another friend added: ‘He isn’t from Bansha. He has a big farm of
his own and when he comes at the weekend he goes milking for someone local.
‘He is a big tall man… he has to be 6ft 2in or 6ft 3in. They seem very much happy together. They go to the pub in Bansha and they also go dancing.’
In a documentary, Mr Moonlight: The Trial Of Patrick Quirke, to be broadcast tomorrow on Virgin Media One, Robert Ryan Jr described the impact his father’s death has had on him: ‘When Daddy was found, there was an aerial shot of the farm put up… Thinking back, I won’t say I was that close – but I was pretty close. It haunts me to this day.
‘Trying to go asleep every night, I’d be turning, tossing, screaming in bed, waving hands…
‘Every time I close my eyes, I actually think he was just thrown in there, hurt and left to starve and die. That absolutely tore me… that I couldn’t help Daddy.’