Five years after the murder of Galway taxi-driver Eileen Costello- O'Shaughnessy, her family believes that the Garda has the "wrong suspect". Mr Martin Costello, the taxi-driver's brother, and her mother, Nora, are convinced that the culprit is still at large.
Ms Costello-O'Shaughnessy was found dead in a lane off the Tuam-Galway road on December 1st, 1997, having failed to return home from work the night before.
The murder is still unsolved, in spite of exhaustive Garda investigations.
One of the first people to be questioned has turned out to be the current suspect in the case. Thomas Murray, a convicted murderer who killed retired school-teacher Nancy Nolan while on parole in February 2000, was questioned again over a year ago at Roscommon Garda station. Murray had been convicted in December 2000 of Ms Nolan's murder at her home in Ballygar on the Galway-Roscommon border. He was originally convicted of the murder of an elderly man, William Mannion, also in Ballygar, in 1981.
After the second conviction, the then Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, initiated an inquiry into how Murray came to be on parole. The Olden report criticised the decision to free him against the advice of the Garda and the prison authorities. Murray was out of prison at the time of Ms Costello-O'Shaughnessy's death, working on a building site near Merlin Park in Galway.
Mr Costello will mark his sister's death with a fifth anniversary Mass at Corofin, Co Galway, this evening, along with family members including his mother and the taxi-driver's two grown-up children, Susan and Damien.
Mr Costello told The Irish Times several people requested by gardaí to give fingerprints had refused. "In my view, they are still suspects until they are eliminated," he said. The Garda had kept in close contact with the family throughout the investigation, he said, but he now believed they were looking at the "wrong man".
Mrs Costello, who was 80 earlier this year, said she always had the feeling that her daughter knew her killer "and she wouldn't have known this man".
"If Thomas Murray did it, he has nothing to lose by confessing because he is in prison for life."
Chief Supt Tom Monaghan of the Galway division said matching fingerprints was not the only way of eliminating suspects and several people who had declined to give fingerprints had been eliminated for other reasons. Gardaí were keeping an open mind on the case.
"This investigation is very much alive, is ongoing and it will not be lost sight of until such time as a conviction is obtained," he added.
