Crime scene examiners found traces of blood in the sitting room and bedroom of Mary Lowry’s house, the Tipperary murder trial has heard.

Retired detective John Grant, formerly of the Garda Technical Bureau, told the jury that he was crime scene manager at the farm in Fawnagowan, Co Tipperary, after the discovery of the remains of Bobby Ryan in a run-off pit.

The body was “badly decomposed and inaccessible”, he told the Central Criminal Court.

Patrick Quirke (50) has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Mr Ryan (52), a part-time DJ known as Mr Moonlight, on a date between June 3, 2011, and April 2013.

“The body was thought to be that of Bobby Ryan, missing two years,” Mr Grant told the court, adding that he was told Mr Ryan had been in a relationship with the owner of the farm. “Pat Quirke was also thought to be in a relationship with Ms Lowry,” Mr Grant added.

He met Inspector Patrick O’Callaghan at the scene, who informed him that the assault “may have taken place at the farmhouse and to examine same for traces of blood”.

On May 3, 2013, the scenes investigators examined the six-bedroom bungalow at Fawnagowan, with Mr Grant noting that the main section of the house was “extremely untidy and unkempt”.

Ms Lowry’s mother-in-law had a separate entrance to her area of the house.

All the outhouses were in a state of disrepair with broken windows, Mr Grant said.

Gardaí used a Kastle-Meyer test which gives a positive or negative reaction to the presence of blood.

There were positive readings in the sitting room, he said, and so they prepared the room for luminol testing, which involved making the room as dark as possible to use lights which enabled them to detect blood not visible to the naked eye.

A light fitting in the ceiling showed a ‘very faint’ reaction, he said, and it was sent to the laboratory for further testing.

Only the ceiling and light fitting confirmed blood and there was no other reaction on the surfaces of the living room, he said.

Ms Lowry’s bedroom was also tested, with the bed frame, mattress and floor showing a positive reading.

The wardrobe also revealed spots of blood on the slide doors of the wardrobe, with ‘directional blood spots’ in the interior. The doors were sent away to the lab for further analysis.

The court has not yet heard evidence of the results of the laboratory testing.

Mr Grant said the rest of the house was examined with crime lights but nothing was found.

“There was no evidence of any blood in the remainder of that house,” he said.

Garda scene examiners investigated the silver Ford vehicle owned by the accused Pat Quirke and got a negative result.

They also used crime lights to examine a Toyota Corolla car found in one of the outhouses but found nothing.

Eight outhouses around the farm were examined but gardaí found it difficult to do luminol testing on those because of the broken windows, making it difficult to black them out, he explained.

Mr Grant revealed that a health and safety risk assessment, carried out at the scene found there was a “high risk” posed to officers by bodily fluids, slurry and methane and so it was decided that fire officers wearing chemical suits would perform the operation.

He was present during the post-mortem examination by the then-deputy State pathologist Dr Khalid Jabbar, which revealed numerous injuries on the body.

The cause of death was multiple blunt force trauma, mainly to the face and side of the head, with further injuries to the ribs and one leg.

Dr Jabbar informed him the injuries were fatal and the victim “would have died within minutes of receiving” them.

Under cross-examination by Lorcan Staines SC for the defence, Mr Grant was asked if he had noted one of the arms had become detached.

Mr Grant told the court that “unfortunately” one of the members of the technical bureau team had been lifting the body into the body bag, when the arm had become detached during that motion.

“They had an adverse reaction.

“I had to call in the welfare service for them because of what happened,” he said.

He said the person’s reaction to the occurrence had “not been pleasant” and that it had been “physical”.

Meanwhile, he agreed that he was “watching closely” as the concrete slab over the tank was removed in order to retrieve the body. When the slab broke, he did not believe this event to be relevant as he felt it had not interfered with the body, he told the court.

The trial continues.

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