The Murder of Sonny Dan

The death some years ago of former Superintendent James Hunt who lived at Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo, marked the severing of another link with the early history of the Garda Siochana and indeed with the predecessor force the Royal Irish Constabulary.

Superintendent Hunt had remained with the RIC right up to disbandment and was one of the members of the old Force who immediately transferred into the Garda Siochana or Civic Guard as it was perhpas more commonly known in the very early weeks of its existence. He was a rare enough animal in the early force,  a police officer with experience of crime investigation.

The RIC had no such thing as a detective branch, as indeed, the Garda Siochana had no detectives for the first three years of its operation. But  within the RIC a small staff of crime investigators had always been available at Headquarter. These men would travel to the scene of major crimes in aid of the local force, offering a degree of expertise which would not readily be found in local stations serving communities which were virtually free of crime as we know it today.

Jim Hunt was one of these men and his experience and knowledge played a significant part in some of the Garda Siochana’s first essays into the unchartered world of crime investigation. He knew the rudiments of forensic science, he had a good knowledge of criminal law, he had, above all else, the instincts of a crime investigator and these well honed by experience.

Perhaps the best known of his early cases was that which has lived on in local lore as “the Rossmuc murder which occurred in 1928 in Connemara. By a coincidence of geography it took place within the divisional area covered by the then Detective Sergeant George Lawlor, later to become celebrated as head of the Technical Bureau with the rank of Chief Superintendent. The solving of the case rested on two talents – Lawyers remarkable and painstaking approach to the securing of evidence and Hunt’s shrewd and penetrating abilities as an interrogator.

The case began with the discovery, one May morning in 1928, of a dead body in a stream out side Rossmuc. It was speedily identified as that of Daniel or “Sonny Dan Walsh, a small farmer of Hunt and his colleagues decided that any pro the vicinity who lived with his very much younger wife Ann and six children a little distance from the village. There were no valuables or money on the body, The only significant item was a small quantity of poteen or illegal whiskey in a bottle.

“Sonny Dan” was Ann’s second husband. Her first husband had died in America to where they had both emigrated. She returned to Ireland in 1919 with her three children, married Sonny Dan and had three more.

An inquest was held and it appeared from the evidence that Sonny Dan had died from drowning, His wife told the inquest that he had left the house the previous night to travel on foot to Oughterard, bringing with him a one pound note and a ten shilling note to complete various business transactions in the town. It appeared that the assumption at the inquest was that he had bought poteen, got drunk and fell into the stream. Small bruises seemed to confirm the theory and a verdict of accidental death by drowning was recorded.

Clearly the local guards should have tumbled to the fact that something was wrong.  Where was the money that Sonny Dan took with him? Poteen at the time was about five shillings a bottle in Connemara so even if he had bought a bottle he should have had a good deal of change. But in those days there was little forensic assistance that could be relied upon. There were no blood tests to ascertain the level of alcohol in the dead, man’s system and no fingerprints to see who might have handied the poteen bottle.

Rossmuc’s Sergeant Dan Gallagher however had his ear well to the ground and he shortly began to establish a picture which contradicted the image of domestic bliss in the Walsh household.  Anne Walsh had been seeing rather a lot of a young man from Rossmuc by the name of Martin Joyce and some reports suggested that he could be seen departing the Walsh house at late hours of the night. The details began to mount up and the rumours began to multiply. Finally, in November, a full-scale investigation was launched under the direction of Superintendent Hunt who had been sent from Headquarters. An exhumation order was issued but a second, more detailed examination of the remains, now six months old of course, revealed little of value beyond confirming a negative; Sonny Dan had not been poisoned as was being suggested in some quarters.

Hunt and his colleagues decided that any progress they could make would be on the basis of questioning of witnesses and suspects. And of course, Mrs Walsh and Martin Joyce were the prime suspects.

Both were interviewed at length. She stuck to her story that Sonny Dan had left to go to Oughterard to transact business Martin Joyce claimed to have been elsewhere on the night of the death and indeed provided a detailed account of his movements, as he claimed them, around nearby Curka Mountain on the night.”

Joyce’s story however did not hold up and Garda Inquiries rapidy established that while his account of his movements was accurate in detail,  it seemed to apply not to the night of the death of Sonny Dan but to the previous night – a stratagem not infrequently employed in the putting up of false alibis by suspected persons. More significantly, a witness was found who declared he had seen Joyce leaving the Walsh household with Sonny Dan around 11.00 p.m. on the night of the death. Meantime it was discovered that Joyce had begun to make plans to leave the district and possibly emigrate to North America. The guards had little enough to go on but they decided to charge him anyway
Joyce was now in custody on a murder charge with the Garda’s book of evidence still woefully thin. How would these crime investigators of the 1920’s have coped with the stringencies of today’s procedural requirements, one wonders! Certainly the solution they found to their problem at this stage would hardly meet with approval in today’s criminal courts.

Ann Walsh’s daughters had been by now sent away by their mother, one to relatives on the Aran islands, another to work with a family at Tuam, Co Galway, Hunt calculated rightly that the key to the events on the night of Sonny Dan’s death must rest with the young girls and he set off to question them. Mrs Walsh made clumsy attempts to silence the children, sending notes to them which warned them not to tell the guards the truth of the incident. But the children were easily persuaded to talk by Hunt and his colleagues and they confirmed the earlier information that Joyce had indeed been at the house. During the night, the children declared, Joyce and Sonny Dan had left together, to be followed shortly by Mrs Walsh. Clearly Sonny Dan met his death at their hands shortly afterwards.

Joyce and Walsh were convicted by the jury in the Central Criminal Court in June 1929 and both sentenced to hang. Later they were reprieved and sentenced to life imprisonment.

The Rosmuc murder is now just a footnote in the annals of Irish crime though it is well remembered in the area to this day. All of the investigating team have gone to their eternal reward. Old timers of the Technical Bureau long gone recall that it was the first criminal case in the State in which photographs were taken and used by the Gardal in evidence.