Shirley Conroy didn’t look at her father as she stepped up to take the stand but he watched her intently. She was about to start giving evidence against him in his trial for the murder of Sligo teenager Melissa Mahon.
Ronald McManus, or Dunbar as most of the witnesses know him, denies the murder of the 14-year-old in September 2006. He also denies threatening another of his daughters, Samantha.
Shirley spoke quickly as she described her life with her father, speaking in a soft English accent. She told the court how her father had looked after her and her two younger sisters after their mother had left them when Shirley was five. They had been living in Essex then. When she was twelve they moved to Kent. Things changed after her father had had a run in with a local drug dealer. Someone had called to the house and shot her and her father. After McManus gave evidence against the shooter in court, he and his daughters were taken into a witness protection programme. They changed their name to McManus and moved to Scotland.
In July 2005, the family moved back to their father’s home town of Sligo. After staying initially with an aunt they moved into a house in the Rathbraughan Estate. All three girls had been attending the Mercy Convent school in Sligo town and it was here they met Melissa Mahon. Shirley explained that it had been her two younger sisters who had hung around with Melissa, whose family had also moved over from the UK in 2005. She agreed that Melissa and her sisters had got into trouble together at school and had ended up being either suspended or expelled.
She told the court that she had moved out of the family home in January 2006 and had soon after met her boyfriend, Danny Lynnot, also known as Danny Burren. She had become pregnant a couple of months later. Shirly said she was a daily visitor to her father’s house and had often arrived to find Melissa there, sometimes in the company of her older sister Leanna. In August 2006, when Melissa had gone missing from home, Shirley said the teenager had been hiding in her fathers house. She said she hadn’t approved and had told her father he would get into trouble if the authorities found out he was hiding Melissa.
She said that she remembered a conversation with her father’s then girlfriend, Angelique Sheridan, where the subject of her father possibly going to jail if the matter came out came up. But she told defence counsel Brendan Greahan that she had no memory of any conversation about her father having a plan to kill Melissa and she didn’t think it was something she was likely to forget.
Shirley told the court that her father and sisters had moved into the house beside the the original family home in Rathbraughan Park in September 2006. She said that her father had kept the key to the back door of the old house and when Melissa was hiding with the Dunbar family when she had run away, he would take her over the back wall to the next door house and let her in by the back door if anyone came round. She said she couldn’t remember the last time she saw Melissa but thought it was in early September 2006.
Shirley said that 18 months after Melissa’s disappearance her sister Samantha had told her some alarming news. Samantha had been staying in the house Shirley was living in with her boyfriend and their baby after she had been kicked out by her father. On January 31st, their mother Lisa rang. She and Samantha had a massive row and, when Shirley took the phone to try and defend her little sister, Samantha started shouting “I’ll tell you why I’m this way.”
Shirley said she hung up the phone and sat down on the sofa with her sister. She told Mr Greahan that she had felt it might be something to do with Melissa’s disappearance. It was then that Samantha told her their father had strangled Melissa and that he had taken his two younger daughters with him when he went to dump the body in the River Bonet. She agreed that her sister had been terrified that she would go to jail herself and had begged for Shirley not to tell anyone about her claims.
Shirley agreed that her younger sister had initially told a different story, which changed repeatedly. The girl, who can’t be named for legal reasons, had claimed that Samantha had killed Melissa on a camping trip when she was high on drugs or in another scenario, that Melissa had attacked both sisters on the camping trip and Samantha had hit her on the head with a piece of wood.
Shirley said that she did not remember her father ever taking the younger girls on a camping trip although it had been frequently discussed and he had asked her to look after her younger sister if they went. She said that she had been aware of rumours that her boyfriend had been having an affair with Melissa but dismissed the news as merely rumour. She told Mr Greahan that her father had told her about the rumours while she was pregnant but she had never taken them seriously.
Earlier today Detective Garda Pauline McDonagh gave evidence about how she had been called by Shirley’s boyfriend and arrived at the house on January 31st. She said that both Shirley and Samantha had seemed very upset. Shirley was holding some rosary beads and Samantha was sitting in an armchair by the fireplace in what seemed to be a chance. Det McDonagh said that she had not known what was wrong with Samantha and had immediately gone over to her and knelt down beside her to talk to her.
She told Mr Greahan that she had “absolutely, categorically and definitely” not told McManus that the case should never have come to court.
Tomorrow we are expected to hear from McManus’s other two daughters via videolink. An intersting day’s evidence I’m sure.
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