The jury in Patrick Quirke’s murder trial has heard he told Gardaí he was afraid of his former lover Mary Lowry.
The 50-year-old farmer from Breanshamore, Co. Tipperary denies murdering her boyfriend sometime between June 3rd 2011 and April 30th 2013.
Patrick Quirke wasn’t under arrest when he first spoke to Gardaí about finding Bobby Ryan’s body in a run-off tank on Mary Lowry’s farm.
He disappeared 22 months earlier after leaving Mary Lowry’s home on the morning of June 3rd 2011.
Mr. Quirke said he found the body as he prepared to go spreading slurry.
He said he got a shock and wasn’t thinking or acting straight when he rang his wife who called over to confirm it was a body before she called Gardaí.
He said he was afraid of Mrs. Lowry, a woman with whom he cheated on his wife with in what she called a “seedy affair” after her husband died.
He said this was his only crime and his name was mud in the town he’d spent his whole life in because of it.
He described her as “vicious” and claimed she verbally abused him in her yard the evening before the discovery.
He said he also had a theory something sinister had happened to Bobby because all the alternatives didn’t make sense to him.
