‘We hope you are at peace now mom. We never gave up hoping for justice’

BY ALISON O’RIORDAN AND BRIAN KAVANAGH

COLD case killer Noel Long, who has been jailed for life, has lived without taking accountability nor ‘showing an ounce of remorse’ for the murder and sexual assault of a vulnerable woman 42 years ago, the victim’s family told the Central Criminal Court.

Long (74) was sentenced to the mandatory term of life imprisonment for murdering Nora Sheehan in June 1981. Mrs Sheehan’s naked and bruised body was found by forestry workers at The Viewing Point, Shippool Woods near Innishannon, six days after she went missing.

‘We hope you are at peace now mom. We never gave up hoping that one day we would get justice for you and we hope we have done you proud,’ the family of Nora Sheehan wrote.

The oldest prosecution for murder ever brought in Ireland, which saw the jury weigh evidence that was silent on a cause of death and did not include any evidence from the accused himself, or his interactions with gardaí, ended last Friday with a jury unanimously finding Long guilty.

Katie Sheehan said that her grandmother’s life was ‘taken from her in the cruellest way imaginable’ and it was hard to convey in words ‘the hurt we have carried over four decades, the legacy of which carries on to new generations’.

Sentencing judge Mr Justice Paul McDermott sympathised with the Sheehan family and extended his condolences to them.

The court heard that Long has 31 previous convictions that span 50 years from 1966 to 2016; 27 of those are for offences committed in Ireland and four are in the UK.

Detective Inspector Eamonn Brady said Long received a 12-month sentence from Cork Circuit Court in December 1971 for assault with intent to ravish, attempted carnal knowledge and common assault. He said Long’s most recent conviction was from Cork Circuit Court for assault causing harm on February 11th, 2014 in Cork city.

The court heard the four convictions in the UK were from the 1960s, when Long served in the British army with The Royal Irish Rangers. Long, with an address at Maulbawn, Passage West, Co Cork had pleaded not guilty to murdering 54-year old Mrs Sheehan.

Earlier, Det Insp Brady, from Macroom Garda Station, told Brendan Grehan SC, prosecuting, that Long became a suspect and was arrested in relation to another matter on June 16th, 1981 and questioned over the course of a number of days and subsequently on July 6th, 1981.

As a result of the directions of the then Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Eamonn Barnes, Long was charged with the murder of Mrs Sheehan and brought before the District Court in Cork on July 7th, 1981. He was admitted on bail two weeks later on July 18th, said the inspector.

The witness agreed with Mr Grehan that the pathologist who carried out the postmortem on the body of Mrs Sheehan died on August 5th, 1981.

As a result, the DPP decided this was an ‘insurmountable obstacle’ in pursuing the murder charge, leading to its withdrawal on November 10th, 1981.

Mr Grehan said due to a change in the science of DNA, Long was charged again with the murder of Mrs Sheehan on June 28th, 2022 and was granted bail by the High Court on July 7th of that year.

The barrister said that Long was married with small children in June 1981 but he and his wife later separated. Long has been in a new relationship for the past 25 years, he said.

The trial, which began on July 13th, heard evidence that a partial DNA profile generated from semen found in the body of Nora Sheehan and preserved for decades had matched DNA found on clothing taken from Long in 2021.

There was also evidence that Long had been in the same area as Mrs Sheehan when she went missing, that fibres recovered from the victim matched those taken from the carpeting of Long’s car and that paint fragments removed from the victim’s clothing also matched paint taken from the same vehicle.

In her victim impact statement, Katie Sheehan said Nora Sheehan was a ‘much loved wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt and friend. She was kind, compassionate and opinionated. She adored children and animals. She grew up in the countryside in Crookstown in a very happy home and lived there until she fell for a Cork city man James Sheehan, and moved to the big city.

‘It was here she became a mother to her three precious boys Jerry, James Junior and Eugene. She was a modern woman  and a bit ahead of her time and wanting to earn her own wage worked at a psychiatric hospital, bringing her country charm into the lives of the vulnerable patients.’

She continued: ‘Those connected to Nora think about her almost every day. Unfortunately we have been unable to think about her many wonderful qualities very often and the horrendous circumstances surrounding her death is what has occupied our thoughts these past 42 years. So many lives have been negatively impacted by this awful crime but we would like to pay special mention to some of Nora’s loved ones.’

She said: ‘We remember our grandfather who mom affectionately called Pop Carty who died a number of years after the loss of his little girl. No father should outlive their child or lose them in such horrific circumstances.

‘From your three boys: To lose a mother at such young ages under any circumstances is incredibly difficult but to learn that your vulnerable mother was taken advantage of, beaten, sexually assaulted and her dead body disposed of in such a horrific manner is something we have been unable to process. We dealt with things as best we could individually, all trying to block out what happened to our mother in our own ways.

‘We hope that we can now begin the process of dealing with what happened to our mother and go on to live the remainder of our lives at peace and begin to remember our mother for the quirky, feisty, glamorous mother she was. We hope you are at peace now mom. We never gave up hop- ing that one day we would get justice for you and we hope we have done you proud.

‘Lastly, we would like to take a moment to pray for the victims of sexual assault and those who have lost their lives by homicide. We pray for your families who live with this trauma. Our thoughts are also with the families of the hundreds of unsolved cold cases. We hope that this outcome gives you hope that one day you will achieve justice for your loved ones.’

It emerged murderer Long claimed that during a 1981 interrogation by gardaí he was beaten and brought into a dark room, where his head was repeatedly immersed in glass containers containing what he was told were body parts.

One of the last surviving members of the ‘Murder Squad’, an historic garda unit involved in many high-profile investigations in the 1980s, denied the allegation and called it ‘extraordinary’.

‘I can say this to my Lord: we don’t have body parts lying around in garda stations,’ retired detective Gerry O’Carroll told a hearing that took place in the weeks before a jury was empanelled.

Mr O’Carroll said that on July 6th, 1981 – barely a month after Nora Sheehan’s body was discovered – Long confessed that he had picked up the mother-of-three in his car after gardaí told him they had forensic proof of matches between her clothing and Long’s car. Long disputed making any confessions to Mr O’Carroll and did not give any evidence about the allegations at the pre-trial hearing.