In the early hours of the morning on December 20th, 1971, a man’s body was discovered in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains.

News reports that morning were quick to note that the body had been found close to the area where, just ten days earlier, the body of 19-year-old Una Lynskey had been uncovered.

It wasn’t long before it was confirmed that the dead man was 19-year-old Marty Kerrigan, who lived in an area known as the Bush not far from Una's home on Porterstown Lane in County Meath.

Marty had spent the last two months of his life under a cloud of suspicion and anger after he and his two friends, Martin Conmey and Dick Donnelly, were falsely accused of involvement in Una’s disappearance.

A composite image of Martin Conmey, Dick Donnelly and Marty Kerrigan at a wedding shortly before Marty’s death.

Gardaí had picked up the trio and taken them to Trim Garda Station where, they say, they underwent a “terrifying ordeal”.

After days of heavy-handed interrogation, both Marty and Martin signed false confessions, while Dick, the oldest of the three, refused.

When they were released, they found that the local community had been told that they had confessed to murdering their young neighbour.

It sparked weeks of intimidation, with shots fired over their houses and the word ‘murderer’ painted on the road outside each of their homes.

So where were the bodies discovered?

A map showing the area where the bodies of Una Lynskey and Marty Kerrigan were discovered. Image: Google

Newspaper reports the morning Una was found say her body was discovered “under Glendoo Moutain about two and a half miles from Glencullen”.

Court transcripts reveal that the remains were found: “Just off the Glencullen Road, between Rathfarnham and Glendoo”.

They go further, describing the location as, “About three miles from Glencullen on the Rathfarnham Road near the Pine Forest”.

They also note that “the closest house to where the body was found is Glendoo House, which is approximately three-quarters of a mile away, on the Glencullen side."

Gardaí say Marty’s body was found at Tibradden, Rathfarnham, ‘close to where Una Lynskey’s body had been recovered’.

Una

On Friday, December 10th, 1971, farmer James Williams was cleaning a drain on the side of the road near the Pine Forest on Glendoo Mountain.

His attention was drawn to something across the bank, maybe seven or eight yards from the road.

It was a metal fire grate resting on top of a piece of black felt in the middle of a clump of bog flowers.

He grabbed his shovel and removed some gorse bushes to see what lurked beneath and, to his horror, he found a human skull.

When emergency services carefully peeled back the black felt, a badly decomposed body was found lying on its back in what appeared to be a hastily dug shallow grave.

It was fully clothed and on the wrist of the left arm was a gold heart-shaped watch. On the ring finger of the right hand was a signet ring with a red stone.

It was Una.

Despite a thorough postmortem, then-State Pathologist Professor Maurice Hickey was unable to establish a cause of death.

With the autopsy now complete, Una’s remains were prepared for a proper burial.

Marty

On the night he died, Marty had been out socialising with friends when he was abducted by two of Una’s brothers, Sean and James Lynskey, and her cousin, John Gaughan.

Witnesses said James Lynskey knocked him to the ground before Sean grabbed him by the hair and dragged him into John Gaughan's waiting car.

The Lynskey brothers and their cousin later told Gardaí that they drove towards the location where Una’s body was found, grilling him about what he knew.

They threatened him and when he continued to insist he had nothing to do with her death or disappearance, his head was bashed off a bar under the car seat.

When they pulled into a garage to refuel, Marty began to scream for help.

Sean Lynskey put his hand over his mouth to silence him and nobody ever heard Marty speak again.

The trio told Gardaí they believed Marty was still alive when they threw him out of the car in the Dublin mountains.

When he was found in the early hours of the morning, he was dead.

In March the following year, the trio went on trial for murdering Marty Kerrigan.

They were eventually convicted of manslaughter. Sean Lynskey and John Gaughan were jailed for three years, while James Lynskey was jailed for two years because he was a minor.

Inside the Crime

Season 3 of Inside The Crime is a story of divided loyalties, misplaced vengeance and an act of cruel injustice.

At the heart of it all, however, is the unsolved murder of a 19-year-old girl.

This is the story of the Una Lynskey Murder.

Throughout the season, you can go Deeper Inside the Crime with interactive maps, family trees and in-depth articles examining the key points from the story.

Listen and subscribe to Inside the Crime on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Spotify now.

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