Bobby Ryan’s heartbroken daughter has admitted she is haunted by the image of her
dad’s broken body lying in a concrete pit.
Michelle Ryan spoke out after evil farmer Patrick Quirke was caged for life for the murder of his love rival at Dublin’s Central Criminal Court.
Distraught Michelle said the violent end met by her trucker dad, a popular part-time DJ known as Mr Moonlight, keeps her awake at night.
And in her first interview since the guilty verdict was delivered in courtroom number 13 on Wednesday, she insisted she could never forgive Bobby’s twisted killer.
She said: “When they showed where daddy was for 22 months I was like, ‘Poor daddy, he was down in the dark and he was down in the cold’.
“We were sitting there every day hoping we would get an answer to the question we have – why?
“That never came. To this day we still carry that question. I think even if there was an answer it would never be good enough.
“I will never, ever, ever, ever forgive that man for taking our world away, because that is what daddy was. When we were sitting there it was 50:50. Are we going to get justice or are we going to walk away with nothing?
“It’s in the hands of 12 strangers whether or not daddy can rest in peace and we can ever close an eye again.”
Scheming Quirke was convicted by a majority guilty verdict after the longest murder trial in the history of the State, lasting 15 weeks.
Jurors heard how he killed Bobby so he could rekindle an affair with his sister-in-law Mary Lowry – but gardai believe he also wanted to get his greedy paws on her land.
Quirke had made secret sex tapes during the affair with the widow and the court heard his obsession with her drove him into a jealous rage over her new relationship.
He sent menacing texts to Bobby warning him to stay away from Mary – and was plotting his murder even as he shook his hand and apologised at an arranged meeting to clear the air.
Michelle told the Marian Finucane Show on RTE radio: “There was nothing to be jealous of. My father had his family and he had his music, he was happy with what he had.
“I said, ‘Daddy, I don’t want you in their company’. I said, ‘You’re an old soul, please let these people stop walking all over you. It’s not healthy, cut your ties from it. Stop it now’. I still don’t know what to make of that to be honest. It was very hard to listen to.
“We were listening [in court] about Mary Lowry and we were listening about Patrick Quirke, but where was the mention of our father?
“He was the absolute life and soul of our world. He really was an exceptional man. He was a jolly soul, he wasn’t confrontational.”
Larissa Nolan comment: 'Where is the support for vulnerable Mary Lowry after Moonlight trial?'
Michelle, who was christened Shelley Moonlight by her father when she followed in his footsteps as a DJ, recalled the last time she saw him alive two days before his murder.
She said: “On June 1, 2011, I would have wrapped him up in cotton wool and took him away with me if I’d known then what I know now.
“I don’t think there’s any such thing as normal left for us after eight years of having our world turned upside down and inside out.”
Recalling the frantic search for her dad the day he went missing she said she “had a feeling” that drew her to the woods where his van was found.
She added she still had “flashbacks” and told how she bought a bottle of Lilt and a bar of fruit and nut chocolate in the hope her dad would emerge hungry from the undergrowth.
Michelle said: “I knew he would not have left us in despair like that.
“I said to myself, ‘You’re not going to see him again, and if you do he’s not going to be able to talk to you’.”
And she told of her heartache at not being able to kiss his face one last time as he was waked in a closed coffin.
Locals reveal that killer Pat Quirke was money-mad and saw himself as a celebrity in Tipperary
She said: “We were told it was a traumatic death. Sitting in the funeral home just before they removed him to the hearse, I just hugged the coffin.”
Michelle revealed how she and her brother Robert moved to Cork after their dad went missing as “Tipperary got too hard”.
And she told how she dreaded the day they would have to explain to Bobby’s six grandchildren why their beloved “Granddad Bob” was not around.
She added: “Time ticks on but we’re still back there on June 3 –there’s not a day goes
by we don’t have flashbacks.”
