Disappearance of Larry Griffin
Laurence "Larry" Griffin (1880 – 25 December 1929[1]) was an Irish postman who disappeared from the village of Stradbally, County Waterford on Christmas Day 1929.
Investigators concluded that Griffin visited a local pub after work where he was injured in a drunken altercation; he either died immediately from his injury or shortly afterwards in the adjacent Garda station.
Investigators eventually arrested and charged several Stradbally residents, but the prosecution's case fell apart in court when the key witness, Jim Fitzgerald, changed his testimony.
[1]: 186–200, 241–243, 262–264 The disappearance remains a contentious issue in Stradbally, where visitors and journalists have been verbally abused and threatened with litigation for asking about it.
[1]: 21 Griffin re-joined the army at the start of World War I, and was discharged on 3 June 1916 due to injuries – his arm was permanently damaged, part of his ear was missing, and he lost several of his teeth.
His wife, Mary, guessed that he may have had too much to drink and decided to sleep at a friend's house, rather than risk cycling home drunk.
[1]: 27 O'Mara established that Larry had not called in to collect the mail at any locations between Stradbally and the point where his bicycle was found, even though these were part of his normal route.
[1]: 35–36 On 6 January 1930, Father O'Shea, a priest from a neighbouring village, told O'Mara that the Gardaí in Stradbally were concealing what had really happened, and that he should question the sixteen-year-old John Power.
Power had been standing outside the window of a local pub, Whelan's, with three other men for some time on the evening of 25 December, and they had seen Griffin and Garda Dullea outside the post office at 6:30pm.
[1]: 39–41 At the time of Griffin's disappearance, it was illegal for pubs in Ireland to serve alcohol on either Christmas Day or Good Friday.
Frawley went into Whelan's to see if they would put him up for the night, but realising that he had been followed in by Sergreant Cullinane (who was ensuring the premises was not serving alcohol), he left again.
Garda Dullea then led Larry round the corner (passing John Power and his friends), and the two of them entered Whelan's by the back gate.
According to Fitzgerald, Gardaí Dullea and Murphy, all the Whelan family, Thomas Cashin, headteacher of a local national school, and four other people (Ned Dunphy, Jack Galvin, and George and Patrick Cummins) were privy to this conversation.
He said that they had not been admitted to Whelan's, and had instead gone to O'Reilly's, another pub in the village, and then to a house known as "The Hall" to play cards, where he claimed he fought with another local man.
[1]: 26 While it was unanimously agreed that a fight had occurred at the card game, the rest of Corbett's story was only partially corroborated by other witnesses.
The stove in Whelan's against which Griffin had allegedly hit his head was removed by Gardaí, as well as a wooden bench, ladies stockings, and a coal scuttle which appeared to be bloodstained.
They were charged with murder, disposing of a body with intent to obstruct a coroner's inquest, and taking away a postbag and postman's cap, which were property of the postmaster general.
[1]: 120 On 7 February, a preliminary hearing was held at Waterford Courthouse, where the prosecution had to show that there was sufficient evidence to justify trying the defendants before a jury.
[1]: 131 With the ever-changing witness narrative and lack of hard evidence, the prosecution's case was to lean heavily on Jim Fitzgerald's testimony.
The case was heard in December 1930; it was alleged that the Gardaí had tried to bribe him to say that he was in Whelan's pub on Christmas night, and that when he would not do so, they threatened to kill him.
Unease began to spread among the Whelans and Cashins, who appeared to be concerned that Corbett would make a deal which would involve him revealing what he knew about what had happened to Larry Griffin in exchange for the cash.
[1]: 194–195 A villager told a Stradbally Guard that he believed that Whelan, Cashin and company wanted "to close his (Tommy's) mouth" because they thought he was "capable of anything".
[1]: 241–243 In 1954, Gardaí Murphy and Sullivan sued a British newspaper, Empire News, for libel for a sum of £600 each over an article which said that "the postman was taken to the police barracks for safety.
[1]: 147–9 Superintendent Hunt, another Garda who had been brought into the investigation, reported that he had interviewed Fitzgerald after the collapse of the prosecution case and said that he was terrified, that he had been threatened repeatedly, and could not obtain any work.
Fitzgerald told Hunt that he had got his initial story about Larry's death secondhand from Tommy Corbett, who had heard it from his employer Patrick Cunningham.
[1]: 273–4 At the time of Griffin's disappearance, the Whelans were in arrears with their landlord, and had been successfully sued by one of their suppliers for non-payment for goods supplied.
When the case was dropped, the Department of Education wrote to him asking him to respond to allegations that he had been in a pub on Christmas Day, that he had been involved in the killing of Larry Griffin, and that his car had been used to dispose of the body.
[1]: 265 In the early 1990s, the broadcaster Cathal O'Shannon tried to make a TV programme about the case, but RTÉ turned it down because James Whelan was still alive and likely to sue for libel.
O'Shannon reported that he "was almost run out of Stradbally and received two threats of legal action from the Whelan family" while researching the case.
Ó Drisceoil believes that there was an altercation in Whelan's involving Larry Griffin, in which he was either killed outright or injured and taken across the road to the Garda barracks, where he later stumbled out of bed and fell down the stairs to his death.
