Larry Griffin - The Missing Postman (2)

Following the disappearance of Stradbally postman Larry Griffin a number of arrests were made.  On 24^th January 1930 National school teacher Thomas Cashin and local farmer Edward Morrissey were arrested.  Three days later Patrick Whelan Publican, George Cummins Farmer and Patrick Cunningham were also arrested.  Within days Whelan’s wife Brigid, his daughter Nora and son James were charged and lodged in jail.  Sensationally two Stradbally based Gardai, Edward Delea and William Murphy, were arrested and all made their first Court appearance at Waterford District Court on 7^th February 1930.  The Prosecuting Counsel in his opening address claimed that National School teacher Thomas Cashin struck Larry Griffin while local farmer Edward Morrissey pushed him to the ground.  Griffin, he claimed, hit his head off a stove and remained motionless on the ground.  Counsel then made a quite extraordinary claim that Griffin ‘was not beyond medical aid’ and that when he was carried to Cashin’s car ‘he was a live man’.  However, despite six appearances before the District Court no evidence whatsoever was adduced to substantiate these claims.

Only one of the 15 or 23 persons alleged by the State Prosecutor to have been in Whelan’s pub that Christmas night made a statement to the Garda.  James Fitzgerald was called to the witness box on 7^th February and immediately claimed to have made his statement under duress and that much of what he had said was false.  In his statement he claimed that Edward Morrissey had pushed Larry Griffin to the ground and that Pat Whelan, the publican coming out from behind the bar cried out ‘you have ruined me, you have killed a man in my house.’  Griffin, he said, was wrapped in a white blanket and put in Cashin’s car which was driven away by Cashin, accompanied by Morrissey.  Larry Griffin was never seen again. 

Near the village of Stradbally were several disused mine shafts, a legacy of the local copper industry which flourished up to the 1870s.  Deep disused shafts were to be found at Tankardstown and nearby Ballinasilla and it was there that the Gardai’s search for Larry Griffin’s body was initially concentrated.  In the meantime the ten Defendants were remanded in custody to appear again at Waterford District Court on 14^th February.  At that second Court hearing Dr. John McGrath, a pathologist based in Mercers Hospital Dublin, was unable to give conclusive blood test results on clothing removed from some of the Defendants and items taken from Whelan’s pub.  The Defendants were again remanded in custody for another week and by now busloads of sightseers were descending on Stradbally as national and international newspapers carried the story of the missing postman.

The mine shaft at Tankardstown was inspected by Garda Brazil who was lowered down 130 feet when he encountered a ledge beyond which he could not go.  Further investigation was discontinued and the search moved to the Ballinasilla mine shaft.  The expertise of a Mr. Frank Morgan of Liverpool was now used and Morgan was lowered down the Ballinasilla shaft to a depth of almost 250 feet.  Water was reached at that point with a depth of another 150 feet or so.  However, the Liverpudlian advised that the narrow shaft was in a very dangerous state and so the  part of the shaft underwater could not be inspected.

The District Court sat on 21^st and 28^th February and on both occasions Prosecuting Counsel sought further remands in custody so that information as to the possible location of Griffin’s body could be followed up.  The ten prisoners made their fifth Court appearance on 7^th March when Thomas Finlay asked the Judge for a final remand so that information made available to the Gardai within the previous five days could be checked out.

On 14^th March with Griffin’s body still untraced the State formally asked the Court to withdraw all charges.  The case remained open but without Larry Griffin’s body further legal proceedings were unlikely to arise. 

James Fitzgerald, the only person to make a statement to the Gardai about Larry Griffin’s disappearance, left his native village in March 1930 and never returned.  The two Gardai who were in Whelans pub that Christmas evening were dismissed from the Garda Siochana.  I first visited Stradbally village in 1958 in the company of John W. Kehoe and was shown the fireplace in Whelan’s pub against which my informant claimed Larry Griffin fell.  However, I was not told that the fireplace was a later replacement for the stove which the Gardai had taken away for forensic examination in January 1930.

A Judge in a subsequent libel action brought by some of those accused of Larry Griffin’s murder criticised the people of Stradbally whom he claimed ‘closed up like an oyster’ and who with low public spirit ‘declined to help the police’.

Larry Griffin - The Missing Postman

On Christmas day 1929 Larry Griffin, a 48 year old married postman, went missing in the village of Stradbally, Co. Waterford.  The saga of the missing postman was to be headline news for months afterwards and remains an unsolved mystery to this day.  Just over 8 years later 35 year old John Taaffe from Co. Longford, a newly promoted Garda Sergeant, arrived in Stradbally from Ballymote in Co. Sligo.  A former teacher, he was to take charge of the Stradbally Garda Station where a Sergeant and 3 young policemen had been stationed on that fateful day in December 1929.  Two of those Gardai were implicated in the disappearance of Larry Griffin and as a consequence had been dismissed from the Garda Siochana.

During his service as a member of the Gardai which commenced on 23^rd March 1926 and ended with his retirement on 9^th July 1966, my father was never heard to discuss Garda business in my presence.  Only once did I overhear a conversation between himself and a retired Garda Superintendent with whom he had served in Castlecomer in the early 1940s.  It was that conversation which first brought the story of the missing postman to my attention and I have been fascinated by it ever since. 

The investigation into the disappearance of the Stradbally postman had been well run down by the time my father arrived in Stradbally.  However, the discovery of skeletal remains brought my father and his station colleagues to what they believed and perhaps hoped was the final resting place of Larry Griffin.  It was not to be as the remains proved in time to be that of a man of the road who died apparently of natural causes.  This was the story related by my father and for a youngster hearing of the missing postman it created an interest which has remained to this day. 

How was it that a middle aged man last seen in a local pub in a County Waterford village could disappear without trace?  Whelans Pub in the village of Stradbally was where the story unfolded that Christmas day evening 82 years ago.  One man came forward to give an account of what happened.  James Fitzgerald, a farm labourer, claimed that the postman died following a row in Whelans Pub when it is believed he hit his head against a stove.  In the pub that day, contrary to the Christmas day closing laws, were a number of people including two local Gardai, a National school teacher and up to 15 or more other persons.

Fitzgerald made a statement to the Gardai which he later retracted, claiming that Griffin, described by his postmaster as a ‘frail and peaceful man’, having received much hospitality while delivering post that day was not entirely sober.  He apparently received quite an amount of half crowns in Christmas tips and as might have been expected had taken quite a few drinks while on his rounds that day.  Late in the evening he called into Whelans Pub where it was said he joined the company of local school teacher Thomas Cashin and another local man Edward Morrissey.  Some of the money given to the postman during the day fell out of his pocket and Morrissey picked up the money and used it to buy a round of drinks.  When Griffin realised what had happened he challenged Morrissey and according to Fitzgerald’s Statement Morrissey ‘threw Griffin over’ and the unfortunate postman hit his forehead off a stove. 

The Prosecuting Counsel at the preliminary hearing in the District Court claimed in his opening address that Cashin struck Griffin, while Morrissey pushed him to ground.  Larry Griffin lay motionless on the ground, his forehead marked where it had hit the stove.  Neither a doctor nor a priest was called, but instead, if Fitzgerald’s statement is to be believed, it was decided to remove Griffin’s body from the pub.  Fitzgerald then claimed that Cashin and Morrissey, assisted by others in the pub, carried the postman’s body to Cashin’s car and that Cashin, accompanied by Morrissey, drove away to an unknown location to conceal the body.  Given that there were believed to be 15 or 23 persons in Whelans Pub that night it is quite extraordinary that no one other than Fitzgerald, who later withdrew his statement, made any admissions to the investigating Gardai.

Larry Griffin had served in Africa during the First World War and after he was demobbed was appointed postman serving the Stradbally area working out of Kilmacthomas Post Office.  Married with a teenage son and daughter he was very well liked in the area and the publican, Patrick Whelan, who with others was later charged with his murder, would later claim that he was a good friend of Griffins.  At midnight on Christmas day Mr. Brown, the Postmaster of Kilmacthomas, reported Larry Griffin as missing and so started a chain of events which would be headline news in Irish newspapers for weeks and months to follow.

.....TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK.....