Shop owner tells of horror of finding body in freezer

Date Published: 27-Nov-2009

THE man whose body was found in the commercial freezer of a city shop – five years after he went missing – died from up to 17 blows to the head, an inquest heard yesterday.

The inquest into the death of Patrick McCormack (47), aka Patrick Wynne, with an address at 12 Upper Artane Cottages, Artane, Dublin 3, heard that officials from the Departments of Health and the Marine had carried out 15 to 20 inspections at Mermaid Fishmongers, Henry Street, in the years between the man’s disappearance and eventual discovery in the cold room.

The shop’s owner, Ali Jalilvand, told the inquest that the task of keeping the large freezer up to standard was the job of his manager – the man who was eventually charged with the manslaughter, Eddie Griffin – who had been almost 20 years working for him.

Mr Jalilvand, an Iranian national living in Ireland for 30 years, said that he ran a separate business and had no dealings with the stock.

“The manager was running everything dealing with all these things, he would have known what was inside,” he said.

He said that Griffin’s employment ceased in January 2007, and six months later the owner received notification of a Department of the Marine inspection due on June 20, which led him a week earlier to sort out the stock and clean up the commercial freezer for the first time ever.

He told the enquiry that the room was quite large, big enough to fit 26 pallets on the floor, with temperatures of -18 degrees.

In his deposition, Mr Jalilvand said that there was a big red fish bin in the corner of the large room, on top of which had been stacked a large number of fish boxes containing many tonnes of produce.

“It was well hidden, it was planned that nobody could find it, as far as I can see,” he told the inquest.

He lifted the fish boxes down and opened the lid of the bin, at first seeing what he thought were old clothes.

“When my eyes adjusted to the light I saw fingers and a hand; I closed the lid and closed the freezer door. . . I was in shock and I got sick,” he said.

Mr Jalilvand added that the discovery was a surprise, even two years later, considering that 15-20 inspections had been carried out by Government departments in the intervening years. He said that while these were done under the guidance of Griffin – described by Gardaí as a known associate of the dead man – that the inspectors would have had the authority to say “open this one, open that one”.

For a complete report of the inquest see page 5 of this week’s City Tribune