5. Extract from statement of Dessie Mahon

[20 July]

"...I am a first-year law student at Trinity College Dublin. I am spending the summer working in "Flaherty's", an Irish bar off Rawlins Park.

On 18 July, I started my shift at 1 p.m. Sometime later I saw a man entering the bar. He caught my eye because he was wearing a very heavy jumper on what was a very warm day. The man looked about him for a moment or two and then went into the restroom at the back of the bar. I said nothing to him and did not follow him. We were quite busy as it was the end of the week and some workers from a nearby construction site had come in to spend some of their week's wages on a few drinks.

Perhaps a half-hour later I noticed a man leaving the bar. At first I didn't recognise him. He gave me a slightly sheepish look as he passed where I was standing. Then I recognised him. It was the man who had come in and gone straight to the restroom. He looked different from when he had arrived. He wasn't wearing his jumper. Plus he didn't have a beard any more - and he did when he came in.

All of this made me suspicious of the man. I called out to him but he immediately ran from the bar. I ran out into the street after him. However in the few seconds that it took me to get around the bar-counter he was almost down at the Corcoran Gallery, a good half-block away.There was no way that I could catch the man and in any event I couldn't leave the bar un-tended. So I went back into the bar and into the restroom to see what he'd been up to.

Inside the restroom I found a fake beard stuffed into a trash-can. I looked around for the man's jumper but couldn't find it. However, when I was throwing out rubbish later that evening I found it in a laneway behind the bar. There is a window onto the laneway from the restroom and it is possible that he threw the jumper out the window.

As the day went on the television stations were full of news about a woman who'd been murdered in Rock Creek Park. We have a television running in the bar and I was half-watching the news between serving drinks. When I heard the description of the man police were looking for, I was sure that this was the man I had seen in the bar. I have since been shown a police sketch of the man wanted for murder. I am confident that this is the man I saw, except that he has gotten rid of the beard that features in the sketch.

My uncle was also working in the bar on the evening of the 18th. I told him about the man who came in earlier that day. When I saw the television news I told him that the man I had seen was the man police were looking for. After we shut up shop for the evening, my uncle brought me to the police station where I have given this statement...".