Murder of Irene White: Unraveling the Web of Lies Protecting a Mastermind
When she was too ill to travel, Anne Delcassian asked her husband Keni to run one last errand.
The man who murdered her sister had been sentenced to life in prison – but he wasn’t the only person involved in the crime. She asked her husband to call the killer’s family with a message: deliver the mastermind.
Anne’s sister was Irene White, a mother of three, who was stabbed to death at her kitchen sink in 2005 after returning from the school run.
A Monaghan history student, Anthony Lambe, was convicted of her murder. The head of the security company he worked for as a bouncer, Niall Power, had confessed to his role as a “middle man”. But the mastermind was still at large.
Lambe and Power were too scared to make statements that would implicate him.
Keni Delcassian fulfilled his wife’s last wish.
“I went to Monaghan. I found out where Lambe lived,” he said. He spoke to a member of Lambe’s family.
“I asked him if he would ask Anthony to help the Gardaí to get all the details – because by that point it was clear he was no longer helping the Gardaí identify the mastermind.”
It didn’t go well. Keni Delcassian then challenged the family.
“Is that your son? Her son who stabbed Irene more than 30 times and then cut her throat? Is that the son we’re talking about, the good little boy you’re talking about?”
The encounter revealed the measures Anne Delcassian was willing to take to ensure that the man who ordered her sister’s murder is brought to justice. Anne had survived terminal cancer to see both Lambe and Power jailed for life. She died in 2019.
The late Anne Delcassian struggled to unmask her sister Irene’s killers
It took almost two decades – but finally the net joins the mastermind. Senior Garda sources said an investigative file into the mastermind’s role in orchestrating the murder of Irene White is being finalized for the Director of Attorneys.
Keni Delcassian said he was not told whether Power or Lambe revealed the name of the mastermind from their prison cell. But in a meeting six months ago with now-retired Chief Superintendent Christy Mangan, the detective “absolutely reaffirmed her commitment to catching the mastermind.”
In April 2005, Ms White was 43, separated from her husband and living with her children, aged five, six and 17, at the family home in Dundalk, Co. Louth.
She had returned to school from dropping off the children that morning and was standing at her sink wearing rubber gloves when an attacker stabbed her 34 times. Her mother discovered her daughter’s body in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor.
Gardaí later found that the security gate had been breached and CCTV around the home was not working.
From those early days, the mastermind was one of the suspects. His friend Power was suspected of withholding information. Even Lambe was questioned – albeit as a witness because his number was on Power’s phone.
The case ran aground. Seven years later, in 2012, Anne Delcassian persuaded detectives to conduct an investigation into Irene’s murder. It eventually helped decipher the case.
The breakthrough came in 2016. By then, Detective Inspector Pat Marry (now retired) had taken over the file. Three years earlier, a young woman in Australia called anonymously in response to a request for information.
She told detectives how Lambe came to her home for Christmas 2005 and told her how he had murdered Ms White. She did not reveal her identity and detectives were unable to trace her phone number.
Anthony Lambe was found guilty of the murder of Irene and sentenced to life imprisonment
According to Mr Marry, the “enormous” detective work of one of the team members, Bobby Ogle, meant she was finally identified through careful analysis of Lambe’s Facebook page.
“Actually, it was like a load off her shoulders,” says Marry, author of The making of a detective, called. “That’s what we’re finding with other investigations: There are people out there burdened with information who don’t realize how much of a relief it can be to talk.”
Lambe was the first link to break, even though he didn’t fit the typical profile of a murder suspect. At this point he was in his early 30s and a mature student at NUI Maynooth studying history and archaeology. But by then other witnesses had come forward, including another woman whom Lambe confessed to in a pub when the case broke on the news.
When Lambe was arrested for murder at the family home in Castleblaney, Co. Monaghan, his family were in disbelief, according to Mr Marry. The denial he offered in front of his family was so halfhearted that it aroused even more suspicion. But as soon as he was in custody, he started talking.
“He wanted to tell his story. It was a burden off his shoulders,” said Mr. Marry. “He was a student at the Dundalk Institute of Technology. He was short on cash and asked Niall Power for a job as a doorman because Niall Power had a security company.”
He was at a low point in his life, drinking and using drugs. Lambe claimed he was under pressure from Power and the man later known as the Mastermind to murder Ms White.
He feared he would be killed if he didn’t follow their instructions and was promised €25,000 – but only paid €2,000. Power turned over half of the blood money on the morning of the murder.
Mr. Marry said Lambe was extremely repentant. Before leaving Garda Station on the evening of Lambe’s arrest, Mr Marry stuck his head in his cell and asked if he was all right.
“He said to me, ‘I know you. you were on the crime reputation Program.'”
Mr. Marry, along with Irene’s eldest daughter Jennifer, launched an information appeal in 2016.
“He said, ‘My mom and dad watched it on TV. I stood there listening to it and a girl came up with it. It was like Irene White. It was the same voice. It was like her on TV.’ He said he went upstairs and cried for six hours,” Mr Marry said.
“As he gave his statement, he walked up to one of the detectives and hugged him. I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Mr. Marry.
That was the beginning of unraveling a web of lies and deceit that had protected Ms. White’s killers for years.
Niall Power was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Irene
The day after Lambe was sentenced to life imprisonment, Mr Marry was preparing at Dundalk Garda Station for a crime conference on the murder of Adrian Donohoe, the Detective Garda who was shot dead in the Lordship Credit Union raid.
“It was a very meaningful conference,” said Mr. Marry. “Two guys came out of the office. They said, ‘There’s a guy down there named Niall Power who wants to see you.’ I said, ‘Can’t he just come back? I’m under a lot of pressure.’”
Mr Marry relented and went downstairs and met Power, who told him: “I want to tell you about my role in the assassination of Irene White.”
“I remember saying to him, ‘Who knows you’re here?’ He said, ‘No one.’”
Mr. Marry delayed the criminal conference. power confessed. The head of the security company was friends with the mastermind who wanted Ms White “sorted out” and wanted Power to do it. Pressured and afraid to go to Gardaí, he agreed and recruited Lambe.
Power, in charge of the security of her home, made sure her security gates were broken down so Lambe could get inside to kill her.
Power said he was with the mastermind the morning Ms White was murdered. Lambe called him and said, “That job is done.” Power turned to the mastermind and told him. Phone records prove a call was made.
Mr Marry said: “He was a man who had a story to tell and that was it. He wasn’t wriggling or crying or broken. He knew what he was doing. He was fully aware of what he was doing.”
The criminal inspector retired in 2018 and left an investigation file with all the clues to the mastermind.
When he first got the file in 2010, he saw the photos of bloody footprints and thought, ‘Who was in those shoes?’ Now, he said, “two people are being arrested, but a third man is involved.”
From their prison cells, Ms White’s killers told gardaí they had no intention of testifying against the mastermind. They didn’t want to be “slashed” in jail for being “solicitors,” a source said. But detectives continued to visit her.
Whether her position has changed will be reflected in the file, which is now on its way to the prosecutor’s office.
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/irene-white-murder-unravelling-the-web-of-lies-shielding-a-mastermind-41604455.html Murder of Irene White: Unraveling the Web of Lies Protecting a Mastermind