Net gets closer to the “mastermind” behind the 2005 murder of Dundalk, mother-of-three Irene White

A Garda file on the alleged “mastermind” behind the murder of Irene White is being completed for the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The handover of the case files to the DPP marks the culmination of a lengthy investigation into the last remaining suspect in the crime.

Two men who admitted to the murder are serving life sentences, but the man who ordered the hit-and-run remains at large.

Ms White’s family have repeatedly called for the man who ordered the murder to be brought to justice.

Kevin Winters, attorney for Ms White’s late sister and her brother-in-law, confirmed this weekend that the family had met A Garda Siochana for an update on developments in the case.

Ms White, a mother of three, was stabbed 34 times in 2005 while washing dishes at her home in Drogheda, Co Louth. She had returned after taking her two youngest children to school. Her elderly mother found Ms White’s body in a pool of blood on her kitchen floor, still wearing her orange dishwashing gloves.

The murder remained unsolved until several years later when the Garda Cold Case Team took over the investigation, ultimately leading to new leads that solved the case.

Gardaí tracked down Anthony Lambe after an old friend claimed he confessed to the crime. Lambe, from Castleblayney, Co. Monaghan, was then a mature student at Maynooth University.

He told gardaí he was a student working part-time as a doorman for a security firm owned by Niall Power of Riverstown, Dundalk. Struggling with debt, alcohol and drugs, Lambe says Power offered him €25,000 to murder Ms White. In the end, Power Lambe paid 2,000 euros for the woman’s murder.

Lambe was convicted of the murder of Ms White in January 2018. Power turned himself in and pleaded guilty to her murder in 2019.

Power, who was described in court as Irene White’s “family friend,” claimed he acted on orders from the “mastermind” who wanted her dead.

Both killers initially declined to make statements to An Garda Síochána involving the “mastermind” because it could affect them in prison.

However, for the past two years, detectives have met with Power in prison to discuss the case and have urged him to provide a statement implicating the mastermind so they can add it to their file with the DPP.

Ms White’s family have consistently urged Gardaí to continue to hunt down and bring to justice the man ultimately responsible for her murder.

Her sister Anne Delcassian, who had campaigned tirelessly for her sister, died of cancer shortly after Power was sentenced to life in prison for murder. It was Mrs. Delcassian who had urged the Garda Serious Crime Review Team to take on the case.

In a statement to the Sunday independent Before her death, Ms Delcassian recounted how her sister had been threatened and reported the threats to the Gardaí.

“She was concerned for her own safety and that of her children. Irene was scared, even more so, when the security gates to her home were disabled prior to her assassination,” she said.

“As someone known to Irene, Niall Power betrayed a position of trust. Niall Power worked in security and Irene wrote in her journals that she begged Niall Power to fix the security checkpoints.

“Knowing the gates were disabled, he instead organized Anthony Lambe to attack Irene at home. It’s hard to believe that Niall Power has continued to live in Irene’s hometown near her motherless children for the last ten years.”

After the murder, she said, Power chose Lambe to be his baby’s godfather. “What kind of person orchestrates the murder of a family friend and then chooses the killer as their child’s moral compass?”

Ms. Delcassian denounced the “pact of silence surrounding this case; between Anthony Lambe, Niall Power and the others responsible for Irene’s murder and protecting her killers”.

Anne’s husband Kenny has continued his late wife’s campaign to bring those behind the crime to justice.