History Left It Alone. I Didn’t. 143 Years Later, The Lough Mask Case Is Back.

I’m a little late posting this update, but this one matters. The Connacht Tribune has published another story about the Lough Mask case, and this one really shows how far this has come.

When I first started digging into what happened to my third great grandfather Michael Flynn, I was trying to understand one case. I had no idea where it was going to lead. Now the Lough Mask case is back in Irish media, it has reached the Oireachtas, Ireland’s national parliament, and the question of whether the surviving evidence deserves an independent historical examination is sitting before the Justice Committee. For anyone outside Ireland who does not know what that means, the Justice Committee is made up of lawmakers from both houses who deal with justice issues. That is the level this has reached.

And somewhere along the way, this became bigger than Michael Flynn. It became The Pre 1922 Justice Project.

The Project grew out of one very simple problem. Ireland introduced a new 2026 policy that effectively shuts pre 1922 convictions out of the modern pardon process, no matter what surviving evidence may still exist. That did not sit right with me, so I kept digging.

And when I say digging, I mean digging. If somebody built a door, I want to know who built it, what it was made of, what hinges are on it, how many screws are holding those hinges in place, who put the lock on it and who has the key.

I want the whole damn door.

And the deeper I went into this case, the stranger that door started looking.

Take the family who became the Crown’s key eyewitnesses. Matthias Kerrigan was not some neutral bystander who simply walked into court with a story. He had been an original suspect. The murders were alleged to have happened at or beside his own property. Joseph Huddy was out that morning carrying ejectment papers, and the process was directed at Kerrigan himself. He was years behind in rent.

Kerrigan was arrested the night of the murders and remained in custody for roughly nine months before becoming an approver and naming Michael Flynn, Thomas Higgins and Patrick “Long” Higgins. His own wife and children then became the Crown’s key eyewitness family, and one of his children had also been arrested in connection with the murders.

And that family’s connection to the scene did not stop there. The trial record discusses Matthias Kerrigan and his wife wiping blood from the boreen in front of their house. The sack said to have been used for one of the bodies came from the Kerrigan house. Young Kerrigan was also involved in carrying one of the bodies away.

Then there is the driver. Michael Coyne drove Joseph Huddy and his grandson that morning. He stood at the very beginning of the timeline later used against Michael Flynn’s funeral alibi. Contemporary accounts report that the Huddys left Coyne at about 10 in the morning and told him to meet them again in about an hour. They did not return. The alarm was reportedly not raised until around 4 p.m. That is roughly five hours after they were expected back.

And when three men were eventually on trial for their lives, Coyne was not in the witness box. He was never produced. He was never cross examined. The Crown said he was believed to be in America. The defence challenged the lack of proof of that claim and questioned what effort had actually been made to produce him.

I also found a Galway prison record for a Michael Coyne, age 20, occupation carman, connected to the murder investigation. I am not claiming every same name record has been proven to be the same man. That is exactly why I keep following the records.

Then there is Martin Kerrigan. He was 11 years old. Before he was sworn, the defence specifically asked that he be examined on whether he understood the nature and obligation of an oath. That was the question that mattered before sworn evidence from a child was accepted.

The surviving transcript does not record that examination taking place. Instead, Justice William O’Brien asked whether Martin had previously made a deposition and, when told that he had, accepted his evidence on that ground. An 11 year old witness in a capital murder trial, and the competency issue the defence specifically raised was never recorded as being tested. His earlier deposition also differed materially from the account he later gave in court.

Then we have what I call the wandering letter, and this one is not folklore or family legend. It is right there in the trial record. The Crown Office sent the defence notice to the wrong Mr. Daly. It was supposed to go to Patrick J. B. Daly in Ballinrobe, the defence solicitor. Instead, through an accident in the Crown Office, it went to Mr. Daly of Tuam.

The wrong Daly opened it, redirected it, and the letter took another two days to reach the correct solicitor. By then Daly was scrambling to find witnesses, travel through remote country and get subpoenas served. The defence asked for more time. Judge O’Brien gave some extra time, but not all the time the defence said it needed. Even the government mail managed to become part of this mess.

Then there is the burned evidence, which is a completely separate issue. Catherine Moran placed Huddy later in the morning than the Crown’s timeline required. She also said a mysterious stranger came to her home later that day and made her burn her copy of the ejectment process. That paper could have helped establish where Huddy was and at what time.

Michael Flynn had a funeral alibi. Timing mattered. Distance mattered. Minutes mattered. And a document that could have helped test that timeline was burned.

Then there are the juries. The parliamentary record shows 41 stand asides in Patrick Higgins’s retrial, 50 in Thomas Higgins’s trial and 53 in Michael Flynn’s trial. Among them were 36 Catholics in Patrick’s, 44 in Thomas’s and 41 in Michael’s. Those are stand aside orders, not necessarily 144 different individual people, and that distinction matters.

But so does this one. Five of the twelve jurors who ultimately tried Michael Flynn had already sat on one of Patrick Higgins’s connected trials. One of those men was James Talbot Power. He had already sat on the jury that convicted Patrick. After Patrick was sentenced, that jury publicly conveyed its view that Patrick was the least guilty of the three men. Five days later, Power sat on Michael Flynn’s jury.

Then there is Michael Flynn’s Land League evidence. His Clonbur Branch Land League membership ticket was dated 15 June 1880 and recorded a one shilling admission fee. That dated membership ticket was part of the surviving trial record.

But that is not the only Land League evidence I found. Separate contemporary testimony reported during the 1888 Special Commission said a witness knew Michael, had attended a Land League gathering with him and gave him sixpence after Michael said he was collecting money for the Land League.

So we are not talking about one vague political label somebody slapped on him later. We have dated membership evidence and separate testimony about him collecting money for the Land League. And the Crown put Michael’s Land League material before the murder jury while also portraying his ability to speak, read and write English in an Irish speaking district as evidence that he was a man of local influence. Apparently that mattered enough to put before the men deciding whether he lived or died.

Meanwhile, the driver who started the morning timeline was not sitting in the witness box. The document that could have helped test the timing had been burned. The 11 year old witness was not recorded as being given the competency examination the defence specifically requested. Nearly half of Michael Flynn’s jury had already been exposed to connected proceedings.

And that is not even the full list. Not close.

There are interpreter issues. Changing testimony. Medical evidence that did not neatly match parts of the eyewitness story. Questions about maps, distances and timing. Government records. FOI records. Blueprints and plans. Political evidence. Missing people. Burned documents. Witnesses estimating time without watches or clocks. Names that keep showing up. Records that lead to more records.

The list goes on and on. And the deeper I go, the more things I find that make me stop and say, wait a damn minute.

That is why I keep digging.

And that is why this stopped being only about asking what happened in 1882. It became about asking why, in 2026, Ireland would create a policy that can stop old convictions from even being examined through the modern pardon system before anybody looks at the surviving evidence.

That is why I started Don’t Silence the Evidence. That is why I started The Pre 1922 Justice Project. That is why I started using Freedom of Information requests to get the Government’s own records. That is why I have submitted evidence to the Oireachtas. And that is why I am still going.

Michael Flynn, Thomas Higgins and Patrick “Long” Higgins were executed in Galway in January 1883. For 143 years, the official version sat there like nobody was supposed to touch it again.

Well, I touched it. And I kept pulling.

Now the case is back in Galway. It is back in Irish media. It is in front of lawmakers. And the question of whether the surviving evidence deserves an independent historical examination is sitting before the Justice Committee.

One thing that has driven me from the beginning is what my third great grandfather Michael Flynn said before he was executed:

“I am as innocent as the child unborn, and I hope Ireland is listening.”

That sentence has lived in my head through this entire fight. And I have to say this because I am proud of it.

I made sure Ireland listened.

I could not save Michael. I could not undo January 17, 1883. But I could make sure his words did not disappear with him. I could make sure his name was spoken again. I could make sure the evidence was dragged back into the light. And I could make sure Ireland heard him.

I am proud of that. Proud, proud, proud.

But this stopped being only about Michael a long time ago. Thomas mattered. Patrick mattered. Their families mattered. And every family affected by an old Irish conviction that can now be shut out simply because somebody decided 1922 was the magic line matters too.

That is what The Pre 1922 Justice Project is fighting for.

I am not asking anyone to declare these men innocent because I say so. I am asking them to look.

Look at the witnesses. Look at the juries. Look at the timelines. Look at the missing people. Look at the documents. Look at the Government records. Look at all of it.

If the convictions survive a real independent examination, then the record will show it.

And if they do not?

History deserves to know that too.

143 years was long enough for this case to sit untouched.

I am not leaving it alone.

The banshee is still screaming. Don’t Silence the Evidence.

#LoughMaskMurders #IrishHistory #HistoricalJustice #Pre1922Justice #DontSilenceTheEvidence

Research & Writing: Erin Flynn — Founder, The Pre 1922 Justice Project