Lynch inquest: no suspicious circumstances

Thursday 27 October 2016

An inquest into the death of a 20-year-old man who went missing after a Christmas party last year and was found eight months later in a reservoir has concluded it was a tragic accident to which all the answers will probably never be known.

Deputy Viscount Advocate Mike Harris says the most likely series of events is that Adrian Lynch was drunk, and after being dropped off by a taxi near his home, stumbled along the lanes, before eventually falling into Handois Reservoir.

Police did search the area using specially trained dogs, divers and sonar equipment, but were hampered by the murkiness of the water and the location. Mr Lynch was found in one of the fish tanks fairly close to the shoreline. The steep sided cliff face made it difficult for officers and dogs to get down, overgrowing trees obscured it, and the submerged roots stopped the boat team searching the shallow water close in.

Giving evidence at the inquest Home Office pathologist Dr Deborah Cook also said bodies don’t always float. She said decomposition was a complicated process and that bodies might sink only to re-surface and then sink again. It’s all rather unpredictable she noted, and she was not surprised Mr Lynch wasn’t spotted earlier.

Although – according to Advocate Harris – the inquest did leave many unanswered questions he was able to say the evidence ruled out foul play and that there was no evidence to indicate Mr Lynch had been taking drugs.

The hearing began with police officers outlining the background to the case. Using a PowerPoint presentation they showed CCTV stills of Mr Lynch’s activities on the night of Friday 4^th December and early the next morning, and maps to track reported sighting of him.

He was captured on camera getting into a taxi leaving the Merton Hotel at 23:30. According to friends he was “tipsy but not paralytic” – he’d had around three pints of beer, a number of Jagerbombs and some house wine. They said he was “drunk, merry, giving people lots of hugs… he was drunk, but not out of it”. Nevertheless, they were concerned and called a taxi and gave the driver £20 to cover the fare.

There was a mix up though, and he was dropped off at a similar sounding address about one and a half kilometres from his home. The taxi driver repeatedly tried to check they were in the right place but couldn’t get an answer. Mr Lynch simply said: “I live just across there. Stop. I’ll get out here.” The fare came to £22.50. Mr Lynch searched his wallet, found an extra £3, and told the driver to keep the change.

It appears Mr Lynch had been dropped there before and was happy to walk the short distance home. He “didn’t collapse after getting out of the car. He was tipsy but not paralytic.” The driver offered to help him down the lane but he refused. The last he saw of him he was “walking slowly, but didn’t fall or stumble. There was no reason to be concerned for him”.

But, he was clearly disorientated. In the police investigation that followed a number of witnesses came forward to say during the following two hours they saw, or heard what they believe to be, Mr Lynch walking the nearby lanes. At one point CCTV footage shows him doing a u-turn, apparently lost.

At least three drivers believe they saw Mr Lynch: one spotted feet sticking out a bush; another had to swerve to avoid a body lying in the road; and a third – a taxi driver – claims on the night of the incident he told a police officer at the Weighbridge about his concerns. The police have no record of the conversation.

Mr Lynch also mistakenly walked into the wrong house and had a conversation with the owner; and chatted to another home owner who’d came out to investigate the noise – Mr Lynch was standing outside talking to himself. They all say he was well dressed, but noted mud on his clothes; and that he was confused, polite, and said he didn’t need help.

What happened after about 02:30 is unknown. His phone and wallet – without any money in – were found later that morning, near where the taxi had dropped him off, and a missing persons investigation launched.

In what was the biggest operation of its kind in the Island, Jersey Police searched a 10km square area near the last sighting of Mr Lynch, spoke to 500 people, took 200 witness statements, and gathered footage from 18 CCTV cameras, to try and get to the bottom of the mystery.

But it wasn’t until August – eight months later – when two workmen from the Jersey Waterworks Company were carrying out routine checks – and spotted what they believed was “an animal carcass” in the reservoir that the search was over.

According to Dr Cook the body was very badly decomposed – basically just a skeleton covered by a few fragments of clothing. Nevertheless, Mr Lynch’s passport was found in one of the pockets, and police were able to confirm it was him by carrying out dental and DNA tests.

Dr Cook’s post-mortem was also able to rule out the likelihood of a suspicious death: there were no indication of blows or stab wounds to the skull, backbone or chest; his legs and arms weren’t bound together; and from the remaining tissue that was still on the body she was able to say he’d been in the water a long time as opposed to having been dumped there recently.

Since there were no internal organs left Dr Cook was unable to determine exactly how much Mr Lynch had drunk. But she said it was unlikely he had drunk so much that he died of alcohol poisoning, or that the two hours of walking the lanes after being dropped off was long enough for him to have sobered up.

Summing up Advocate Harris admitted there were still many unanswered questions to what was “the tragic death of a relatively young man”, but that he was satisfied there were no suspicious circumstances. In a statement afterwards the family also hoped the inquest would put an end to “the fictitious and cruel rumours that circulated about him and how he went missing”.