FORMER STARDUST DOORMAN Michael Kavanagh told a family friend hours after the fire which claimed the lives of 48 young people that the victims couldn’t get out because “the doors were chained”.
Kavanagh also admitted that he lied when he initially told gardaí that he had opened the doors of the nightclub on the night, the inquest into the fire heard today.
James “Jimmy” O’Toole, the father of Michael O’Toole, a friend of Kavanagh, told gardaí that in the early hours of 14 February 1981 the doorman told him that four exits were padlocked and two were unpadlocked. He said Kavanagh also told him that the doors were always locked and that he was under instructions to keep them locked.
O’Toole said Mr Kavanagh had told him: “The poor bastards in there must have died like rats. They couldn’t get out, the doors were chained.”
O’Toole said that following these statements, Kavanagh went with Michael to go around the hospitals to see if they could find Mr Kavanagh’s girlfriend Paula Byrne. Paula was one of the 48 victims who died in the fire.
Giving evidence at the inquests today, Kavanagh told Des Fahy KC, representing a number of families of those who died, that he would not dispute the statement which James O’Toole, now deceased, gave to gardaí on 17 February 1981.
Michael O’Toole also made a deposition to gardaí stating that Kavanagh had told him the exit doors were locked.
After the statements of both men were read to him, Kavanagh said that while he couldn’t remember what he said in their family home in the early hours of Valentine’s Day he would not dispute it because “if Michael and his father Jimmy said it, I must have said it”.
Kavanagh, who was 20 years old at the time, initially told gardaí and journalists on 16 February 1981 that he had unlocked the fire exit doors at the club.
However, he retracted this statement on 19 February after O’Toole told gardaí that the doorman had told him that the doors were locked when he was in their house at around 3am on the morning of the fire.
In his evidence today, Kavanagh admitted that he had lied when he initially told gardaí that he had opened the doors on the night. He said he did not know who had opened the doors and said he went to gardaí to tell them the truth, that he had not opened the doors, because he felt he was being made a “scapegoat”.
In his second statement to gardaí, Kavanagh said that on 18 February 1981, deputy head doorman Leo Doyle and PJ Murphy, another doorman, called to his house and asked his mother to tell him to go on television or to tell the paper that he [Kavanagh] had gotten the keys and was responsible for opening the fire exit doors at the Stardust nightclub on the night of the fire.
He said his mother told him this when he came home and this prompted him to go to the police and tell them the whole truth as he felt they wanted to make a “scapegoat” out of him.
He said even without that, he was going to tell the truth for his own “peace of mind” and for the sake of his girlfriend Paula Byrne, who was lost in the fire.
Kavanagh said he was interviewed on television and gave the same story as he had in his first statement. “I can only say now that the reason I told lies was that I was in a state of shock after the fire,” he said, adding that he was also “trying to protect the other doormen”.
The former doorman said he decided to go back to gardaí and admit that he had not opened the exit doors after a conversation with his father gave him “a reality check” about the stupidity of going on television, talking to journalists and making a statement that “I shouldn’t have made”.
Fahy ran through a detailed sequence of events, which included Kavanagh’s statement that the doors had not been opened, his subsequent claims to the press and gardaí that he had opened the exit doors and a visit by the two doormen to Kavanagh’s father.
This visit came in the aftermath of Murphy’s earlier meeting with another doorman who said Kavanagh had told him that he [Mr Kavanagh] did not unlock exit doors, the inquests heard.
In one of his statements to gardaí, Kavanagh was asked if he had said anything to Michael O’Toole about Stardust manager Eamon Butterly. Kavanagh said he had mentioned something to O’Toole about the Stardust exits and that he would get Butterly “hung”. “I don’t know why I said that. I think I was so upset over Paula Byrne that I did not know what I was saying,” he said.
In his direct evidence today, Kavanagh told Fahy that he “wasn’t thinking straight” for weeks after the fire.
He said he got “caught up in something that was not my making. I got caught up in all of that”.
When pressed, he said he meant the fire was not of his making.
“I went and I did what I was asked to do. I did it. The following day it was through stupidity that I did what I did,” Kavanagh said. “I was talking to a journalist and talking to Today Tonight… I retracted the statement.”
Kavanagh also said that there was a “change in policy” some weeks before the fatal Stardust fire when he was told that fire exits were to remain locked.
He told Simon Mills SC, a member of the coroner’s legal team, that this new policy was put in place about six or seven weeks before the fire. He said the directive was implemented because Eamon Butterly was “ basically p**sed off” that people were gaining access to the premises through side doors. The doorman said that these instructions to keep the fire exit doors locked were communicated to him by deputy head doorman Leo Doyle.
Kavanagh said the new policy was that the doors were to remain locked until 12am and would be unlocked after that. He confirmed to Fahy that on one occasion he had removed the chains and locks from the fire exits doors during a disco only to find later that night that they had been relocked before the disco was over. He said the time he had discovered that they were relocked was after 12.30am.
The witness said before the policy changed, one of his duties as a doorman was to attend to the locks and chains on the emergency exits and he would open the exits and drape the chains over the door to give the impression they were still locked. He said this would be done before any patrons came in.
He said that the reason for this change in policy was on a number of occasions in the weeks prior to the fire people had used unlocked exit doors to get into the complex without paying.
Asked if he personally had ever seen anyone being let in an emergency door Kavanagh said he had not.
Kavanagh was questioned about his statement to gardaí that Stardust manager Eamon Butterly was angry that patrons had been able to come in without paying and was asked if he had had any personal conversations with Butterly about this. The former doorman said he had not, he said the information was relayed to the doormen via management.
He said he was a “complete junior” at the time so any decisions made were “nothing to do with me”.
He said the information was communicated to him by Leo Doyle in the weeks prior to the fire who told him: “The doors are to remain locked”. Asked by Mills if this order relayed to him from Doyle had come from Butterly, the doorman agreed that it had.
Kavanagh also told the inquests that he had received no fire or emergency training. He said he tried to tackle the blaze with a fire extinguisher but once the fire hit the carpet tiles it went “straight up”.
The inquests continue tomorrow when Kavanagh will give further evidence.
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