A FORMER STARDUST doorman who initially lied to gardaí and the press by telling them he had opened all exits at the club on the night of the fire has denied that he was “put up to it” to “advance” the interests of “other parties”.
Michael Kavanagh, who was 20 years old at the time of the 1981 fire, also denied that there had been any discussion amongst doormen that they would give a “sanitised” version of events.
Giving evidence for a third day today at the inquests, Kavanagh also said he does not remember having a bunch of keys in his possession at a family friend’s house in the hours after the fatal blaze.
Bernard Condon SC, appearing on behalf of ten of the families of the deceased, put it to the witness that Michael O’Toole – a friend whose house the doorman visited shortly after the fire in the early hours of 14 February, 1981 – will give evidence to the inquests that as Kavanagh stated that people couldn’t get out of the club and the doors were locked, he took a bunch of keys out of his pocket.
He asked Kavanagh if he remembered that and the former doorman said he did not.
“He took the view that they were the keys of the Stardust,” said Mr Condon. “Do you have any comment to make about that?”
“None whatsoever, no,” Kavanagh replied.
Kavanagh told Condon SC that it would generally have taken him between 10 and 15 minutes to open all the exits at the club and said he “wasn’t aware” of a second set of keys for the complex.
He agreed that from what he could remember the keys were in a bunch on one keyring and were kept in the Swan Bar from where whoever was going to open the exit doors would collect them.
“If there was a desire very quickly to get doors opened, would you agree with me that it should have been the case that there were quite a number of sets of those keys that different people could have access to at different points?” He was asked.
“I can only say when I had the keys I did it in sequence and it was only the once and they were all on the same bunch,” Kavanagh replied.
“The real issue here is that the person who has knowledge of opening the doors, if they don’t know that there’s a second set of keys that’s the problem. That you weren’t told where… the second keys were. Is that a fair comment?” Counsel asked.
“It would be yes because I definitely didn’t know there was as second bunch of keys,” Kavanagh replied.
“So if the place was locked up to 12am-12.30am and something happens in one corner, having only one set of keys doubles, triples or quadruples the danger don’t you agree with me?” Counsel asked.
“Definitely yes,” Kavanagh said.
Keys in the cash drawer
The former doorman confirmed that his memory was that he had left the keys in the cash drawer at around 9.30pm-10.45pm and had no memory of seeing them after that.
“Once I left them there, I didn’t see them after that,” he said.
Kavanagh told the lawyer that he returned to the Stardust at around 5am and had been there for about 20 minutes before he spoke to the press about unlocking the doors.
“I know I was pointed out as being a doorman by somebody and that’s when the media came over to me,” he said.
Condon said the real issue “we are all grappling with” and that the jury “probably would like to know and understand” was what happened between the time he was sitting at the O’Toole’s table telling them the doors were locked and telling the press at the Stardust that the doors were unlocked.
“What happened in that intervening period to cause that?” he said.
“Like I’ve been saying, I’ve no idea,” said Kavanagh.
“With the greatest of respect, I wonder if that’s good enough Kavanagh,” counsel said.
“You understand that that lie, as it was called, caused an enormous shadow or fog to fall on the investigation and I don’t think it’s ever been lifted so the one question people want to know is what happened in that club and how did those people get out of that club?”
“I don’t know what happened,” Kavanagh replied.
When Condon pressed that the matter “required and explanation”, the former doorman said: “I don’t have an explanation.”
Counsel said the “extraordinary thing” was why Kavanagh had then gone on RTE and repeated the lie to “the whole country”.
“What was going on?” counsel asked.
“I’ve no idea,” Kavanagh replied.
Condon said the issue was whether Kavanagh was being used by other parties to “advance their interests”. Asked if he was “put up to it” the former doorman denied this was the case.
“An innocent abroad”
Counsel said the question was whether Kavanagh was “an innocent abroad, a fantasist having a rush of blood to the head” or at the other end of the spectrum, whether this was “a conspiracy” that was “being done to advance the interests of other people”.
“I don’t know why I did what I did. There was no conspiracy on my part. I don’t know. I don’t know how many times I can say it,” said Kavanagh.
Condon said the behaviour of doormen Leo Doyle, PJ Murphy and John Fitzsimons during that week “would suggest that you very much were being used, knowingly or unknowingly”.
Asked if knew whether all the doormen were going to give gardaí a version of events “that was sanitised”, Kavanagh said he did not.
“ou did not hear any discussion that that should happen?
“No,” he said.
Tribunal of inquiry
Condon put it to the witness that at the tribunal of inquiry before Mr Justice Ronan Keane in 1981, he had told lawyers that when he went back to the Stardust at around 5am on 14 February, he met management staff including head doorman Tom Kennan, manager Brian Peel and Stardust manager Eamon Butterly, and had a “brief chat”. Asked if he remembered this today Kavanagh said he did not.
Counsel suggested it to the witness that at that point it was possible that they [management] were putting to Kavanagh that he had opened the doors or “something along those lines” and that Kavanagh “had a decision to make” to either “tell the truth that he didn’t open the doors and risk being scapegoated” or to just “go along with what they wanted you to say” and maybe he would feel protected by them.
“Does any of that have any resonance at all with you?”
“Again I don’t recall having a conversation with any of them,” Mr Kavanagh said.
Condon asked Kavanagh why he had not mentioned the practice of “draping” [with chains] or “mock locking” the fire exit doors in his initial statement to gardaí. He said it was an “extraordinary co-incidence” that all the other doormen didn’t mention it either.
He said the one thing that was missing from all the statements was the reference to draping locks and asked if this “was a line to be taken” by the doormen and that was to be maintained by the doormen.
Mr Kavanagh said he wasn’t aware of “any line to be taken”.
Condon said Leo Doyle and PJ Murphy “became worried” that Kavanagh would not “stick to the story” that he had unlocked the doors and it was at that point that they had visited his mother and father.
He said that was why they “needed to put head doorman Tom Kennan in as the man who unlocked the doors”.
Counsel said Kavanagh’s father was told “quite extraordinary things” including that the young doorman “would be up for perjury”.
Kavanagh agreed he decided to go to gardaí after this point but denied that his father had asked him why he had said what he did.
“Would that not have been an obvious question to ask? What is the correct version?” Condon asked. Kavanagh said his father was “protecting” him. “He told me what to do and I did it,” he said.
Asked what business it was of Doyle and Murphy to go to the witness’s house to try and “sort out” who did what and why – instead of going to the guards – Kavanagh said they had “absolutely no reason” to come to his house.
Didn’t make sense
Condon also put it to the witness that he had “recorded wrongly” the version of events in his garda statement and that this “didn’t make a lot of sense”.
“Doyle and Murphy told your parents that you were to say that you didn’t unlock the doors. You told the guards that the message you received from your parents was that you were to say you had unlocked the doors, which is quite different from what your parents said,” he said.
The inquest has heard that in his second statement to gardaí, Kavanagh said that on 18 February, 1981, Doyle and Murphy called to his home 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 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.
However, the inquest has also heard that Kavanagh’s father, Patrick Kavanagh, now deceased, told gardaí in a statement that Doyle and Murphy had called to his home and that the man called PJ asked him to tell Michael “for the love of God to retract the previous statement he had made to the Police”.
The lawyer put it to the witness that it had been suggested at the Keane tribunal that he was trying to “mislead” the guards.
“I didn’t mislead the guards when I gave the statement,” Mr Kavanagh said.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say