Kelly Lynch's body was found in a DRY canal with 93 injuries. Four pathologists have looked at the case. One said she'd drowned. The next two disagreed. The most recent suggests third party involvement. Meanwhile her mother waits for justice.

Published: 06:49, 4 July 2026 | Updated: 06:49, 4 July 2026 Julieanne Lynch can remember how her daughter Kelly laughed – it was a big, bold laugh, full of fun, and she would give anything just to hear it again.  But nearly two-and-a-half years after the horrifying phone call her parents received on St Patrick’s Day, the circumstances that surround Kelly’s death are no clearer than the muddy ground where her body was found. Kelly, 23, was found dead in a disused canal in the town of Monaghan on St Patrick’s Day 2024, after attending a family funeral with her boyfriend and later socialising in the town. Gardaí at the time believed she wandered off alone, fell from a bridge into the canal and drowned. They did not treat her death as suspicious. But even then, even before any pathology report, her mother felt something else had happened to her child. ‘I do believe that Kelly came to harm,’ Julieanne tells the Irish Daily Mail. ‘Her body told a story that blew my mind when she came home. Kelly Lynch with her mother Julieanne before her tragic death  ‘That was long before we had any postmortem report, long before I knew the extent of her injuries or how many she had. I knew when I looked at her in the coffin that something was wrong, something went badly wrong. ‘She was just discarded in that dirty, dingy canal. She was not submerged in water, there was not enough water for her to drown and I will dispute the drowning as cause of death with the state pathologist, because I do believe that that was just a lazy assumption.’ After two years of Julieanne raising her voice and speaking out about Kelly’s death, last week there was a chink of light.  The Lynch family were given the results of a Garda Peer Review into the investigation that followed Kelly’s death. This was in answer to questions that had been raised by the family with the help of former PSNI officer James Brannigan, who runs The Katie Trust, a charity helping families who have concerns over the unexplained deaths of their loved ones. In a statement, Julieanne welcomed the review and the team who conducted it. ‘They examined the investigation objectively and were prepared to identify where standards had fallen short,’ she said in the statement. ‘In doing so, they identified over 20 deficiencies relating to investigative failures. ‘As a family, we welcome these findings. James Brannigan also welcomes them, as does our legal team. We believe they represent an important step towards accountability and, ultimately, towards establishing exactly what happened to Kelly.’ She added: ‘There is still a long road ahead, but today I wanted to acknowledge the professionalism, independence and integrity shown by the Gardaí Peer Review Team. Thank you for the care you took in examining Kelly’s case, and for having the courage to identify the shortcomings you found. The real measure of this review will not be the findings themselves, but what happens next.’ What happens next, though, needs to happen sooner rather than later. Julieanne says Kelly had a big, bold laugh and she was full of fun As each day passes, the Lynch family are struggling under the weight of this. Julieanne and her husband Sean are doing their best to make sure their five children are okay but Julieanne’s own health is suffering. She has a rasping cough from a chest infection that she hasn’t been able to shake and she’s picking up every infection going. ‘I’ve been very sick since Kelly died,’ she says.  ‘I can’t eat, I don’t sleep, I ended up having to have emergency surgery to remove my gall bladder. I’ve never had any issues before.  'Then I was diagnosed with pernicious anemia, so I have to have injections every 12 weeks for the rest of my life, and I’ve also got iron deficiency anaemia. I have a whole host of things going on with me.’ This is the reality of a woman who has not only lost her daughter but has been forced to fight for the last two-and-a-half years to get people to listen to her concerns. ‘It’s the reality people don’t see, what happens behind closed doors when you’re living this, it has such a detrimental effect on everything,’ she says, though she is reluctant to speak about how things have affected her physically. ‘But it does affect every part of you – your heart, your soul, your spirit, your body, your mind. It just takes so much from you.’ ‘But it does affect every part of you – your heart, your soul, your spirit, your body, your mind. It just takes so much from you,’ says  Julieanne Lynch The family met with the officers who conducted the peer review to discuss the findings but they cannot say much about the contents currently until the inquest into Kelly’s death is held. They didn’t get to see or read the report, as is protocol. ‘They just went through the list of recommendations and then listened to the questions we had, and just basically told us what they had found, and all I can say is that our concerns were spot on from the very beginning,’ says Julieanne. ‘So it’s now been passed to the superintendent of Monaghan Garda station, and it is up to him and the investigative team, if they are going to take on board the recommendations. ‘It’s basically a waiting game, at the moment, but we are pushing for an inquest to happen sooner rather than later.’ After coming on board at Julieanne’s behest, the Katie Trust commissioned a private pathology review, the findings of which disputed the pathologist’s report. It found that Kelly had 93 injuries. It was initially said that Kelly had fallen into the canal and drowned  Some of these injuries were inflicted on Kelly after she had died, which is quite concerning. Most notably, there was a fracture to her T-10 vertebrae and also a wound to her head. There was no water in her lungs that would point to drowning as the cause of death so it concluded she had been the victim of a homicide. The State Pathologist refuted these findings but James Brannigan believes a change is needed in the coronial system to help prevent situations like the one the Lynch family is in. ‘You have a system that works within the UK and Ireland that hasn’t changed in 823 years that our social norms have changed greatly – our healthcare, education, everything,’ says Brannigan.  ‘But when we die, nothing has changed in 823 years of how that death is looked at. ‘Kelly’s case is a prime example of this. Where a young woman was found dead in the canal, it goes to a pathologist, the pathologist says she drowned.’ This is despite the fact that there was no water in Kelly’s lungs or in the canal where she was found. A garda on the scene said it had been raining heavily the previous day and Brannigan is firm in his belief that this influenced the postmortem. ‘Drowning is a diagnosis of exclusion,’ he says. ‘You have to exclude everyone else. You have to ask the question then at that point, how did she get into the water?  'And why did she not get out of the water? That’s the crucial point they should have gone back to. But once the pathologist said this is drowning and it’s not suspicious, the guards’ hands are tied.’ These decisions are also very hard to overturn and once that decision is made, vital evidence is lost. ‘You have to have the right approach in the first few hours,’ Brannigan says.  ‘If you don’t have that right approach, more importantly, if the pathologist comes back and says, this isn’t suspicious, the gardaí have no authority to go any further.’ The family are hoping for an inquest into Kelly's death He believes the coronial approach both here and in Britain is causing murders to be missed, the so-called hidden homicides. He worries, having solved the Katie Simpson murder, that more are occurring in domestic settings as pathologists are being presented with police bias, especially in domestic settings where the perpetrator is giving a performance. ‘I’m not saying it happened in this case but this is where the whole coronial process isn’t fit for purpose at the moment,’ he says. ‘It’s enabling hidden homicides to go unreported.’ Brannigan wants to see an inquest taking place sooner rather than later. ‘We don’t know how Kelly ended up in the canal or why she couldn’t get out of the canal,’ he says.  ‘And it’s going to come down to what the pathologists are saying. One pathologist is saying it’s drowning, two other pathologists are saying it’s not drowning, and one of them is saying there’s third party involvement. ‘So we need the inquest to put the people on the stand, both the witnesses who were last with Kelly and the pathologists, and get them to stand over their work in court.’ For Julieanne, an inquest would be a step in the right direction. She has no death certificate for her daughter until this takes place, all she has is a fact-of-death notice.  ‘There has to be an inquest to determine a formal cause of death,’ she says. ‘We were told that it could be six to seven years, but I can’t wait that long. This is killing us slowly so I can’t imagine what it’s like for my parents, who are in their 70s. ‘Mum often asks me if I think things will happen when they’re still around. I don’t want to even think about that, but Kelly was like a daughter to them.’ Kelly’s death and Juileanne’s fight to find out what happened is the subject of a new documentary, The Girl In The Water, which will be shown on RTÉ One this Wednesday at 9.35pm. It’s another way for Julieanne to raise her voice about what happened to her daughter, something she has been doing for the last two-and-a-half years. ‘I think there was a perception in the beginning that maybe I was just an angry grieving mother posting on social media,’ she says. ‘But I was the only one to really create any awareness about Kelly’s death. There was very little in regards to Kelly’s death when it actually happened. ‘There was no appeal to the public from the gardai for more information – that did not happen until Kelly was dead a year. It’s just shocking that it has taken me and my family to get really loud and to be making a bit of noise, and contacting everybody and anybody who has a wee bit of power to realise that we’re serious.  'The questions that we have from the very beginning have been very serious questions and concerns.’ There is a Fiosru investigation that can start now the peer review is over but this was lodged back in April 2024 and the family are at a loss as to when the inquest might take place.  ‘When are we likely to see this happen?’ says Julieanne. 'Is it going to be in the next six months, the next 12 months, are we looking further ahead? While we’re waiting, it is literally like being in limbo. ‘It’s just a prison sentence, really for us. I do want to be able to get into court, and have our experts discuss the reasons why they came to the conclusions that they have, and then, obviously, anybody who has made any statements or anybody who gave any information. ‘I’m interested in hearing their stories two years later, their version of events, because we still have so many questions over how Kelly came to be where she was, and in the state that she was in.’ One of the other facets of Julieanne’s campaign is to help other families like hers. While Kelly died in the Republic, her home was in the North and the Lynch family fell between two forces and were left to fend for themselves. She has already met with Michelle O’Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly, the First and Deputy First Ministers of Northern Ireland, to discuss her concerns. ‘There is a major gap in cross-border procedures when something like this does happen,’ Julieanne explains. ‘There was literally no support for us, on either side of the border, when Kelly died. ‘I’m pushing for change now, that there has to be some legislation brought in, there has to be a professional body to support families like us. ‘We were told on St Patrick’s Day that Kelly was deceased at three minutes past one in the afternoon, and that was it.  'The gardaí told us over the phone to make arrangements to go to identify Kelly the following day, no guard or PSNI officer crossed our door or came to our home. We were left completely alone for the first 24 hours. ‘It was also widely known in the community that Kelly was dead long before we ever found out. In my home town of Lisnaskea, [Co Fermanagh], the priest who buried Kelly had on St Patrick’s Day asked for prayers for a young woman who’d been found from the local community, and that was at 11 o’clock Mass. ‘We didn’t find out for another two hours. Why was it common knowledge? ‘To be given the news over the phone, that your daughter’s dead and then no professional entity comes into your home to give you any support or to tell you what happens next, it’s just disgusting. It shouldn’t be happening.’ Julieanne’s grief is palpable as she relives the horror of those days for this interview. But in reality, she relives those moments every day, as does her husband Sean and their wider family. Answers to the questions they have surrounding Kelly’s death are the least the Lynch family deserve. ‘It just feels so surreal that sometimes you question, how is this my life?’ Juileanne says.  ‘Because it feels just so unbelievable at times. When we look at the pictures we have of Kelly and all the videos, she’s just so alive and beautiful. And now she doesn’t exist any more. That’s really hard.’ Sorry we are not currently accepting comments on this article.