Dr Cassidy
A former local doctor who used to work with the Tyrone GAA team received a suspended prison sentence yesterday after pleading guilty to being involved in the forging of a will of an elderly woman who left a €1.9m fortune.
Dr James Cassidy (62), also known as Seamus, pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy in connection with the €1.9m (£1.5m) will of a widow whose body had to be exhumed as part of the police investigation.
The GP, from Killyman Road, Dungannon, had previously pleaded not guilty to doctoring the last testament of south Armagh publican Catherine ‘Kitty’ Haughey when he appeared in court.
But earlier this year, Dr Cassidy changed his plea and was sentenced to one year and six months in prison, which was suspended for three years.
While the sentence was handed down in June, it couldn’t be reported until this week when reporting restrictions were lifted.
Catherine ‘Kitty’ Haughey was found dead in the living quarters of her south Armagh pub in December 2004. Concerns were raised about her will after it emerged it had been changed two weeks before her death. Ms Haughey was widowed and childless.
Her body was exhumed in 2007 amid fresh suspicions surrounding her death.
However, a post-mortem examination later confirmed she died of natural causes.
Dr Cassidy, who had a practice on the Avenue Road in Dundalk where he was once based with the late Dr Mary Grehan, pleaded guilty in June alongside David McQuaid (38), a quantity surveyor from Lisnaree Road, Lisnaree, Banbridge.
The restrictions were lifted after the last of the co-accused – the widow’s godson Francis Tiernan (53) of Carrickasticken Road, Forkhill – pleaded guilty to two charges of conspiracy to use a false document. He will be sentenced later this month.
A fourth accused, Dr Cassidy’s secretary Niamh Hearty, was unanimously found not guilty of forging the widow’s signature.
Ms Haughey’s forged, handwritten last will attempted to redirect the childless widow’s fortune from charitable organisations and a female friend called Alice Quinn to persons “in the business of becoming millionaires”.
The Newry court was told that Ms Haughey was the target of a “Hollywood scripted” conspiracy, which was discovered after Ms Quinn brought her suspicions of Kitty’s falsified signatures on a forged will to the Gardaí.
The jury at Miss Hearty’s trial heard that Ms Quinn became apprehensive about the document during a conversation with a man (now known to be Francis Tiernan) at Ms Haughey’s wake. The Garda investigation gained speed when a falsified patient file at the GP surgery of Dr Cassidy was generated at the behest of a letter said to be from a Dundalk solicitors.
The details of the GP’s letter were constructed to read that an examination of Ms Haughey had been done by a now deceased doctor shortly before the publican’s death.
The diagnosis was to say that Ms Haughey had been a healthy woman right up to her death. The letter was declared to be false in its entirety in 2008 and only a photocopy of it survived.
Details of the case emerged for the Newry Crown Court jury which later found Ms Hearty not guilty of involvement.
The 34-year-old from Long Avenue, Dundalk, was charged with two counts of conspiracy to use a false document and two counts of forgery in 2004.
A defence solicitor said the criminal investigation was “blown open” by Ms Hearty, who exposed the illegitimacy of her signature on the forged will.
He said she was a young woman working at the surgery and had been targeted as a “fall girl”.
Source: Newry Reporter
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