What happened to Kelly Marie Lynch? One mother's fight for justice and the truth

On March 17, 2024, the body of Kelly Marie Lynch was found in the Ulster Canal in Monaghan, 30 hours after the last confirmed sighting of her.

Kelly was found with 93 injuries on her body, yet her death has never been treated as suspicious, no one was ever questioned about her untimely death and no one has been held accountable.

For the last 15 months, Kelly's mother Julieanne has been working tirelessly to get justice for daughter and to get some answers for what happened.

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A GoFundMe page has been set up by Kelly's family to help with the rising legal costs that Julieanne says they are not entitled to as Kelly's death is not being treated as a criminal case. 

"We are getting absolutely no help from any government organisation whatsoever", says Julieanne, "We've had no help from anyone since Kelly's body was found and we have no idea why.

"We have reached out to politicians on both sides of the border. I've contacted human rights on both sides of the border with both parties telling me that they can't get involved with this.

"I was told that the Human Rights and Equality Commission in Dublin does not get involved or offer advice on cases like this and the Human Rights Commission of Northern Ireland say they have no jurisdiction across the border, although it clearly states on their website that they do, they do cross border jurisdiction, but either way we're just getting no help whatsoever."

Kelly was in a relationship with a young man from Monaghan. On March 13, Kelly received a phone call to let her know that her boyfriend's brother had died, and that his body had been found. Understandably, Kelly was devastated and left Armagh to go to Monaghan to be with her boyfriend and his family.

Kelly left shortly before 8pm on March 13 and that was the last time her mother Julieanne saw her alive.

"It'd been an absolute horrendous year," says Julieanne.

"There have been quite a few articles  on Kelly's case over the past year and some reporters have tried to help but Kelly's story still remains under the radar. There was never any appeal for information with details until Kelly's one-year anniversary. The guards put out an appeal on the 17th of March, a year to the day when Kelly's body was found.

"Why was that not put out in the days after her body was found? Why was there not a request for immediate information or for anyone to come forward when Kelly was found? These are the issues that I'm raising and it's like I'm banging my head against a brick wall and we're getting nowhere fast.

Speaking on those horrific first days when Kelly's body was found, Julieanne says she has been quite vocal about it. Speaking about it doesn't trigger her because she's living with it every day. "It's a part of my everyday life".

Julieanne said she spoke with Kelly a few times in the 48 hours after she left her home, but on the morning of the 16th, she had woken to several missed calls and a 23 second voicemail from Kelly.

"We talked over the next 48 hours and on Saturday the 16th, I had received a lot of missed phone calls during the night, but I hadn't heard them."

In the voicemail, which has not been made public, Julieanne said: "You can clearly hear she's very hurt, she's been injured and she can't breathe and she's doing a lot of crying, and it lasts for 23 seconds. So I tried to contact Kelly all day on the Saturday into Saturday evening, even went as far as messaging her boyfriend on Facebook."

Kelly had been with her boyfriend on and off for 15 months, said Julieanne, and Kelly would travel to Monaghan twice a month to visit him and stay with his family. Julieanne would drive her there as Kelly didn't drive.

Julieanne said she had never met Kelly's boyfriend, but when she would drop Kelly to his house, they would beep horns to acknowledge each other.

Julieanne wasn't friends with Kelly's boyfriend on social media, but the message was never opened. Julieanne said it wasn't until November when she found out that that particular account was no longer in use.

By Sunday morning, March 17th, there was still no contact from Kelly: "I just knew something was really really wrong, I just had a gut feeling", said Julieanne.

Before 12.25pm that afternoon, a call came from the PSNI to Julieanne's then 18-year-old son's phone, looking for Kelly's next of kin. The phone was passed to Julieanne where an officer told her that Monaghan Gardaí were trying to get in contact with her.

"I remember asking was everything ok but the officer told me she couldn't tell me anything and I was to keep the phone line clear."

Julieanne said she got her two youngest children (4 and 12 at the time) into the car and after driving around 3 miles down the road another phone call came through just after 1pm from Monaghan Garda station.

"I asked them was she OK and I remember silently praying that maybe she was detained overnight for being drunk and disorderly, even though Kelly had never been in trouble with the law before, but I was hoping that was the case.

Speaking to Julieanne, the officer on the phone told her that he was really sorry to have to do this over the phone, but her daughter Kelly Marie Lynch was deceased.

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Kelly's two younger siblings, sitting in the back of the car, heard what the officer had just said to their mother.

"It was just life-altering, life-changing", said Julieanne. "It was the most devastating news, it just felt surreal, too real to comprehend. I just felt so much pain and I just wanted to be with Kelly, I just couldn't understand. We didn't know any details of how she had dies or where she was. I just kept asking the officer where is she and can I see her.

"I can imagine it was an uncomfortable call for the officer to have to make but can you imagine how it was for me with my two young children in the car? I had to race home to make sure that my two older boys who were in the house hadn't heard the news on social media. It was just absolute chaos and pure devastation.

"It's every parents worst nightmare and the one thing we all fear as mothers."

Kelly was exactly 23 and 6 months when she died on the 16th of March. She had been laying dead for over 30 hours before she was eventually found by her boyfriend and his cousin.

There was no canvassing of the scene where Kelly died until five days after her body was found, nor did Gardaí receive any CCTV footage of the area in time from people's properties so it had been overwritten. 

There was never any explanation given as to why CCTV was not checked immediately.

"No protocols or procedures were followed in accordance with Garda protocols when a body is found," said Julieanne: "The normal procedures just weren't followed. It's something that we have raised with The Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC)."

Julienne has since lodged 13 complaints with GSOC.

The Superintendent overseeing Monaghan Garda station requested the State pathologist to do an autopsy on Kelly's body but didn't request her to come to the scene. It was the locum technical branch that was meant to be collecting evidence at the scene. The area where Kelly was found wasn't preserved.

Kelly was found between half 8 and 9 o'clock that morning, she was pronounced dead by a GP at 11am and then she was quickly taken away by 1pm. The road wasn't cordoned off until that evening. 

Julieanne's sister, who lives 20 minutes away in Navan, went to the scene shortly after 2pm on her way up to see Julieanne. Upon her arrival to the bridge at the canal, she questioned Gardaí who were on patrol for the St Patrick's Day Parade, telling them that her niece had been found dead a few hours earlier and asked them why the area wasn't cordoned off. Gardaí told her to "move on".

When Kelly's aunt left Julieanne's house that same evening and went back to the bridge, the road was then cordoned off.

"But why hadn't it been cordoned off earlier on? Why hadn't State forensics been called up from Dublin to preserve the scene and collect as much evidence as possible?," Julieanne asks. 

She then said the area was being used during the St Patrick's Day Parade to divert traffic.

"We were told over the phone that Kelly was dead. Nobody came and nobody still has ever came to our home, nobody has offered any support to us."

Julienne said that the family had been assigned a Family Liaison Officer (FLO) who then left over a month later because complaints were lodged to GSOC.

"Nobody told us that we had to get a certificate of death for Kelly which was needed for bank accounts and other such instances. I had to source all of that myself and had to look online for a coroner.

"We should have had assistance with all this stuff. Can you imagine trying to come to terms with your daughter dying and then having to choose a coffin in between identifying her body and then arranging her funeral?

"It just completely upended our lives. Life has completely changed, for all of us, and we feel it every day. And the more stonewalling that we get from An Garda Síochána in Monaghan, the harder they're making it for us.

"But I am being very proactive in my campaign, probably making enemies for me within the guards but at the end of the day, they're a public body who are meant to be there to help families and they've hindered everything."

Kelly's phone has never been pinged or triangulated, it has never been forensically checked to come up with a timeline of who she was last in contact with, because Gardaí say her death was not criminal or suspicious. 

Nobody has ever been taken in for questioning or have even been under suspicion for any part in Kelly's tragic death.

"They did not bring anyone in, there was no arrests made. Anybody that did go in to give a statement, did so three weeks after Kelly died."

Julieanne has been in contact with an investigator in Monaghan asking the question, why wasn't due process followed?

"The two people who found Kelly should have been brought in immediately for questioning and maybe checked for any marks on their body to rule anything out.

"Kelly had 93 injuries on her body when she was found and Gardaí say they are a result of a single fall event. It doesn't add up. I'm not disputing that Kelly's cause of death was drowning, but what happened to Kelly to get those 93 injuries before drowning?"

Julieanne said her daughter would never be the type to be on her own and that Kelly was almost "afraid of her own shadow".

"It had been first assumed that she had taken her own life, but that was quickly redacted. Kelly would never had taken her own life. I know that if Kelly would have done something like that she would have done it at home, in her own bed and would have just gone to sleep forever. She wouldn't put herself through trauma.

"I have posted videos recently of Kelly making notes of what she wanted for the future and she had written one for the new year. If that doesn't tell people that Kelly wanted to live.

"I think it's so easy for people to say 'oh she was a woman who was depressed so she committed suicide'."

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The state pathologist concluded that drowning was the cause of Kelly's death but an independent pathologist doesn't believe drowning to be the single cause of Kelly's death. Because of the inquest, Julieanne was unable to go into more detail on this.

Shockingly, Julieanne said she has been told that the inquest into Kelly's death could take anywhere from 18 months to 6 years.

Julieanne said the impact of the last year has affected her and the entire family "horrendously". Her youngest, who had only turned four when Kelly died, hasn't slept on his own since it happened and is "very confused by it all".

Her other child, who had turned 12 just before Kelly died, the 13th of March, has been in therapy for the last year and has been referred to CAMHS.

"She doesn't sleep, she doesn't eat right", said Julieanne, "She's very much stuck within the trauma of it all. She's afraid to talk about Kelly because she says that if she talks, all she's going to do is cry, she can't face knowing that she's never going to see her big sister again."

Julieanne said that although she has a good support system around her, she hasn't received any grief counselling and is currently on a waiting list.

"I just don't sleep because when I do I have nightmares about Kelly. I just keep seeing her in that room in Navan. We couldn't even touch her when we identified her. We had to look at her through a glass window.

"Identifying Kelly was just horrific, all we could see was from the tip of her nose up, we couldn't see her mouth or anything else, she was covered by a purple fleece blanket."

The post-mortem had not concluded when Julieanne went to identify Kelly's body.

"Just knowing that my daughter was lying there, cut open, no longer whole and complete, just haunts me.

Julieanne said she knows she is never going to see Kelly again, and that she will never have her back in her life, but she tries to remain strong and create a life for the rest of my children, creating memories for them in the future so that their whole life hasn't just been trauma and devastation from Kelly's death. Julieanne admits it's so hard without any kind of answer or closure over what happened her daughter. 

"I listen to Kelly's voicemail daily, and it haunts me all the time", she said, "I was the last person that she contacted, it's horrifying.

"And then there's the wealth of guilt that come from hearing the phone calls. But she was 23 years of age, I had no reason to believe that she was going to be in danger. She had never come to harm any other time, and she was thee to support a grieving family.

"I just don't understand how a young man was found dead on the Wednesday and then my daughter was found dead four days later. It just does not make sense and yet the guards don't find that suspicious."

Julieanne met with the Garda Commissioner in October 2024. She said that he was shocked to hear that Kelly's belongings had been returned to Julieanne just eight days after her death and because there was a break in the chain of evidence it would be hard for the court to resubmit them.

The peer review team took Kelly's belongings back, including her clothing, into their custody in November 2024, but the review has been going on for the last six months and as Julieanne understands, they have only just begun to test the clothing.

"Why is it taking so long?2, asks Julieanne, "Did they give the peer review to detectives who were so busy he knew he wouldn't be able to devote all of his time to it?

"Everything just feels so underhanded. I'm being suspicious, but I think I have grounds for my suspicions."

Having demanded a meeting with the Gardaí after their FLO had become unresponsive to her messages, Julieanne said she was told that her FLO was on annual leave but when she checked on the Garda website, she realised they should have been appointed a new FLO as a replacement, but that never happened.

When she put this to the Garda, their response was "Maybe in the cities, but not in rural areas".

"That's the whole point of having a family liaison officer, for them to be the in-between and keeping us updated on what's going on, but we don't have anyone", said Julieanne.

"We were told that the Superintendent in Monaghan would act as our FLO, but again, isn't the whole point of a FLO is that they're assigned to you with that specific role, to give you the support and to relay any information and answer our questions. Why do I need to be emailing a superintendent who's not always obligated to reply?"

"I honestly do believe that the Gardaí didn't think that we would ask the questions and that I would make as much noise as I have. They probably expected me to accept my daughter's death, sit back and cry myself stupid and not ask for reasonable answers to my questions and I think that has really annoyed them. It's institutional."

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Julieanne said she has contacted the Minister for Justice and the Taoiseach, and that she is receiving some support from Sinn Féin TD for Cavan and Monaghan Matt Carthy, but his involvement is limited until after the inquest.

Julieanne, who already has a solicitor in Dublin, said she will need one up north too in order to apply for an exemption with exceptional circumstances for legal aid to see if they can help in any way, but that will have to be financed by Julieanne.

"There's just so much red-tape", said Julieanne, "And I don't know anybody who has thousands and thousands sitting in their bank ready to bury a 23-year-old child and then fight for inquest and fight for a case, we're just normal people.

"It's so difficult, but I'm so driven to get some kind of answers. It might take me the rest of my life but even my eldest boy said we will get the truth and they'll keep fighting long after I'm gone."

"There's days that I just cry and cry and cry but then I get it out of my system, I put my big girl pants on and start all over again"

Once a writer, Julieanne is now a full-time carer for her son who suffers from autism. She also has three other children to look after.

"My solicitor has also contacted Apple to get access to Kelly's phone data, I do believe her data will answer a lot of questions like who was the last person she was talking to on social media or WhatsApp, snapchat etc. these things should have been investigated.

"That phone would be a blueprint to Kelly's life, but it was never investigated, so if Apple would release it without a court order it would be great but if they don't we'll have to go through a court order route, which will be quite expensive so any donations that we get will be going towards that.

"Every letter we get from a solicitor costs money, every time we send a letter it costs money, all those small little things add up and we just can't do it ourselves, otherwise we won't be living either

"I still have to feed and clothe the children. It really is through the generosity of others and the community coming together to make this all possible."

Julieanne has been very vocal on social media, particularly on TikTok, highlighting and creating awareness of Kelly's death and the family's constant fight for justice.

Julieanne admits it's nothing something she ever thought to do and that she wouldn't be overly confident to speak online but the responses she has gotten back from those watching her videos, that have resonated with her and Kelly's story, has been overwhelming.

"It felt like all the power had been taken from me when Kelly died", she added, "The silence dulled my role in Kelly's life, so me documenting her story was me taking my power back. It's been good, it's been cathartic in a way and it has also brought so may people into my life."

Julieanne went on to say that a fundraiser is planned in Kelly's honour by a couple from Dundalk who she met on TikTok this coming September, a week before what would have been Kelly's 25th birthday. 

"We want to mark it with happiness and community while also raising important funds and awareness", said Julieanne, "We really want to give back to the community who have helped us by asking them to come out and meet us, have a drink and a dance and bring the kids along because Kelly loved children, and to honour her name as well.

On the power of social media, Julieanne said it has been incredible over the last 15 months for the awareness she has been able to bring to Kelly's case and for the support her followers have given her.

"I'm doing it for awareness, but not just for Kelly, "but every other woman that this has happened to and for every other child and every other family, and I really want to encourage other families to not be afraid to speak up against an institution that's been around a long time.

"At the end of the day, we have voices, our voice is our power and if we don't use that, there's never going to be change or reform. I'll never let this go and I just hope that other families, if they're currently going through this then, they need to start shouting."

We reached out to An Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC), now Fíosrú, who told us the investigation is still ongoing and they would be unable to give us any update at time of publication.

We also reached out to An Garda Síochána who sent us back the following statement,

"Garda Commissioner Drew Harris and Chief Superintendent Alan McGovern, Louth-Cavan-Monaghan Division, met with the family of Ms Kelly Lynch on 21st October 2024, and listened carefully to their concerns.

"Following this meeting, Commissioner Harris directed that a Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) from a Division external to the Louth-Cavan-Monaghan Division conduct a peer review of the investigation into the death of Ms Lynch.

"An Garda Síochána is currently conducting that peer review of the original Garda investigation. The SIO is keeping the family up to date with the progress of the review.  An Garda Síochána is also assisting the Coroner’s Inquest and fully co-operating with the GSOC investigation. These processes are ongoing.

"The timing of a Coroner’s Inquest is solely a matter for the Coroner. An Garda Síochána appeals to anyone with information on the death of Ms Lynch to contact Gardaí."

As was mentioned in the above statement, "The timing of a Coroner’s Inquest is solely a matter for the Coroner", we also reached out to the coroner. We found out they were still awaiting the file from the Gardaí along with a deposition in order to set a date for the inquest. We were told this could arrive in their office tomorrow or another year from now.

You can donate today to The Kelly Marie Lynch Legal & Investigation Fund

Donations from the Gofundme page will go towards legal fees and towards the investigation into Kelly's death.