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According to one newspaper, ‘the manner of Conor Harris’s death caused widespread revulsion and shock’ among his fellow students and friends. This revulsion and shock initially took the form of whispered conversations around the dinner table. Then it took the form of silence.

According to various newspapers, Brendan and Eileen Harris were ‘distraught’ or ‘inconsolable’ or ‘tearful and deeply shocked’. They made ‘heartfelt appeals’ and ‘stinging attacks’ and ‘desperate pleas’. They were ‘strong in the face of grief’.

(Of course, they were not strong in the face of grief. They were felled, defeated, harrowed.)

According to other newspapers, the Culhanes ‘stood staunchly by their son’. They were ‘determined to prove his innocence’. They were ‘deeply saddened’ by Conor’s death but ‘one hundred per cent certain that Richard had not been involved’.

According to various newspapers, Conor Harris was ‘kicked to death by a mob’; ‘brutally assaulted by a gang of drunken youths’; ‘tragically killed during an altercation outside a nightclub at three in the morning’.

According to various newspapers, Richard and his friends were ‘snobs’ or ‘rich kids’ or ‘rugger-buggers’.

According to other newspapers, Richard and his friends were ‘students’ or ‘former private-school pupils’ or ‘three young men of college age’.

All of these descriptions are true at a certain level.

The Unique Selling Point of the story – from the point of view of the news media – was, of course, the private-school element.

People called up radio phone-in shows and explained that Brookfield boys and their ilk were thugs and always had been, and that it was about bloody time they got their comeuppance.

Other people said that this was a tragedy and we should be thinking of the families involved instead of airing our private grievances.

Still other people said that fights like the one in which Conor was killed happened every night on the streets of the capital, and that the news media had only seized on this one because the people involved were rich and educated and therefore glamorous in a way that other violent young men were not.

Still other people opined that the boys would get away with it because of who they were and where they’d gone to school.

About the night itself people were less passionate but equally opinionated. Some people said Conor must have been asking for it. Other people – echoing the girls of St Anne’s – said that there must have been a woman involved.

I don’t think anyone ever expressed the opinion that Stephen, Barry and Richard were innocent.

It’s interesting that these debates were conducted almost entirely through public channels. It’s also interesting that the people who wrote to the newspapers and spoke on the radio and on the television about the case were not people who had grown up in south County Dublin. They were northsiders or people from the country.

On the southside, we were expected to be quiet.

All over south County Dublin people tacitly agreed that the case would not be publicly discussed. Of course, almost everyone in south County Dublin either knew Richard or Stephen or Barry or Conor or their parents directly, or they knew someone who did.