‘Eddie was just good. He was a good son,’ says heartbroken mum Nancy

His mother Nancy, aged 83, speaking to the ‘Journal’ yesterday, described him as a devoted son who would have bent over backwards for his friends and family.

“Eddie lived with me. Looked after me. Cooked for me. He would have made sure he was in every night for me,” she says.

Due to her bad back Nancy had had to move her bed downstairs in the house she shared with Eddie in the Little Diamond. She recalls the typical routine.

“Every night as he was going to bed he would say, ‘Ma, good night and God bless and if you need anything just hit the ceiling with the stick and I’ll come down’. I used to laugh.

“Eddie was just good. He was a good son.”

Eddie took a pint in the Bogside Inn and enjoyed a game of pool. He was a big fan of cue sports and darts. Nancy has fond memories of watching the championships at the Crucible and Alexandra Palace with him in the house.

“We used to watch the snooker. He was wild about the snooker. And the darts,” she says.

Eddie’s daughter Aoife Wade remembers how he doted on his children and grandchildren.

“He was great with the wains,” says Aoife. “He would always have taken them a walk down the quay on the summer nights. They always looked forward to seeing him. My wee girl is a dancer. So he would have done dancing competitions and discos with her for a bit of banter. She always used to go on about her ‘Granda’s Da Vinci’s Dance’! He was really happy-go-lucky. You never would have got him in a bad mood.”

Aoife could always call upon her father as a handyman whether he had ever attempted a job before or not.

“He would always have done anything that you needed done. Any papering or painting or anything you needed sorted. He was always at the other end of the phone if you needed something done in your house, even if it was something he had never done before he would have had a go at it.”

Eddie’s sister Tanya remembers him as an incredibly bubbly character: “He was so full of life. He would have done anything for anybody. And he would have laughed at two flies going up a wall.”

Aoife told the ‘Journal’ he was a great man for big family festivals like St. Patrick’s Day.

“He had loads of time for all the wains and was always up for a bit of craic and a laugh with them at Hallowe’en and Christmas. He was always the one up for a laugh and dancing. He once dressed up as a mermaid! He would have always been there on St. Patrick’s Day with his shamrocks on and a can of Harp in his hand.”

Brother Terry recalls him simply as ‘a character’: “It’s the only way I can describe him.”

Eddie was a bit of a daredevil in his younger days. In the 1970s, says Nancy, Eddie would have been out throwing stones at the British army and she couldn’t wait to get him into their home in the Rossville Flats to keep him away from the rioting.

“Eddie would have been a wild stone-thrower,” says Nancy. “I used to be glad to see the riots so I could bring him in and put his pyjamas on. I put him into the room one night. I’ll never forget it. The snow was on the ground. We lived on the top floor of the high flats. Eddie was out of the window going along the ledges from one room to scare the ones in the other room. He was hanging on with one hand to the top of the flats. How he never slipped....”

During his later life one trait that stood out was that Eddie was generous to a fault, Nancy adds.

“He used to leave himself with nothing. I used to say to Eddie, ‘You’ve loaned all your money out. Where are you going to get your money for your cigarettes and your couple of beers?’ He would say, ‘Ma, sure I’ll get it off you’!”

On November 25, 2018, Eddie Meenan was the victim of one of the most brutal murders ever inflicted on a human being in Derry. It’s a nightmare his family have been living ever since. The details of the atrocity which occurred at Thundering Down behind Creggan Street have been well-rehearsed throughout what has been a gruelling court process for the Meenans.

Eddie was stabbed 52 times and beaten so badly he suffered two broken legs and over a hundred sites of assault were marked on his body.

This week Sean Rodgers (34), of no fixed abode, was found guilty of Eddie’s murder, while Ryan Walters (22), with an address in Crossgar, was found guilty of manslaughter. Derek Creswell (29), of King’s Lane in Ballykelly, had already pleaded guilty to murdering Mr. Meenan.

Though it remains incredibly painful for the family Tanya recalls the events of November 25, 2018: “We went up that morning and the Little Diamond was cordoned off. We saw my mammy’s house was cordoned off and I said to the police that we needed to get in to get her medication but they told us that a body had been found, that it was a crime scene and that we couldn’t go in.”

Tanya says such were the injuries that had been inflicted and the fact Eddie was small in stature the PSNI thought it was a youth that had been killed rather than her 52-year-old brother.

“The police thought it was a young fellah because he was that battered and Eddie would have been small that they thought it was somebody younger. That morning when my mammy heard there was a body found, my mammy started to do the rosary for the family that was going to hear that news that day. Little did she know she was praying for her own family.”

Nancy affirms: “I just thought look at the news that’s coming to that mother today. Little did I know that that news was coming to me. I’ll never forget it and I’ll never get over it.”

Terry remembers one of Eddie’s final acts in the week before he was murdered which demonstrated the kind of caring and sensitive brother he was.

“Eddie probably saved my life because previous to the Saturday when he was murdered I had suffered a silent heart attack on the Sunday and I didn’t know it.

“That Tuesday my mum asked me to come up and move a mattress into Eddie’s room because Eddie had a bad arm and a bad leg. I was going up the stairs and felt a bit nauseous. So I stopped and said, ‘Listen, I don’t feel well at all’. Eddie was insistent that I go to the hospital as a precaution.

“I went over to the hospital and they did their tests and discovered it was a problem with my heart. That was on the Tuesday. By the Wednesday I had a stent in at Altnagelvin. I got out on the Thursday and Eddie was murdered on the Saturday.”

Another incredible tragedy for the Meenans was that when Eddie’s funeral finally took place on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception at St. Eugene’s just across the street from where he was murdered, Nancy took unwell and was unable to attend.

“The morning that Eddie was buried I took a heart attack. I never even got to his funeral. The undertakers asked me if I wanted to say goodbye to him. All I could do was go over to the closed coffin and give it a kiss before they took me away,” she says.

This week the family received a degree of closure when the jury brought in its verdicts for Rodgers and Walters but it’s still unbelievably hard.

“The nature of his death was horrific, unimaginable, like something out of a horror film. We couldn’t even say goodbye to him,” says Tanya.

“How do you do that to another human being? Eddie was either at death’s door or dead when they stripped him of his clothes and stabbed him 52 times. What in under God makes someone do that?” Describing Sean Rodgers as “evil”, she added that he “should never have been out of prison”.

“There was no remorse from any of them. Not an apology or anything. You could never, ever forgive them,” adds Eddie’s sister.

Nancy says: “It is immaterial to me whether they get ten years, twenty years, forty years...it will never bring Eddie back. Though I got the verdict that I wanted.

“I wouldn’t even want an apology from them. It wouldn’t mean anything. It will never bring Eddie back. But I can’t go through life hating them because hate eats away at you. I know if I hate them I’m only doing more damage to myself. But the man above will judge them.”

For Terry and Tanya it is hard not to feel hatred.

“I’m full of hate. I know it is only doing damage to me but I can’t help it. I’ll never forgive them,” says Tanya.

Terry saw Eddie’s body before the casket was closed. He says he got no closure this week. He has an image seared in his mind’s eye that no brother should have to endure. He told the ‘Journal’ his brother’s head was swollen to two or three times its normal size. He kissed it and said goodbye.

For Terry the manslaughter verdict for Walters did not go far enough.

“I’d been out of Derry for 32 years. This has denied me an opportunity to have a brotherly relationship with Eddie again. I was working in Dublin so it’s denied me that.

“He didn’t deserve to die like that. No way. It’s like a nightmare. When I was in that court sitting there you felt like they were talking about someone else. That’s the way it felt to me. It was as if you were sitting there listening to a case that doesn’t concern you.”

The Meenans will try to realise some measure of peace in the years ahead but things will never be the same.

“There is some kind of closure that they have been found guilty,” says Tanya. “But it was mentally and physically draining. Even to this day I have nightmares and they are all about knives. It’s changed everyone in the family. We’ll never be the same as we were before. It’s something we’ll never, ever get over.”