Eamonn Lillis was quite definite when he told gardai he had not had an affair. After his arrest, six days after his wife’s death on December 15th 2008, he was woken in his brother-in-laws house and arrested on suspicion of murdering his wife, Celine Cawley.
In a series of interviews that Sunday he refused to comment when he was asked about his relationship with his wife. He agreed they had slept in different bedrooms as a rule but this was down to her heavy snoring and thrashing about in the bed.
He was quite definite that he had not been having an affair in the ten weeks leading up to his wife’s death. He had known Jean Treacy only as the woman who gave him his weekly massage, he told them. Celine went to her as well.
The gardai told him they had been speaking to Jean and she told a different story. A story in which an advance was made over a massage and a kiss was snatched in the salon where she worked. They suggested regular weekly meetings on a Monday when she wasn’t working, three visits to his home.
At first Mr Lillis was determined in his denial but as the details stacked up he admitted the affair. A mid life crisis, he called it. He had been infatuated but wasn’t a jealous man. He said he had known she was due to marry the following year and it didn’t bother him.
He told them he had worked out a “resolution list” with his mistress and then discussed the list with his wife over a bottle of wine. The list covered things he was unhappy about in his life, the man he wanted to be, what he wanted to change. The talk was very therapeutic, he said, it helped the marriage.
He denied that Celine had found out about his affair on the day that she died although he agreed he was due to meet Jean in their regular Monday meeting. He couldn’t do that to his wife, he said. He didn’t have it in him.
He refused to comment when gardai suggested that his wife’s death had been a terrible accident, that he had just snapped under intolerable strain. He couldn’t do something like that to Celine he said. He wanted to speak to his solicitor.
He also told gardai that he had changed his clothes after picking up an Irish Times in a local newsagents. He had been going to take the dogs for a walk so had changed into combats and walking boots. He had put the jeans he was wearing in the wash room and changed his dark top and black boots with white trim.
The jury was shown the contents of a black bin liner, found in a small suitcase under some cameras and lenses. The suitcase had been submerged under boxes of children’s toys, dolls and children’s books. In the bin liner were a pair of jeans and a black V neck sweater, a pair of white socks and a pair of boxers. All the clothing was bloodstained. As was a dish cloth, a pair of men’s outdoor gloves, a pair of rubber gloves and several wads of kitchen roll. The bag also contained an empty sauce bottle and a yoghurt pot.
The jury were also shown a bloodstained grey polo shirt found in the upstairs bedroom used by Mr Lillis and a pair of black boots with white trim with blood stains on the soles.
We now have a very good idea of the layout of the house in Howth where this story played out. This morning the prosecution played a video tour of the house filmed by gardai. The camera swung slowly round the property showing a home in the run up to Christmas. Gold tinsel was draped over every picture and the Christmas tree made another appearance.
Breakfast things were abandoned on the counter in the kitchen and beds were dishevelled. The house had an empty, deserted look, made more acute by the inscrutable eye that looked on it in the aftermath of a forensic investigation.
The camera lingered over the soft toys in a bedroom, clutter on a bathroom shelf, an ornamental cow with daisy spots across it’s back in the garden. All the trapping of lives lived before events that would change them forever. A Marie Celeste moment before tragedy struck at the start of an ordinary week just before Christmas.