A Daughter Condemns…

Samantha Conroy’s voice shook slightly as she described trying to resuscitate her best friend.  Giving evidence via video link, the 18-year-old told how she had come home one day in mid September 2006 to find her younger sister crying in the downstairs living room, smoking a cigarette.

Samantha told the court that her sister had told her not to go upstairs, so she did.  She said she ran upstairs and into her father’s room where she saw him lying on the bed with Melissa Mahon.

Samantha’s father, Ronald McManus, otherwise known as Ronnie Dunbar, denies murdering 14-year-old Melissa Mahon on an unknown date in September 2006 somewhere in Sligo town.  He also denies threatening to kill Samantha.

Court 16, the only place in the Four Courts where video link evidence can be heard, was packed with witnesses and gardai.  As his daughter began to give her evidence McManus craned forward to try to see past the crowds standing at the back of the court to the two large screens suspended above the judges bench.  Eventually he moved to the witness box where he sat listening intently and taking occasional notes.

Samantha told the court that Melissa was lying, on her side facing away from the door with her father lying behind her, facing into Melissa.  He had his arm around her neck.  Samantha told the court “I thought they were getting up to sexual activities”. The room was in darkness with the curtains closed so she turned on the bedroom light.

As she did so, Samantha says, her father jumped up from the bed and ran out of the room.  As he moved Melissa fell onto her back.  Samantha told the court that Melissa’s face was purple, her lips blue and her eyes closed.  She said she ran over to try to resuscitate her friend, sitting on her legs and pressing on her chest.  Melissa was trying to breath.  Samantha told the court that she could hear a high pitched noise coming from Melissa’s mouth but her attempts at resuscitation were unsuccessful.  “Melissa wasn’t breathing any more.”

Samantha told the court her sister had come into the room and was standing there crying.  She herself was screaming Melissa’s name.  Then their father came back in.  Samantha told the court that she and her sister watched while her father put Melissa head first  into the sleeping bag he had brought back into the room and tied a tie around the end where her feet were.

She said that her father picked the sleeping bag up roughly and took it down stairs.  Then he backed his car up to the front door and opened the boot.  But he had difficulties getting the body into the boot and Samantha said she heard a snapping sound as Melissa’s neck broke.

Samantha told the court her father told her and her sister to get into the car.  They didn’t argue and got in.  Their father drove them to a place they had gone many times, a wooded area beside the River Bonet.  Samantha said that her father had been considering buying a barge that had been moored there with the intention of living on it.  She told the court he called the spot his “secret wood” because it was in the middle of nowhere.

She said her father dragged the sleeping bag into the woods, holding it by Melissa’s legs, and dragged it down the bumpy path to the river’s edge.  She and her sister followed behind.  Her dad, she said was “very controlling” and she and her sister were afraid of him.

When they reached the river, Samantha told the court, her father told them to grab the sleeping bag and help him to get it into the water.  She said she waded into the water with him and on the count of three they swung the sleeping bag and threw it into the river.  An air bubble was trapped in one end and the bag stayed near the surface before eventually sinking to the bottom of the river.

Samantha said that on the way back to the car her father had said over and over again that they were now accessories and that he would see they met the same end if they went to the gardai.  He kept telling them this all the way home.  Once home, a friend of his arrived to take him to football practice in Collooney and the three left the house again.

Samantha said she and her sister had never spoken about what happened that evening again and that the first time she spoke about Melissa’s death was when she told her older sister Shirley in January 2008.

She said when she first met Melissa at school she didn’t like her because she was the girl who was always getting her little sister in trouble but when Samantha started “dossing with them” she got to like her.  She agreed that her younger sister had been pushed out when her friendship with Melissa had deepened.

She told the court that Melissa had told her that her father was sexually abusing her and had put her head through a door.  Melissa also told her that she had fallen in love with Samantha’s father and was having a sexual relationship with him.  Samantha said that her father had overheard this conversation and had admitted to having a sexual relationship with Melissa.

She said he had cut Melissa’s fringe straight across so that it looked like Cleopatra.  The trial previously heard from McManus’s ex girlfriend Angelique Sheridan, also known as Dupois, who told the court that Melissa had told her she believed she was the reincarnation of Cleopatra and that Ronnie was her king.

Samantha will continue her evidence tomorrow…