Melissa Mahon was, by all accounts, besotted with the man accused of her murder.  In the first five days of the trial of Ronald McManus (known as Ronnie Dunbar by most of the witnesses) witness after witness has testified to her eagerness to be by his side.

Last week her sister Leanne told the court that she had found a photograph of McManus in a keepsake box Melissa kept in her bedroom, while she was looking there after her little sister’s disappearance. Staff at the care home where Melissa was admitted in the final weeks of her short life said time and time again that Melissa had been anxious to keep in contact with McManus and his daughter Samantha even after she was in the care of the HSE.

The 14-year-old had undoubtedly been unhappy at home.  She told social workers that her father had sexually abused her and her mother beat her.  She was a frequent runaway and would disappear for days at a time, usually to be found at the house McManus shared with his three daughters.  Melissa even referred to him as her father and told a previous witness, McManus’s ex girlfriend Angelique Sheridan, that she believed she was the reincarnation of Cleopatra and Ronnie was her reincarnated King.

She even slept with his photograph under her pillow.  Today staff at the Lios Na nOg care centre told the court that a photograph of McManus was found in Melissa’s bedroom.  Fiona Keogh, a care worker at the centre, told how she had found the photograph while she was making Melissa’s bed.  The teenager had been a resident at the centre for around a week when the discovery was made although she was frequently absent without permission.

Ms Keogh told the court that the photograph, showing McManus holding a bottle, had been cut into a roughly circular shape.  On the back was written either “best wishes” or “good wishes” together with the name McManus.  Ms Keogh said that she put the photograph back on Melissa’s night stand but raised the subject with her colleagues as soon as she had a chance.  She said that she had not made a formal note of the find because she had wanted to broach the subject with Melissa first.

Melissa went missing on September 14th.  She was last seen walking in the direction of the Rathbraughan Estate, where both her parents and McManus lived.  Today the court heard that Melissa was, perhaps, seen on one more occasion, one week after her disappearance.

Maria Lloyd, another care worker at Lios Na nOg, had been travelling into work on the bus when she saw a small figure running ahead of the bus, heading towards Rathbraughan.  She had known Melissa during her short stay in the centre and as the bus followed the running figure Maria became convinced that it was in fact Melissa.  The black hair, tied back in a pony tail and worn with a fringe, were the first suggestion but the real clincher was the fact that the pink tracksuit jacket the figure wore was stained black all down the back and sides.

Ms Lloyd explained that Maria had died her hair black while she was staying in Lios Na nOg and that, some time later when she was doing a batch of laundry, she noticed that Melissa’s pink jacket was stained from the dye.  When the bus stopped she tried to follow the running figure but her way was blocked by elderly passengers climbing off too slowly and by the time she had got to the alleyway the figure had run down, it was empty.

On cross examination Ms Lloyd agreed that she wasn’t 100% sure that it was Melissa she had seen that day, she had only had one brief glance at the figure’s face as it turned to run into the alleyway. She said she was fairly sure of the date though, as she had mentioned it to her co workers and a not had been taken.  The date of the note in the log book was September 21st.

So Melissa briefly appeared as a ghost in today’s proceedings.  A small running figure in a stained tracksuit top.  A brief vision that cannot be confirmed or fully denied. She has appeared in this fashion throughout the trial so far, in snapshots that stand out from the linear progression of the State’s case.  Sitting on top of a shed roof when her mother and sister walked by, running across a green in a housing estate one afternoon, the lonely figure running alongside the bus.  Images of the lost, lonely little girl all attention is now on, snapshots of the short life about to come to an abrupt end.  Now all that’s left of her are these snapshots and a few bones.