Tag: Murder (Page 4 of 4)

Religion and Mobile Phones

12th March 2009 / Abigail / 0 Comments

“Do you believe in God?” the gardai asked Gerald Barry when they interviewed him on suspicion of killing Swiss teenager Manuela Riedo.

“I do believe in God”, he answered them. “I believe there is something there.” Barry, with an address at Rosan Glas, Renmore in Galway, denies killing Manuela on wasteground near Lough Atalia, Galway in early October 2007. It’s a strange question to hear read out in court, one that jars with the meticulous logic of the proceedings. But this is a case that has inflamed emotions so perhaps not so surprising after all.

Manuela Riedo’s semi naked body was found in bushes a short distance from a well known shortcut between Renmore and Galway city. A used condom was found hanging on a bush beside her and her clothes were scattered around the clearing where her body lay.

Barry was being interviewed after his arrest some ten days after the death. Gardai had arrived at the flat he shared with his sister and arrested him early that morning. A search of the place discovered Manuela’s digital camera under the mattress of a bed in a room that Barry admitted using. At the start of the trial he pleaded guilty to stealing both the camera and a mobile phone belonging to the Swiss girl. When he spoke to gardai that day in October 2007 he told them he had never seen the camera before or any like it. He had only ever known disposable cameras, he said.

He told gardai that the room where the camera was found was used by the many different people, the flat was often filled with visitors some of whom he didn’t even know. On the day of the killing he said he remembered a red haired man and a dark haired man, neither of whom he knew. The red haired man was from Spiddal, he thought. The other was probably a traveller, “he had that way about him.”

Barry told gardai that he had spent most of October 8th, the day Manuela disappeared, in bed. He had got up in the late afternoon and spent several hours driving around with his brother-in-law and his brother. He hadn’t been near Galway city at all, he told gardai. He didn’t know any Swiss girl and he hadn’t been near Lough Atalia since the last time he visited his mother in Mervue, three weeks previously.

They eventually went back to his brother-in-law’s house and watched TV. “Banged Up Abroad” was on, a fact agreed by both brother and brother-in-law when they took the stand today. Their account of the night was somewhat different though.

Dennis Ward, the brother-in-law, explained that he had been driving around with Kevin Barry, Gerald’s brother, when they received a phonecall from Gerald. He asked to be picked up in town, at the Supermacs in Shop Street. They drove to the appointed place and waited. Barry arrived soon after, wearing a red jacket and carrying a plastic bag. It was raining and the jacket was wet.

The red jacket and plastic bag made several appearances today. First grainy CCTV stills shown on the courtroom’s twin screens show a figure walking towards Shop Street, wearing what was identified as a three quarter length red coat and a black baseball cap. In his right hand was a white blob which may have been a white plastic bag. The time was 8.27p.m. on October 8th.

Mobile phone records showed a call from Barry’s Meteor phone to Dennis Ward at 8.20. The call was routed through the mobile phone cell at Lough Atalia, an hour previously another call had been routed through the same cell, this one to the mother of one of his children. She told the court today that she couldn’t remember receiving a call, her phone had been ringing but she hadn’t picked up.

Barry tried to reach her several more times that evening, sending her texts at 10.10 and again at 11.

The trial will be continuing tomorrow.

Post Mortem

11th March 2009 / Abigail / 1 Comment

The court listened quietly as the Chief State Pathologist Marie Cassidy ran through her findings. What emerged was a disturbing picture of Manuela Riedo’s last hours or minutes.

The 17-year-old’s mud stained, semi-naked body was found dumped in bushes near a desolate shortcut into Galway City from Renmore where she was staying for the two weeks she was to be in Ireland. She had died from asphyxiation, most probably from an arm pressed against her throat, so hard it had left an impression of the thin gold chain she wore with it’s two small crosses.

Martin Tierney, her host for her brief stay, told the court he had warned her not to take the short cut into town. It cut through waste ground near the railway tracks and even in daylight was a desolate place. It was safe enough to walk through in a group but it was wiser not to walk there alone, especially not at night.

Tragically Manuela didn’t take his advice. The last time he saw her was when she stuck her head round the door of the living room, where he was watching television with his sons, to say she was heading out to meet friends in the King’s Head Pub in Galway city. That was the last time she was seen alive.

Her friend Azaria Maurer broke down into tears as she told the court she had been due to meet Manuela at the pub instead of meeting by the barracks that marked the beginning of the shortcut. They had met here every time they had headed into town after learning about the short cut on their second day in Galway, the day before Manuela’s death.

Photographs taken from Manuela’s digital camera, which was found under the mattress of the accused’s bed, show the two girls smiling outside a traditional Irish pub. The last photograph, taken on the day of her disappearance was of the classroom where she was supposed to be learning English.

She had spent that Monday in lessons before meeting up in the King’s Head with friends scattered around Galway’s other language schools. She arrived home and had dinner at the Tierney house before making her fatal decision to take the short cut back into town.

The post mortem report always follows a set pattern, systematic and thorough. It examines from the outside in and from the top of the head down to the soles of the feet. Everything is looked at and all minor injuries and imperfections are noted. It can be a bewildering litany of the scrapes and bumps we encounter as we move through the world somewhere in the middle of which hide the grimmer facts of the case.

Manuela Riedo had a lot of superficial injuries. Her body was covered in fresh bruises and scrapes, possibly caused as her body was dragged through the sharp undergrowth to the place her body was found. Scenes of crimes officers described strands of dark blond hair snagged in the bushes from the upper path she would have taken down into the bushes.

There were four separate injuries to her head, consistent with slaps or punches. Her father Hans-Peter wept, held tightly by her mother Arlette, as Professor Cassidy turned to the sexual injuries his daughter had received, scrapes to the vaginal area and the horrific “unusual injury” that lead to much cross-examination and reexamination.

This injury was the one that led to gruesome discussions of the relative features of animal bite marks and the work of a human wielding a knife. When Manuela’s body was found a piece of skin 5 centimetres by seven was missing from her groin area. It had been removed after she had died. The top of the wound was perfectly smooth and inconsistent with the work of wild animals. We were told in some detail about the difficulty of removing skin from an area with a natural crease. It’s one of those things I really would rather be unaware of.

Her clothes had been discarded on the way to the clearing where her body was found. Her outer clothing and her distinctive cherry covered bag were found closer to the pathway while her shoes and socks were placed near the body. In the bushes nearby gardai found her underwear and a used condom snagged on a branch…it’s contents secured by a knot.

I’m not seeking to be sensational here. I’m not being gratuitous. These were the injuries she suffered and that her parents listened to as the post mortem evidence unfolded. The details of a violent death are never pleasant.

A Hectic Few Weeks Ahead

9th March 2009 / Abigail / 0 Comments

It looks like I’ll be taking up residence in the Four Courts again from tomorrow. The jury for the trial of Gerald Barry, accused of the murder of Swiss language student Manuela Riedo, is due to be sworn in tomorrow.

17-year-old Manuela’s body was found on waste ground close to the railway line at Lough Atalia in October 2007. She had only been in Ireland for three days, here to take part in a two week intensive English language course.

27-year-old Gerald Barry with an address at Rosan Glas, Rahoon denies the murder. He also denies the theft of a mobile phone and a camera.

The trial is expected to last around two and a half weeks and it’s one of those trials that will get a lot of attention. Manuela’s parents Hans-Peter and Arlette have travelled, along with her aunt, two of her teachers and a school friend, to attend the trial.

The six men and six women in the jury will begin hearing evidence tomorrow.

And Back to Jail he Goes

7th March 2009 / Abigail / 0 Comments

The papers today are screaming about the failure of Joe O’Reilly’s appeal. O’Reilly, for any non Irish readers, is a notorious wife murderer. He was the first of the recent batch of high profile cases of this kind and ticked all the sex and violence boxes necessary for a media frenzy. O’Reilly also had an unusual level of arrogance which led him to chat happily to various media outlets and even appear on the Late Late Show, Ireland’s foremost chat show.

Anyway, the appeal was heard back in December and the judgement delivered yesterday. To read today’s front pages you would think that O’Reilly was the devil incarnate. The Sun even goes so far as to call him “Devil Joe”. Yesterday’s Evening Herald went into an orgy of satisfied gloating with eight pages of “analysis”. It’s all standard tabloid hyperbole but the judgement was hardly much of a surprise.

When the grounds for appeal were announced last year the general consensus in the Media Room at the Four Courts was that it was all a bit lacklustre. The defence had even applied to have the verdict over turned on the grounds that O2 Ireland, which was O’Reilly’s mobile phone provider and supplier of some of the most damning evidence, might not have been a legally licenced company at the time. It really wasn’t the most inspiring set of grounds to appeal.

The thing was that before the details of the appeal were announced speculation was rife that there would be some strong grounds to appeal on the use of mobile phone evidence to position him in frame for the murder or the seizing of emails from his work.

With the grounds that finally did go forward I doubt there were many surprised, except apparently O’Reilly himself, that the appeal was unsuccessful.

The murder of Rachel O’Reilly was a particularly nasty and brutal one. It’s hard to understand how any husband could do that to their wife but these things happen and they happen with alarming regularity. Personally I don’t think that makes him evil though, and certainly not demonic. Joe O’Reilly is arrogant and obviously thinks he is a little bit cleverer than anyone else.

The facts of the case prove otherwise. He may be a sociopath but to call him evil or demonic elevates him to somewhere he shouldn’t be. He’s simply an Irish man who killed his wife rather than go through a marriage breakup. He’s not the only one and he certainly isn’t anywhere near being the last. He’s no different from Brian Kearney or Anton Mulder, nasty cheap little men all. But as the first he’ll always be beloved of the tabloids…well at least there’s no retrial on the cards!

Back to the Courts…

16th February 2009 / Abigail / 1 Comment

Kathleen Mulhall, the mother of the notorious “Scissor Sisters” Linda and Charlotte, today pleaded guilty to helping to clean up the scene where her daughters had hacked her Kenyan boyfriend to death.

Farah Swaleh Noor’s torso and limbs were recovered from the Royal Canal, his head and penis were never recovered. It was a trial that seriously captured the public’s attention when it ran over several weeks in the Autumn of 2006.

The papers were full of detailed descriptions of how the two sisters had cut up the body in the bathroom of their mother’s house in Ballybough…an operation that took around five hours. They had killed Noor after a day drinking with him and their mother over the Patrick’s Day weekend in 2005.

In court today Kathleen Mulhall stood quietly as the charge was read out to her. She was dressed in black trousers with a white shirt and black jacket, her hair pushed up under a black cap, her eyebrows drawn on rather than grown…her signature look.

The gathered press – and there were many to witness this addendum to such a gruesome case – leaned forward to peer round the packed bodies in Court 1 in the hope of seeing a remorseful tear. After all, the man her daughters had killed was the man she had left her husband for in 2001. Today though she looked straight forward and lean how you may the tears were not much in evidence. Although as the single charge was read out to her she could be seen swallowing nervously.

It was all over in a little more than a minute. The charge of obstructing an investigation by helping to clean up her home after the murder was read out and she quietly admitted her guilt. She will not be remanded in custody to await her sentence on May 5th.

There have been a rush of guilty pleas lately. For some reason things tend to work like that in the courts. You might have a succession of acquittals or a flurry of not guilty by reason of insanity’s (actually there appears to be such a flurry ongoing at the moment). I’ve never worked out whether it’s because the Director of Public Prosecution’s office tend to deal with similar cases in a bunch or whether it’s some weird cosmic thing. I’d place money that it’s something completely prosaic though.

Guilty pleas are the worst though because from a reporting point of view it means that the case never gets a run. While a summary of the evidence will be given at the sentencing you don’t here the details and the different view points that a full trial will give. I’m sure there are plenty out there that could come up with multiple reasons why the guilty plea is preferable but what can I say…I’m a writer.

So it looks like the rest of this week will be taken up with editing of the novel and various meetings that must be attended. Such is the life of a freelance!

When the Story Gets Lost in the Legal Argument…

15th October 2008 / Abigail / 0 Comments

I can’t help but see any trial that I cover as a story and it’s frustrating sometimes when the law gets in the way of telling it. I’m not being an air-headed artistic type here, each murder is the story of the end of a life.

The person who we refer to, with professional distance, as “the deceased” once went about their life with all the hopes and dreams and fears and foibles that are the basic building blocks to any story.

It’s easy to see yet another dead stranger as simply the “corpse of the week”, as if it’s some TV series unfolding before our eyes. Perhaps in a way it’s self preservation to dismiss them like that. When you hear post mortems and forensic results it’s better not to think of the body as a living human being.

But in the end, as a journalist, my job is to tell the story. It doesn’t matter how convoluted the prosecution case may be, I sit down at my laptop and find the strongest hook to hang the day’s instalment on.

But sometimes that’s more difficult than others. There are certain prosecution barristers who stick to the letter of the law until the story is all but lost. The one’s that insist on dotting every legal “i” and crossing every legal “t”.

Instead of proving that the evidence was gathered and the investigation conducted in full accordance with the law we will hear every aspect of the case proved from numerous different angles. Rather than taking broad strokes and proving the main strands of evidence, we get the story through feathery little strokes that stretch the narrative, and the sense, of the investigation to breaking point.

It’s not just boring it actually makes the job more difficult when you just get the same piece of evidence told in half a dozen different ways rather than new information. Of course it has to be seen that the law was above reproach during the investigation but if there are, for example, numerous CCTV pictures in evidence, do we really need to hear from every single person in the chain from the source to the garda in charge of evidence?

This chain can be several people long. There’s usually the shop keeper (or whoever) from whose premise the CCTV camera was on. Then there’s the garda who went to collect the DVD of the footage, the garda who downloaded it onto a computer, the garda who watched it, and finally the garda who’s in charge of all the evidence and so has to receive the DVD in the end.

Now this might not seem so bad but consider the trial where there are multiple CCTV cameras and we go through the same chain for each one. It’s not necessary to prove every little thing. Especially when the defence team’s acceptance of the evidence is a clear indication that everything was done correctly. But there are some prosecution barristers who work their way through the book of evidence from page one right through to the end.

Just to clarify, every criminal trial has a book of evidence, the collection of every document that was gathered to prove the prosecution’s case. Not everything in the book of evidence will be told to the jury. Not every witness whose statement appears within it’s pages will be called. This is normal. This is because a garda investigation goes down certain set lines and takes a lot of man power. But not all these people are essential parts of the story.

For me, it’s simply an inconvenience and an irritation. It’s also very, very boring. But I’m only there to do a job. Justice happens whether I’m there or not. It’s the jury who are going to decide whether the accused is guilty or not. That’s the problem. An over-reliance on protocol blurs the story they have to judge. When a barrister has no sense of the story he is telling, it makes their job more difficult and that’s not good for justice.

I’m not saying every barrister should be an actor but I can’t help thinking it may be a bit of a disservice to both the deceased and the accused when their story gets lost in the middle of legal protocol. Surely the accused should be judged, based on whether the jury believes the prosecution’s story of the events leading up to a person’s death, rather than whether the members of the gardai did their jobs right?

I’m probably just tired and cranky tonight. There’s been too many budgets and taxes today. Maybe I’m being a bit pretentious. But I do think the story is important and allowing it to be told gives both the deceased and the accused their due. Not every trial will titillate the tabloids like Sharon Collins, or Joe O’Reilly or Brian Kearney but every murder means someone died and someone else is facing a hell of a lot of jail time. They all decide to have their story told.

Some are More Equal than Others

11th October 2008 / Abigail / 0 Comments

On Wednesday Sharon Collins and Essam Eid, the Clare housewife who tried to hire a hitman over the Internet and the Las Vegas poker dealer who conned her out of her money, were in court again to find out when they would face sentence. As usual the photographers were out in force looking for a shot for the next day’s papers and as usual they came away empty handed.

There are always photographers down at the courts. Along with those of us who write up the trials for the newspapers and broadcast media there are two agencies who cover the photographs on a daily basis. Every person accused of a crime and every major witness will have their photo taken from outside the Court gates so that the many column inches will have their illustrations.

There’s a agreed procedure. The snappers take up their positions outside the gates, photography not being allowed within the grounds of the court buildings. Anyone taking the stand runs the gauntlet every morning and evening as well as coming too and from lunch time. It’s not a pretty job. People accused of a crime are not usually in the mood to have their picture taken but it’s the way of it and so it continues on the daily basis.

Unless it’s a high profile trial and there’s been a verdict. While those whose case was not deemed interesting enough to hit the headlines are always photographed being led away in handcuffs, the same is not true of those whose trial and subsequent conviction has caused a press frenzy.

The likes of Joe O’Reilly, Brian Kearney or Sharon Collins are unlikely to appear on the front page being led across the judge’s yard at the back of the building with their hands shackled in front of them.

When a high profile felon appears before the judge they suddenly gain secret agent-like levels of stealth. Instead of being led across the yard to the prison van in full view of the side gate of the Four Courts the prison services start a game of cat and mouse with the increasingly frustrated snappers. There is an uncharacteristic ducking and diving and the prison van will draw up in a shielded corner beside the courts’ canteen away from any prying but excluded lens.

Now when I say high profile trials I mean those that cover the kind of violent middle class crime we have seen several examples of over the past year or so. We’re talking the kind of conviction where the tabloids take great interest in what the guilty party’s first meal in gaol was or whether their lover visited them or not. The kind of conviction where the accused’s state of mind when the prison door clangs shut behind them is of lip licking importance.

These are the cases where the prisoner suddenly has a right to privacy as they are led away to their cell. Unless the snappers can grab a hurried shot of them through the window of the prison van the photo used on the front page will be file.

OK these prisoners are special cases simply because the public appetite has already been whetted by screeds and screeds of purple prose; the one’s that the likes of me write books about as the dust is settling. But the photographs I’m talking about are the standard shots from a criminal trial.

Surely all prisoners have the same rights by law? Either none should have their moment of shame snapped for posterity or all should be led past for their deserved close up. Isn’t it just pandering to the celebrity status by avoiding this simple shot?

Sharon Collins is unlikely to be snapped in handcuffs, if he’s lucky her often ignored co-accused will receive the same treatment. But the Las Vegas poker dealer never really had the requisite glamour for the Irish press so it’ll be interesting to see if he’s allowed to join this hallowed group.

It would be easy to think that to get the full consideration of your privacy, you must be convicted of killing, or plotting to kill, your nearest and dearest, preferably while living a comfortable life and taking an attractive family photograph.

The people who are given this special treatment have usually been convicted of horrendous, calculated crimes. They are often arrogant to begin with and convinced of their own ability to evade the law. Yet when a jury finds them guilty the same law they have shown so much contempt from protects them like celebrity bodyguards outside a glitzy nightclub, from being shown being led away to pay for their crime.

Someone who lives to regret killing in a moment of rage, or as the almost inevitable climax to a marginalised life, or because their mental illness made them take an unimaginable step are not given the same respect. It really does seem that some are more equal than others.

Back to Work

6th October 2008 / Abigail / 1 Comment

The Courts are back at work today and tomorrow is the first list in the Central Criminal Court so it’s back to the day job. It’s always a little like going back to school once the Michaelmas term starts – well actually it’s exactly like going back to school apart from the lack of lessons and the fact that I don’t spend my summers playing on the streets these days.

So tomorrow it’s back to the grindstone and a different murder, after three months immersed in the intricacies of Ms Collins and Mr Eid. Of course, their story isn’t over yet. We’ve still got the sentence to come with all the excitement that will bring (from a journalistic point of view that is). They were due to be sentenced on Wednesday but it looks like things won’t happen quite that quickly. The appearance on Wednesday will just be a nod and a wink and the real fun will be deferred until a later date. As far as the book is concerned that means it ain’t over until it’s over. in lieu of a fat lady we’ll just have to await a tune from Mr Justice Roderick Murphy.

So until the date is decided for us to gather in Court 2 again and find out how long it’ll be before Sharon Collins can send her own book off to publishers it’s back to normality.

I cover murders all the time, it’s one of the main areas the news agency I work for covers. Every now and then there is a trial that is elevated to circus proportions by the press and public. The kind of trial that ticks all the boxes to sell newspapers. In the last few years there’s been a run of high profile cases – Joe O’Reilly, Brian Kearney, Anton Mulder, John O’Brien. These trials tend to be the ones that centre on sex or money so Sharon Collins fitted the bill even without the added curiosity of her being a woman.

Despite the number of trials like this in recent times they aren’t the standard case to come towards the Central Criminal Court. The trials that usually come up are sad, sordid affairs, a moment of violence that may never be repeated or an unhappy chain of events that were waiting in some way to happen. Most trials go almost unnoticed, certain ones almost guaranteed to sink into obscurity.

We’ve got so used to murder these days that trials will be graded on their story worthiness. A domestic tragedy scores well, if the wife was a tragic mother, preferably blond and passably good looking, or the husband rich enough and preferably having an affair. On the other hand, a row between drunken young men is brushed off almost completely.

I know why this happens but it does seem as if some human lives are being ranked as better than others simply because of who killed them and how they died. Each murder trial or attempted murder or even conspiracy to murder is a personal tragedy for someone. Lives are wrecked no matter what the circumstances. It always seemed sad that some stories will never be told.

Ah well, there’s work to be done before tomorrow’s list; notebooks and pens to dig out after their two month’s break. There’s little time for philosophising once the work’s begun so I’m just making the most of the calm before the frenzy of the new term.

Deep breath, back straight and off I go…back to work at last.

The Books

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