Ronnie Dunbar’s youngest daughter sat with her head tilted to one side as her older sister had done for most of the morning.  She answered the defence counsel’s questions shortly but politely in the soft english accent she shared with her two older sisters.  She was firm in her version of events and quick with her answers but the questioning was beginning to heat up.

Last week we heard the first suggestion that the youngest Dunbar daughter had previously previously given several conflicting accounts of the events of the September evening when she and her older sister Samantha say they saw Sligo teenager Melissa Mahon die at the hands of their father.  The same evening, both girls claim they helped him to dispose of the body at an isolated spot on the banks of the River Bonet in Sligo.

Their father, Ronnie Dunbar, also known as Ronald McManus, denies murdering 14-year-old Melissa or having anything to do with her death and the disposal of her body.  He also denies threatening to kill Samantha.

The girl agreed that she had given her most recent statement to gardai only a couple of weeks ago after the trial had started.  It was this account that she gave in her primary evidence, telling how she had come upstairs to find her father lying on top of Melissa.  She asked what he was doing, he replied “keeping her sweet”, to which Melissa, lying beneath him, giggled.

The girl told prosecuting counsel Isobel Kennedy that when her older sister Samantha came back from her Youthreach scheme about ten minutes later, she brought her upstairs to show her what was going on.  She said that her father and Melissa had changed position and were now lying side by side, her father lying behind Melissa with his forearm across her throat.  The girl said that her father told her and her sister to get out of the room.  He said he had had to kill Melissa because she had threatened to report him to gardai and had tried to kill him on a previous occasion.

She said he then got a tie out of the bedside cabinet and put it around Melissa’s neck then told her and her sister to hold an end each while he went to the bathroom.  When he came back, she said, he pressed a pillow over Melissa’s face before stuffing her head first into a sleeping bag he had sent Samantha downstairs to fetch.

The girl said that when they arrived at the River Bonet to dump the body her father opened up the sleeping bag to remove the tie.  She said Melissa was purple all down one side.  Her father zipped back up the sleeping bag and tied the tie around the top, where Melissa’s feet where.  They then threw the sleeping bag and it’s contents into the River.

Months later, she told Ms Kennedy, she and her father made a late night visit to the River Bonet.  Her father had brought a blow up dingy and took her up and down the river for around an hour while he used a flashlight to search the banks, looking to see if the body had “risen”.  The girl estimated this nocturnal trip had taken place at around 3 am.

She agreed with defence counsel Brendan Grehan that she had given various different accounts but she stuck by the account she gave today.  She said that any differences between her account and Samantha’s were simply because they had perceived things differently even though Mr Grehan told her that they couldn’t both be right.

She agreed that she had phoned her aunt, the accused’s sister, while her sister was giving evidence but said that she had not said Samantha was telling a pack of lies.  She denied discussing the events with her sister but said she had been following the trial in the media.  That didn’t count though.  She suddenly sounded far older than her years when she told Mr Grehan  “As you know, newspapers add things in, take things out, mess them up.”

There was laughter in the courtroom as everyone looked towards the press.  It wasn’t the first time a broadside had been aimed in our direction and it certainly won’t be the last but all accounts of events as detailed as a court case must be edited in some way.  There’s frequently a large dose of cynicism aimed at press reports but it’s unusual to find it in one so young.

I wonder will she be reading accounts of her performance tomorrow morning before she takes the stand again tomorrow.  What’ll she think of our accounts of her own performance in the stand?