Two protected witnesses who painted themselves as “innocents abroad” downplayed their own roles and cannot be trusted to convict Ruth Lawrence of murdering two men, her defence barrister has argued, telling a jury that “they played the system and they tried to play you”.
Defence counsel Patrick Gageby SC urged the jurors in his closing address not to convict the 46-year-old Dublin woman, calling the foundations of the State’s case “shaky” and describing it as the “slimmest of prosecution cases”.
The trial has heard Ms Lawrence was extradited from South Africa to face trial in 2023, nearly a decade after the bodies of Anthony Keegan (33) and Eoin O’Connor (32) were found on a lake island in the midlands.
Ms Lawrence, who is originally from Clontarf in Dublin but with an address at Patricks Cottage, Ross, Mountnugent in Co Meath, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Keegan and Mr O’Connor at an unknown location within the State on a date between April 22nd, 2014, and May 26th, 2014, both dates inclusive.
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In his closing address, Mr Gageby submitted the issue in the case was “what part, if any, had the prosecution satisfied” the jurors that Ms Lawrence played in the men’s deaths “such that she is liable to be convicted of one murder or two”.
The trial has heard that two protected witnesses – father and daughter Jason and Stacey Symes – came forward to the Garda in 2014 and gave voluntary statements about the alleged involvement of Ms Lawrence and her boyfriend, South African national Neville van der Westhuizen, in the murders of the two men.
Key witness Ms Symes, who has the benefit of the Witness Security Programme along with her father, gave evidence to the trial that Ms Lawrence told her that she had shot Mr O’Connor “but it went wrong”, so her boyfriend Neville “took over”. The witness also said that she and her father were asked to help move the bodies of the two men.
Mr Symes told the jury he was “terrified” of Ms Lawrence, who he said carried around “a little black gun” and would put it down the back of her trousers.
Mr Gageby said, with the exception of Mr van der Westhuizen, no one else had been charged or sought for anything else connected to the case or the background circumstances to it. “No one else was charged with a clean-up and assisting after the murders were committed. There is such an offence which may come to your attention later, which is assisting an offender,” he continued.
The lawyer said the phone evidence did not establish that Ms Lawrence shot Mr O’Connor or “was part of a plan to do so or to do the same to Mr Keegan or that she was in Dublin on April 18th, 2014”, when drugs were stolen from a house used by drug dealer Mr O’Connor.
He said the State’s case depended on the Symes’s evidence to prove his client was guilty of the two charges; “either as a shooter or someone assisting in some way in that crime either before it or during it being committed”.
Mr Gageby submitted that, in so far as either of the Symes say Ms Lawrence had admitted any part in the killing of one or both of these men, their evidence was not reliable.
He added: “This case is entirely about trusting them ... trusting you can rely on them to convict that woman behind me of a murder or two murders”.
Mr Gageby said the Symes were charged with “nothing” and went into the witness protection programme, which “modestly” funded them.
Counsel added: “You have absolutely every reason to be cautious with these two witnesses, with all they did, they suffered no penalty whatsoever but got Government support.
“They have constantly downplayed their roles and they played the system and they tried to play you.”
The trial continues on Wednesday before Mr Justice Tony Hunt and a jury of four men and eight women, when the judge will continue giving his charge.
