A murder trial jury yesterday heard a five-year-old boy say he saw his daddy "hammering" his mammy on the head and two other children say they were told there was "a monster in the garage" before they found it was their mother.
In the first testimony of its kind at an Irish murder trial, a jury at Dublin's Central Criminal Court watched video-link evidence given by three children of the deceased woman and her husband, the defendant.
Mr David Murphy (36) has denied the murder of his wife Patricia Murphy (33) between May 27th and May 28th, 1996, within the State.
Her body was found beside a skip at Woodpark, the Rise, Glasnevin, on the morning of the 28th. The couple and their four young children had shared a home on Griffith Avenue after living for nine years in Kilrush, Co Clare, where Mrs Murphy was from.
The State alleges Mr Murphy killed his wife and then with a degree of "skill and ingenuity" tried to have the Garda think otherwise. They claim his defence is "it wasn't him".
Yesterday, six video screens were installed in the court. The jurors watched almost two hours of evidence recorded last year when the three children were examined and cross-examined in a video-link hearing before District Court Judge James Paul McDonnell.
The trial judge, Mr Justice Cyril Kelly, ruled the video-link evidence was admissible under Section 16 of the Criminal Evidence Act 1992, and yesterday, prosecution counsel, Mr Gregory Murphy SC, requested the tape be played.
On tape, a 9 1/2-year-old girl was the first of the children to take her place in the video room, linked by a television screen to counsel and the district court judge, who were sitting in a courtroom in a building opposite.
The girl was eight at the time of her mother's death. Judge McDonnell addressed her. He told her: "You are going to be talking about the circumstances of how your mammy came to die". In answer to his questions, she said she understood what it meant to swear to tell the truth. Otherwise "you'd get into trouble" and "be sent to jail", she said, before going on to take the oath.
She recalled getting up on Monday, May 27th, having breakfast and going to school. "Our ma kissed us goodbye and then our dad dropped us down in the car," she told Mr George Bermingham, prosecuting.
Her father collected her and another brother at 2.30 when they got out of school, she said. When they got home, their mother wasn't there. "We were waiting for her to come home and make us our lunch," she said. "Then when she didn't, we said we'd give it 15 more minutes."
Her father went out looking for her mother and when he returned, they all went out looking. They walked around the nearby roads and when they gave up and came home, they all went upstairs "for a rest".
Later her father again went out, she said, and when he came back he said he still could not find her mother. He went upstairs and then came back down and "went back out again to look". On his return he said he'd had "no luck". Then she went upstairs to bed, she said. The last time she saw her mother alive was that previous morning. "We just waved her off at the door and then she was gone."
"Did you ever see your mam dead?" Mr Bermingham asked. "Yes, in the garage," the girl replied. She supposed her then three-year-old brother had gone down to the garage because he heard a noise, but he had come upstairs and said "there was a monster in the garage".
The girl said she went downstairs, turned off the alarm and went in to look. "It was all dark," she said, then the light went on and her dad was standing at the door. Her two brothers were with her. She said: "We could see our mam's body lying against the wall."
The brother closest in age to her had ran to the door "to try to get out" and her father had held her youngest brother by the hand. They were then told to go to bed, and when their father got them upstairs, "he slapped us".
The next day she went to school. In the morning, "I said to dad what was that in the garage, and he said that was just a monster."
The girl told Ms Mary Ellen Ring, defending, she had spoken to at least four women gardai, a neighbour and a number of people at Temple Street and the Mater Hospital since her mother's death. She agreed with Ms Ring she thought her father was walking when he went out looking for her mother and that maybe the car wasn't there that day.
She said that she had checked on her four-month-old baby sister who was crying from her cot in her parent's room during that night.
Normally she went to bed at 8.30 p.m., she said, but that night it had been 11 or 11.30 p.m., she thought. She did not know if it was later. Under further cross-examination, she said her younger brother would sometimes come home with ghost stories, but he never spoke about a swamp monster.
Was there a swamp monster in the house, Ms Ring asked. "No", the child replied. Was there one in the garage, she was asked. "Well, I thought it was at first but then I saw it was my mam, so no, there wasn't," she said.
The child told Ms Ring when she was asked by a woman police officer had she seen her mother's body in the garage, "I told her no for about a month, and then I told her." She thought about telling, she said, but then "I thought I might get into trouble with my dad".
The second child of the Murphy's to give evidence was a 71/2 year-old boy. He began sobbing when Mr Bermingham passed from introductory questions to asking about when his mother died. After several moments of distress and interrupted video recording, he resumed giving evidence. A court steward held his hand.
He remembered his younger brother coming upstairs and saying: "It's a monster, it's a monster" and that it was in the garage. He said he went into every room looking for his dad but he wasn't there. He followed the others to the garage where he said his sister turned on the light.
He saw "this body lying on the floor," he said. It was "my mam's". Then "our dad" came into the garage and when he went down to see her, his dad caught his hand before taking them upstairs and slapping them.
The child, aged five at the time of his mother's death, told Ms Ring his dad had walked to school to collect them that day. "We had no car at the time," he said.
He remembered "sometimes" making up stories about ghosts, including one called Pizzaman. A friend had told him she saw the swamp monster on television. He saw it there too, but "no", he didn't see one in the house. He thought what was in the garage was a monster but then he "realised it was my ma". Asked had the police told him what he was going to talk about, he replied: "Yeah".
"Same to you," he replied when Judge McDonnell wished him a happy Christmas at the end of his evidence.
The second youngest of the Murphy children, a five-year-old boy who was three at the time of his mother's death, was the last to give evidence. "There's the judge," he cried when he sat on the chair in front of the video camera. "Well spotted," the judge told him.
He remembered his mother was lying on the ground in the garage and that "she had her eyes closed. I asked her a question but she didn't answer me," he told Mr Bermingham. His dad and older brother and sister were in the garage with him at the time, he said.
"We only saw a rope around her neck", he continued. He didn't see anything happen to her or anyone touch her at that stage.
He agreed there was tool box with a hammer in it in the garage. Did he ever see it being used, he was asked. "Well, daddy hammered mammy on the head," he said. With what, he was asked. "A hammer," he replied.
The five-year-old told Ms Ring he wasn't fed up yet. Later in cross-examination he was asked had his father went out looking for his mother. "He already knew that mammy was dead, because he was there . . .", the witness said. Asked how this was, he replied: "Because he turned on the light".
He told Ms Ring his father had woke them up and brought them down to the garage. He didn't go down to the garage alone, he said. He was not allowed to go down there, he agreed.
He believed in ghosts and monsters, he told the defence counsel, but neither he nor the others had ever told stories about ghosts and monsters.
Under re-examination from Mr Bermingham, the child repeated he saw his mother in the garage. "I saw daddy hammering her on the head," he said.
The prosecution case continues in the Central Criminal Court on Monday before the jury and Mr Justice Kelly.