DNA MATCHING both Meg Walsh and her husband John O’Brien, currently on trial in the Central Criminal Court for her murder, was found in the boot of her car the jury has heard.
The body of Ms Walsh (35), a mother of one, was recovered from the river Suir on October 15th, 2006, after she was missing for two weeks.
She had died from blunt force trauma to the head.
Her husband, bus driver John O’Brien (41), Ballinakill Downs, Co Waterford, denies murdering her between October 1st, 2006, and October 15th, 2006.
Michael Burlington, a forensic scientist, told Dominic McGinn, prosecuting, that DNA matching both Ms Walsh and Mr O’Brien was found in the boot.
Blood found in Ms Walsh’s Mitsubishi Carisma matched her profile with a probability of more than one in 1 billion.
Fellow scientist Marcy Lee Gorman told Denis Vaughan Buckley SC, prosecuting, that blood was found heavily staining the mat from the boot of the car, which was found near the Uluru pub car park where the car was found abandoned.
Ms Walsh’s blood was also found on the hardboard spare wheel cover, which had also been thrown away and sections cut from both the hardboard and the mat, which were found in a nearby housing estate.
There were also patches of Ms Walsh’s blood on the back of the driver’s seat and the inside of the driver’s door.
Ms Gorman said Ms Walsh’s blood was also found on the rear bumper of the car and the door pillar on the driver’s side. Attempts had been made to wipe the blood away in some places.
Ms Gorman said Ms Walsh’s blood was also found on a diamante ring found at the house, although she agreed with Paddy McCarthy, defending, that there was no way of telling when or how that blood had come to be on the ring or when the ring was last worn.
She agreed with Mr McCarthy that no blood had been found in a detailed search of the house or of the garden shed or of the dog house.
Mr Burlington said that a mixed blood match found along the edge formed when the section of the hardboard wheel cover was cut away was a full match with Ms Walsh and also contained elements, all of which were found in Mr O’Brien’s profile.
However, Ms Gorman agreed with Mr McCarthy that the blood could have got on this cut edge perfectly innocently.
“It just soaked through.”
Mr Burlington agreed that it was entirely possible that Mr O’Brien’s DNA had gotten into the boot of the car in innocent circumstances.
Mr Burlington said that both Mr O’Brien’s and Ms Walsh’s DNA was found on samples taken from parts of the boot which were not bloodstained.
He agreed that the edge section he had tested, which yielded a mixed profile, came from fragments of both stained and unstained hardboard.
He also said that other unidentified partial profiles had been found on the unstained parts of the boot but agreed that these were not suspicious.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Barry White and the jury of seven men and five women.
It is expected to enter its closing stages by the end of this week.