A Cork man has denied the murder of his wife and two of his sons have denied the murder of their mother early on Christmas Eve 1995. Mr Joseph O'Brien (49) and two of his sons, Kieran (23) and Noel (22), pleaded not guilty in the Central Criminal Court in Dublin to the murder of Ms Julia O'Brien (44) at the family home in High Street, Drimoleague, Co Cork, on December 24th, 1995.
Ms O'Brien's other children gave evidence yesterday at the start of the case against their brothers and father.
Ms O'Brien was found by her second-eldest son, Liam (24), after he returned from a disco in Skibbereen. He told the court that when he came into the house at 3 a.m. his mother was in the sitting room lying on the floor. She was later found to have died from strangulation and from numerous blows to her body, including rib fractures. Opening the trial, Mr Ralph Sutton SC told the jury the circumstances of the case centred on "a very violent and tragic situation, contributed to very largely by drink on both sides". There would be evidence from neighbours of "a rumpus" in the house at about 1 a.m. The trial, expected to last three weeks, will hear "very harrowing evidence", he said.
"You will hear that the unfortunate deceased had a fair amount of drink taken and was not unaccustomed at times to taking drink," Mr Sutton said. The accused men also had drink taken and, though this went some way towards explaining what happened, it in no way excused it.
The men also face three "alternative charges" of manslaughter, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and common assault. They have pleaded not guilty to each of the four counts.
Mr Liam O'Brien told the court that he left the house at 6 p.m. the previous evening. "My mother was drunk in the house at the time so there was no point in staying," he said. He told gardai she was "demented drunk" at the time.
When he found her lying on the floor on his return, he tried to wake her. "I saw then that she had a couple of marks on her face."
He went upstairs to check what had happened and someone said one of them had pushed her after she threw soup in his face. "I then had a fight with Noel about it," he said. "I hit him more than once." When he went downstairs he tried "to put her to bed". He thought he heard a "faint groan" as he moved her. He got as far as the kitchen door before he gave up, "because Kieran had gone back up so I was by myself".
About 20 minutes later his sister returned to the house after a night out.
Ms Miriam O'Brien (20), the youngest in the family, told Ms Aileen Donnelly, prosecuting, that she knelt by her mother and tried to get a pulse for about 45 minutes. She also changed the jumper her mother was wearing "because there was some blood on it". She did not know what happened to the jumper. "I left it somewhere," she said.
She then told her friend at a house nearby and her friend's father, Mr Paddy O'Driscoll, went to check what was happening.
Mr O'Driscoll said he saw Julia O'Brien in a local pub at about 10.30 p.m. on the 24th. "She seemed to be pretty well drunk," he said. At 4 a.m., he went to the O'Brien house and found "Julia lying on the floor, her head facing me as I came in the door". Her face was cold, there was no pulse and there was blood in her nostrils, he said. Mr O'Driscoll said he left the house to ring an ambulance and was put through to the Garda. He told Noel and Kieran O'Brien to call their father, who they said was sleeping upstairs. When he returned, they called him again and when he came downstairs and saw his wife, Mr Joseph O'Brien's reaction was "Oh Jesus Christ", Mr O'Driscoll said.
He agreed with Mr Ciaran O'Loughlin SC, for Mr Noel O'Brien, that her neighbours and "the whole town" had known about her drink problem for four to five years. He told Mr Michael McMahon SC, for Mr Joseph O'Brien, that Mr O'Brien would often open the door to people returning his wife home drunk.
Her husband would make excuses for her and "pay her bills around the town". Ms Miriam O'Brien told the court her mother was "very violent and abusive" when drunk. "Most of the ornaments in the house were broken because she would take whatever was next to her and throw it. She'd hit you with anything she could get her hands on - a brush or poker or anything," she said.
She told Mr Patrick Gageby SC, for her brother Kieran, that before she went to bed, she used to make sure there were "no knives or scissors" lying around "because they would be within easy reach".
In 1994 she kept a diary, she told the court. "I used to put a star at the bottom of the page of every day that she was drinking." When she added them up, "there were 177 days", she said. She stopped doing it the next year because there were too many stars.
She said when her mother was drunk she would call her "ugly" and "stupid", and in the last years before her death, "she was drinking more and becoming more abusive". She regularly said Miriam could not be a daughter of hers, she was too ugly. "She was always trying to put me down,", she said.
She did the same to Noel, who was "very vulnerable, kind of soft". In August 1994 Ms O'Brien said she tried to commit suicide "because my mother was seeing other men and I knew she was and it really upset me".
Mr Liam O'Brien told the jury he tried not to be in the house when his mother was drunk because "she fought with everybody". It was "common enough" for her to pass out when drunk and he first thought this was the case when he found her lying on the floor. He agreed with Mr O'Loughlin that his mother had called Noel "stupid" and "retarded" on occasion.
Noel's birthday passed without comment the day before, he said, and though his mother was given money to buy food for Christmas, she spent it all on drink.
He told Mr Gageby that Julia would drink a bottle or two of whiskey every day. "Since I was very young, I can always remember her drunk." Her habit cost a lot of money, which she would get off his father or take from her children's pockets.
"She never thought she had a problem," he said. "If you ever said anything to her it was only abuse you'd get back." He told Mr McMahon that his father had "given up trying to get her to do something about her problems". Mr Joseph O'Brien was "very quiet" and worked six days a week, he said. It was his father's habit to leave the house or go upstairs to bed once she was drunk.
His mother would often follow him upstairs "and she would try to pull him up by his hair sometimes". He believed neighbours would have heard the frequent arguments because of the terrace walls separating the houses.
The eldest son, Mr Michael O'Brien, said he moved to Glen garriff a couple of months before his mother's death. "Every chance I ever had to leave the house, I always did," he said. He told Mr Sutton he never used violence against his mother, and he never saw others use violence against her, but he had seen her use violence. Her abuse of Noel was "vindictive". There were two mothers, one the drunken abusive woman, the other the sober nice one. "At the end of it, there was only one woman. The sober woman just wasn't there any more," he said.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Quirke and the jury.