A 32-year-old Dublin man was jailed for life yesterday for the murder of his former partner's boyfriend in 2001.
After six hours of deliberating at the Central Criminal Court a jury of six women and six men returned a majority verdict to find Gerard McKeever guilty of the murder of Glen Dunne (31) in Bawnlea Drive, Tallaght, on November 11th, 2001. McKeever had denied the charge.
Jailing McKeever for life, Mr Justice Paul Butler expressed his sympathy to the Dunne family and said the victim had been "entirely blameless" in the incident. McKeever, formerly of Ballymun and with an address at Jobstown in Tallaght, stared across the courtroom at the Dunne family as he was led away to begin his sentence.
During the seven-day trial the court heard that McKeever was drinking beer, vodka and Red Bull for most of the evening before he used a knife he had concealed in his trousers to stab Mr Dunne three times outside a house in Tallaght.
In convicting McKeever, the jury dismissed the father-of-four's defence that he was provoked by Mr Dunne during a confrontation in which McKeever alleged the deceased had "sexually interfered" with his four-year-old daughter.
He gave evidence that during a row with Mr Dunne he "exploded" and stabbed him. "Glen put his arm around my shoulder, that's when the knife came out . . . at that point I just exploded and stuck the knife in him." Mr Gerard Clarke SC, prosecuting, maintained that McKeever had intended to kill or cause serious injury to Mr Dunne when he confronted him. Evidence was heard from Ms Donna Pepper, McKeever's girlfriend at the time of the incident, that earlier in the evening he told her he "was going to kill" Mr Dunne.
McKeever dismissed this and told the court it was only "talk" and that he armed himself with an eight-inch boning knife to threaten Mr Dunne to stay away from his daughters. "I didn't want Glen in the house where my two daughters were . . . I would have threatened him to get out of the house."
His former partner and mother-of-four Ms Anna Conway, who was in a relationship with Mr Dunne at the time of his death, denied suggestions by defence counsel Mr Erwan Mill-Arden that the deceased man had touched her daughter in a sexual way.
She also disputed defence suggestions that there was a reference to the alleged sexual assault in the argument that preceded the stabbing and said the row was about an unrelated matter.