A WEALTHY businessman began to cry as he told Wexford Circuit Court how he and two other men set about forging the will of a bachelor farmer as he lay dying in Wexford General Hospital.
Charlie O’Leary (50), The Haggard, Ramsgrange, Co Wexford pleaded guilty to forging a document purporting to be the will of Matthew Hayes on a date between December 25th, 1998 – the day Mr Hayes died – and January 8th, 1999.
Sgt Mick Troy told the court there were two other people implicated in the crime, the beneficiary, referred to as Mr X, and Mr Y. Mr X was Mr O’Leary’s best friend at the time and Mr Y is a close relative of O’Leary.
Sgt Troy said no genuine will was ever found in the name of the late Mr Hayes. When he died he left £99,000 in a bank account and 141 acres of farmland, then valued at £350,000.
Mr Hayes had no immediate family and his closest relatives were second cousins. However, in 1999 a will was submitted to probate that left everything to Mr X. This “will” contained the signature of Mr Hayes and its signing was purported to have been witnessed by O’Leary and Mr Y. All the land and the money left by Mr Hayes subsequently went to Mr X.
O’Leary, a father of four, was sentenced to 18 months in prison, but taking into account the mitigating factors, Judge Alice Doyle suspended this term for 18 months on the basis that he pay €30,000 as compensation – just above today’s equivalent of £12,500 in 1998. She directed that the money will be held by State solicitor Kevin O’Doherty until the issue of Mr Hayes’s rightful next of kin is resolved.
Sgt Troy said that in 2006 the Garda became aware that O’Leary was troubled by what he had done and he made a full statement to them.