BACKGROUND:
The public was gripped by the juxtaposition of violent death and everyday suburban detail in the Kearney murder trial, writes
Ruadhán Mac Cormaic
IT WAS just after 10 o'clock and the courtroom, made so intimate and stuffy these past few weeks by the sheer press of people, still had the airy, spartan feel of morning.
The jurors' chairs were empty, and even the registrar had yet to arrive. It was quiet, too, but for the tap-tap of a laptop at the back and some faint patter from the gallery above. A few detectives passed in and out, lugging the familiar props - brown labelled bags, stacks of files and folders, an ensuite door - and setting them down in their usual place.
As always, Brian Kearney had arrived early. He sat in his seat by the witness box, accompanied by his daughter Aoife and brother Niall. Just now he was listening as Aoife told a story, smiling here and there and letting out the odd laugh. Less than an hour before the judge would begin his charge to the jury - the final act before jurors would retire to consider whether Kearney murdered his wife - he looked relaxed, at ease. Wasn't this the first time we had seen him laugh?
And then the McLaughlins began to file in; first Deirdre, then her sisters Caroline, Niamh, Brighid, Aisling, Ann Marie, brother Owen and their parents. Kearney's demeanour changed in an instant. He sat rigidly now, at an awkward angle to the court. He picked a fixed point on the wooden ledge and stared inscrutably ahead.
The McLaughlins, for their part, studiously avoided looking at the man they called "Mr Kearney". Usually the accused sits alone in these situations, but at his trial Kearney's extended family lined up alongside him every day, leaving an uneasy proximity between the two families. They know each other well, and yet to look at them they might have been strangers.
How did it come to this? How did the story that began 17 years ago, when Brian Kearney met Siobhán McLaughlin at work in Mulhuddart ("She was 21, I was 31. I thought she was older. She looked so in control of the place.") end here, he facing a life in prison for her murder?
From a distance, the Kearneys must have seemed enviable neighbours in early 2006. They lived with their three-year-old son in a fine home in an attractive Goatstown estate, just around the corner from where Kearney's parents lived. Building work had finished on the new house in the garden, and as well as his successful electrical contractors business there was an income from the other south Dublin properties Brian jointly owned with his own family. The couple ran a €2 million Majorcan hotel, and had looked seriously at fulfilling the long-held dream of owning a yacht on the Mediterranean.
But below the surface, the Kearneys had their troubles. Siobhán had initiated moves towards a legal separation and, on the advice of her solicitor, had started keeping a diary, which she kept hidden in the hot press at Carnroe. Her plan was to move into the new house. One of Siobhán's closest friends told the court that she noticed a week before her death that her friend wasn't wearing her wedding ring, and we know that Siobhán worried that she couldn't devote enough time to the boy because of her hotel work, and felt Brian was putting pressure on her to return to Spain.
For his part, Brian was overstretched on borrowing - €844,456, according to forensic accountant Toni Massey and, according to the prosecution, the most logical option - the sale of the family home - would be closed off to him if the separation went ahead.
There were hints, in evidence, that relations between Kearney and the McLaughlins were strained even before he was arrested. Aisling McLaughlin recalled arriving at Carnroe at about 10.45am on the morning Siobhán died. When Kearney arrived half an hour later, "I told him to get out, but my mother told me to stop", Aisling told the court.
Later that morning, when the McLaughlins were talking in the kitchen and one of Kearney's brothers came in to boil the kettle, he was told to leave the room.
Brighid felt there was something odd in his reaction to his wife's death. And why, asked Dominic McGinn for the prosecution, did Brian not ask what was wrong when Siobhán's mother phoned him from his own home to tell him to get home straight away?
In court, it was clear from day one that the McLaughlins were convinced of Kearney's guilt. But it was another matter to persuade the jury beyond reasonable doubt.
The prosecution's case, resting substantially on circumstantial evidence, involved convincing jurors not only that the accused had a motive and an opportunity to kill his wife, but that murder by Kearney was the one inescapable conclusion to draw.
Simply put, the motive was money. Although Kearney had assets - of almost €5 million - he was overstretched on borrowing and was under pressure from the banks to reduce his loans. Hotel Salvia had been on the market for some time but was refusing to sell. That left as the most logical course the sale of Carnroe, and for the family to move into the house they had built next door. "The difficulty was, the separation wouldn't fit it," as Dominic McGinn put it.
By combining State Pathologist Marie Cassidy's evidence on the time of death with the intruder alarm log, the prosecution was able to narrow the spectrum of possibilities. Prof Cassidy put the time of death at 9am, with a range of three hours either side. But we knew there was no sign of a break-in and, importantly for the prosecution, Kearney accepted in a Garda interview that his wife died when only he and his son were in the house.
That left two options: either Siobhán killed herself, or she was murdered by her husband. To disprove the suicide theory, the prosecution relied on scientific evidence and testimony showing the short- and long-term plans Siobhán had been putting in place.
And plans there were. Apart from instigating moves towards a legal separation, she was working to secure a school place for her son and making arrangements to hand over management of the hotel in Spain. She had a hair appointment at a local salon for later that morning, and another meeting at the Citizens Advice Centre for the following month. The night before she died, Siobhán sent a chatty e-mail to her sister-in-law, Alessandra Benedetti, saying how excited she was by their impending visit. "Not something someone would write if they were going to kill themselves," said McGinn.
The prosecution leaned heavily on Prof Cassidy's evidence, and in particular her finding of deep bruising to the neck area and three separate fractures to the Adam's apple, factors which she said were "more usually a factor suggestive of manual strangulation, less common in ligature strangulation and unusual in low-level suspension." Prof Cassidy also hypothesised that the victim had been strangled on the bed before the flex was applied to her neck.
There was then the testimony of Dr Neal Murphy, an engineering lecturer at UCD, whose tests on the original vacuum cleaner flex showed that it would break after five to seven seconds if an object of Siobhán's weight was applied to it.
And then there was the key, which was found just inside the locked bedroom door by those who arrived that morning. Why, if she was going to kill herself, would Siobhán Kearney lock the door, take the key out and throw it on the floor? More plausible, to the prosecution, was that Brian Kearney slipped it under the door after locking it from outside.
Moreover, why was there no noose around her neck when her body was found, and why was the flex not tied to any anchor-point in the room?
Defence counsel Patrick Gageby SC made strong criticism of forensic scientist Dr Michael Norton's evidence on the vacuum cleaner flex. Whether valid or not, it was clear that Dr Norton - a nervous witness whose hand tremor made his reconstruction of the flex loops confusing - presented something of a problem for the prosecution. In the absence of the jury, they tried to have the demonstration redone before the jury by Det Insp Martin Cummins, but the judge refused permission on the basis that it added nothing to the case.
The contents of Siobhán's diary were also the subject of legal argument not witnessed by the jury. Denis Vaughan Buckley SC, prosecuting, had originally indicated he would try to have its contents admitted as evidence, but changed his mind the next day, apparently due to what Mr Justice White called "an excess of caution" caused by fear that the Court of Criminal Appeal might not look kindly on its introduction.
Also in the jury's absence, Mr Gageby last week tried to have the case withdrawn because there was insufficient evidence and pointed out that, according to Prof Cassidy's time of death, Siobhán could have died after the accused left the house. The judge refused the application.
When yesterday's verdict was delivered, there was barely room to stand in court No 3, a reminder, if it were needed, of the hold this short but gripping trial has had on the public mind. In some ways this case was different; both legal teams and the judge alluded to the couple's wealth, and it's not every day that a drama such as this plays out at the Central Criminal Court.
But in another sense it was perhaps the banality of the mosaic pieced together over the past fortnight that was most compelling. The exhibit list was an inventory of everyday suburban life, and the pictures of the dead woman's body stuck in the mind above all for the odd juxtaposition of violent death amid everyday suburban detail: a Dyson vacuum cleaner, a flip-flop, the red tartan pyjamas.
As the judge requested, there was no triumphalism in court yesterday afternoon; no yelling and no pumping fists. But perhaps it would have been that way even without his asking. By 3.45pm on day 13 of an unbearably intense trial, too much energy had already been expended, and too much emotion put on the line.
Too much had been lost.