When Mary Gough (27) was planning her wedding to Colin Whelan in the summer of 2000, he was surfing the internet looking for information on asphyxiation.
Two months before the couple married, their life insurance policy was doubled so that the surviving partner would receive £400,000 if the other one died within 10 years.
A few months after the couple married, Whelan embarked on an internet relationship with a woman abroad. They exchanged photographs, and were due to meet for the first time on March 2nd, 2001.
But one day earlier, just six months after he married, Whelan strangled his wife and made it look as though she had fallen down the stairs of their Balbriggan home.
Seven months before his trial for murder was due to start, he faked his own death and fled to Majorca where he worked as a barman until he was spotted and extradited.
He may have been a computer analyst, but Whelan either forgot or did not realise that gardaí could trace his every movement in cyberspace.
A Garda team discovered that he had conducted at least 21 internet searches using terms such as asphyxiation, strangulation and choking between July 2000 and February 2001.
Gardaí also discovered that he had downloaded a transcript of a case from the North Carolina Supreme Court. This case bore "remarkable similarities" to the Balbriggan murder, the Central Criminal Court heard yesterday.
In both cases a duvet was used to keep the body warm so that it would appear the "accident" had just happened. Both cases involved the use of a towel to conceal ligature marks around the victims' necks.
Supt Tom Gallagher, who headed the investigation, told the court that Whelan had used the belt of a dressing gown to strangle his wife. He then replaced the belt on the dressing gown, and left it in the bedroom.
Two years later he had created a new name and a new life for himself in Majorca. It all sounded like a far-fetched movie, but the court heard that Whelan's actions had created a "life of hell" for the Gough family.
The murdered woman's brothers said this "beautiful, funny, intelligent, easy-going and straight-talking" girl was the heart of the Gough family, especially since their father died in 1989. She was the second-youngest child of six, and the only girl in the family from Stamullen, Co Meath.
David Gough addressed his former brother-in-law directly as he made his victim impact statement. The family would "never, ever, ever" forgive him because he took a piece of each of them when he strangled Mary.
Although the defendant was just a few feet away, he did not meet David Gough's eye as he said these words.
Whelan (34), a tall, dark-haired man in a charcoal suit and grey shirt and tie, did not betray any emotion during the court hearing. He stood with his head bowed as Mr Justice Paul Carney told him he had prolonged the suffering of the Gough family by refusing the offer of a quick trial when extradited. When gardaí gave the history of Whelan's internet searches, the dead woman's mother, Marie Gough, became upset, and was comforted by family.
Whelan's barrister Hugh Hartnett expressed his client's "profuse" apologies to the Gough family. He knew that what he had done was abhorrent in the eyes of any Christian.
Mary's only crime, her brother David said, was in loving her husband too much. "You thought you were above the law, but you are not," he told Whelan. "Justice has finally been done here today."
