Children tell how they saw mother dead in garage

They all had their hair brushed to a shine. Two dark heads and one ginger, they sat in the same blue chair one after the other. Politely they told the men and woman who questioned them that they went downstairs in the dark one night and found their mother lying dead on the garage floor.

The last of the three children who gave evidence against their father, at trial for the murder of their mother, was the youngest boy, who was three years old in May 1996. Aged five when the videotaped evidence was recorded, he smiled a gap-toothed grin at the judge. He had a check shirt and a rattling cough and was asked if he wanted some water by Judge McDonnell.

"Only if you want me to," the little boy said. Then he told the judge he wanted a "microphone you sing into" for Christmas. This child called his parents mammy and daddy. The others said he had run upstairs to his older brother and sister to tell them about the "monster" in the garage.

He said he remembered "she was lying on the ground and that she had her eyes closed and that she never told the words to me".

When asked to explain that, he said: "I asked her a question but she didn't answer me.

"We only saw a rope around her neck," he said. "Daddy hammered mammy on the head." "With what?" the barrister asked.

"A hammer," he said.

David Murphy's daughter, his eldest child, was the first to give evidence in the video played during his trial on a charge of murdering his wife, Patricia Murphy.

"When the light was on we could see our mam's body lying against the wall with her head sort of slanted like that," the little girl said, tipping her head to the right to demonstrate.

The media would be doing a "disservice" to the children to name them, Mr Justice Cyril Kelly had said before the tape, recorded almost a year ago, was played. David Murphy tapped his index finger on the ledge beside him when his daughter first appeared on the screen in front of him, pulling her chair up to the camera and smiling politely.

She agreed with Judge McDonnell that she was 9 1/2 years old and in fourth class. Did she know what an oath was? he asked.

"That means you have to tell the truth," she said. Or else what? he asked.

"You'd be in trouble."

As she described the events of May 27th, 1996 her father's only visible reaction was occasionally to rub his face with his left hand.

As the eldest child she would mind the others, and sometimes peeled potatoes for the dinner. She brought her two little brothers up to bed and tucked them in sometimes, and when her baby sister cried she went to help.

She knew how to switch off the house alarm, which she said she did on the night they saw the body. Despite her grown-up tasks she was still scared by the ghost stories her brother brought home, including tales of a swamp monster.

Did she think there was a monster in the garage? defence counsel Mary Ellen Ring asked "I thought it was at first but then I saw it was my mam." She looked down and repeated softly, "it was my mam."

After 30 minutes of evidence she was finished. When Judge McDonnell said she should not talk about her evidence to her brothers she smiled.

"Yes, I've been told. No problem."

Her 7 1/2 year-old brother came next. Minutes into the evidence the boy burst into tears. Sobbing filled the packed room and only the top of his head was visible as he leaned forward into the camera.

His father put his head forward on his hands as he watched.

"I'm just going to hold [the boy's] hand," a woman's voice said off camera after a pause. "Is that okay?"

Like his older sister he called his parents mam and dad as he described that night less than three weeks after he turned six.

He had come downstairs after going to bed without dinner. "And I looked into every room to see if dad was there, but no he wasn't." Then they saw "this body lying on the floor". Whose body? he was asked.

"Our mam's."

As he left the chair, 20 minutes later Judge McDonnell wished him a good Christmas.

"Same to you," the little boy replied politely.