'I started talking to the body, saying "Rob", as if he were alive'

Wayne O'Donoghue gave gardaí an extensive statement, detailing how he killed his next-door neighbour Robert Holohan in a row and then, in panic, dumped the boy's body in a glen near an isolated beach, the court heard yesterday.

Wayne O'Donoghue told gardaí how he called Robert's name after he had grabbed him around the neck during a row on January 4th last and when he didn't respond, he brought him into the bathroom of his family home to try and revive him.

Mr O'Donoghue told gardaí how he put two plastic bags over Robert's body before he put it into the boot of his car and put Robert's bike in the back seat of his car. He left home at 4.10pm and dropped off the bike at Carrigoghna some 500 yards from his house.

He was in a state of panic driving around Midleton before he decided to go to Inch Strand and leave Robert's body there.

When he got there, he found a silver car in the car park so he couldn't leave the body on the beach as he originally intended, he said.

He drove slowly back from the beach before stopping on the roadway and taking Robert's body out of the boot and dumping it over the ditch and then driving back to Midleton at speeds of 80mph, returning home and trying to appear as normal as possible.

He drove down to his girlfriend Rebecca's house but was in a daze as they watched The Simpsons.

"I was thinking how disrespectful it was where I'd put the body and what I'd done to a friend . . . to place the body in the middle of nowhere where it wouldn't be found," Mr O'Donoghue said in a cautioned statement made to gardaí at his home on January 16th.

"I said to myself that I had to go back and remove the body from where I had left it and place it on the beach and get rid of the plastic bags so the body would be found.

"I had also decided when I had carried out this, I was going to come home and when everyone was gone to bed, I was going to hang myself from the tree in the corner of the garden, I was going to remove the bags and burn them; I was telling myself this was the way it had to be."

Mr O'Donoghue told gardaí how he drove back to Inch and spent some 20 minutes looking for the body but he couldn't remove it from the briars and he ended up just burning some of the plastic with petrol and a lighter that he had brought with him.

"I started talking to the body, saying 'Rob', as if he were alive," said Mr O'Donoghue, adding that he decided to put off committing suicide that night and to return at first light and put the body on the beach where it could be found.

However when he returned home, he became involved in the search for Robert that night and over the following days. As he continued searching, he found it more difficult to come forward and tell what he had done, he said in his statement.

"As each day went by, I felt the the hole getting bigger and I felt it more difficult to reveal the truth and carry out my plan and remove the body so he could be found; I didn't want him to be found where he was," he said in his statement.

"I am deeply sorry for what happened. Robert was a good friend, he was like a brother to me. If I could switch roles, I would. There was never any intention to harm him, what happened him was a fluke of an accident. I'm sorry I didn't come forward earlier."