A 47-year-old woman found dead at her partner’s apartment had a series of injuries, the overall pattern of which were more consistent with her being assaulted, a murder trial has heard.
Gillian Curran was pronounced dead at the apartment of her partner, Marcus O’Neill, on O’Brien Street in Waterford on the morning of January 25th, 2025. He told gardaí she had suffered a number of falls the night before while drinking and he awoke to find her after she had fallen down the stairs.
O’Neill denies the murder of the woman at his home. On Wednesday, the jury of five men and seven women at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Waterford heard evidence of the injuries that the woman was found to have suffered.
State Pathologist Dr Heidi Okkers said she had been informed by investigators before she began her postmortem that Curran had been drinking on the night of January 24th and fell off a sofa several times.
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She said she had been told that O’Neill had found his partner naked at the foot of the stairs the following morning. He put some clothes on her and put her on a sofa before contacting emergency services, who gave him instructions on how to perform CPR before assistance arrived.
Okkers was informed that the woman was unresponsive and was pronounced dead at 10.23am on January 25th by Dr Paul Campbell. She also noted blood stains had been found upstairs on the frame of a bedroom door, on the wall of the stairs and on the banister of the stairs.
She said that at the postmortem, which she carried out at University Hospital Waterford on January 26th, she found the woman had suffered a series of bruises and abrasions, the vast majority of which were less than 24 hours old.
Okkers told prosecution counsel Conor O’Doherty that she found bruises and abrasions on Gillian Curran’s head, including her forehead, around her eyes, her cheeks, her lips and chin and her neck, as well as all over her body, including her front, back, arms and legs.
She said that while some of the 118 injuries to the woman’s head and body “may have resulted from a fall, the overall pattern of injuries was consistent with a sustained assault”.
Bruising around both her eyes resulted from either a punch or a fracture of the skull. She had not suffered a fracture of the skull and extensive bruising and swelling to the upper and lower right eyelids were consistent with “direct trauma such as a punch”.
A series of bruises and abrasions across Gillian Curran’s neck were consistent with manual manipulation where compression of the neck resulted from being gripped by a hand or application of a cloth.
The State Pathologist told O’Doherty that the abrasions could have been caused by fingernails during manual compression of the neck. These abrasions were at the front, sides and back of the neck and could have been caused by mild to moderate pressure during gripping.
The trial continues on Thursday.
