IT was a double tragedy for the O'Connor family. In November two years ago, Julia O'Connor buried her daughter, Bernadette, who had been knocked down by a lorry in Blanchardstown. A year later, she buried what remained of her second daughter, Patricia.

Patricia McGauley (43) had been missing for four years before gardai discovered the sites where Michael Bambrick her common law husband had hidden his two victims. It was Bambrick (43) who reported her disappearance and her distraught family always believed she had been killed.

Only fragments of her skull, a rib and some bones were found in the water filled dike in Balgaddy where Bambrick dumped Patricia's body.

Bambrick later told detectives how he had dismembered her and placed the parts of the body in black plastic sacks which he carried on a bike to the dump.

Patricia's mother, Julia, was convinced she would never abandon her two children, Adrienne (13) and six year old Louise. Patricia had been very close to her elderly mother. She visited her regularly at her home in Mary's Lane in Dublin city centre.

Every week, Julia collected the lone parents allowance on behalf of her daughter. That September week in 1991 was no exception. She had waited for Patricia to collect her money but Bambrick turned up instead.

He told her Patricia was missing, left the two young children with her and went off for a couple of hours. While she was minding the girls, he was secretly burying their mother.

Born on September 19th, 1948, Patricia was one of four children, three girls and a boy. She grew up in Capel Street and still socialised with childhood friends until her death.

She had various jobs meeting her first husband while working in a soap factory in North King Street. The marriage, characterised by violence, lasted just two years.

She met Bambrick in 1982 and moved in with him at his home in St Teresa's Gardens. They later moved to St Ronan's. Park, Clondalkin, when her second child, Louise, was born. They lived there for five years but Patricia McGauley never got to know her neighbours well.

According to neighbours, the couple regularly fought about drinking and about Bambrick getting a job.

A garda close to the investigation said. "Patricia was an unfortunate sort of person. She left one violent relationship and went on to another."

On the night she died they had been out drinking together. When they returned to St Ronan's Park, after collecting their children, they began fighting.

"Neighbours heard a ferocious row in the early hours of the morning," said a garda involved in the investigation. "There was a lot of screaming and shouting. Then it all went quiet."

Bambrick told gardai that things quietened down after the argument and they later went to bed. Patricia McGauley died during the sexual encounter that followed.