BACKGROUND:The trial had all the ingredients to ensure there were queues for public seats at Court 19, writes KATHY SHERIDAN
WHEN CHILDHOOD friends of Eamonn Lillis read the story about the burglar in the balaclava, they knew instantly it was fiction. As a boy in Terenure on Dublin’s south side, young Lillis was the only one they ever knew who owned a balaclava. “When we were out pretending to be shootin’ up the street, he’d be there in his balaclava being James Bond . . . That story was a total throwback to his childhood.” When he wasn’t being James Bond, he was devouring Ian Fleming’s books about 007 on her majesty’s secret service, or writing short stories, or sketching brilliantly realistic images. A vast mural of an action-packed Battle of Britain inside the garage of their immaculately kept house in Wainsfort Park was his. He was a dreamer, a doodler, an exceptionally quiet, rather detached, slightly built boy, who had little in common with his peers in Templeogue College and none of the usual interests in street kickabouts.
He was one of three children of Séamus Lillis, an Irish Army officer (with the transport division) who moved on to become transport manager for Beamish Crawford. His mother, Mairéad, from Rossnowlagh, Co Donegal, died when he was 18, about the time he went to UCD. His father was a “nice person but unbelievably regimented”, says one who knew him in later years. “His routines were so precise you could set your watch by him. He was not an affectionate man”. He was apt to refer to his only son Eamonn as “George”, in tones that implied the boy was beyond his understanding and floated on a loftier plane: “George? He’s up there, his head stuck in a book.”
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To the few who got to know Lillis as an adult, it was clear he had always fallen well short of his father’s expectations. He went to UCD to study Arts and told the court he spent four years there, although it is not clear if he graduated.
His chosen career in art directing was also a long way from his father’s world. He went on to work for DDFHB, the advertising and marketing agency, in a pitiless industry. “It’s a fairly merciless meritocracy . . . If things aren’t working out, you’re gone,” says an industry source. In September 1990, the career of the 33-year-old Eamonn Lillis was waning when he met 28-year-old dynamo Celine Cawley, a driven, ambitious producer with GPA, a television commercials production company.
The pair worked in the same industry and shared a love of dogs. But there the similarities ended. Her relationship with her father, James, a high-flying solicitor, was one of mutual adoration. The contrast between her passion, energy and ambition and Lillis’s passive, dreamy, almost disconnected persona was stark. But to one who cared deeply for Cawley and grew close to both of them, “they were the perfect fit. I thought he was a nice guy. I really liked him”.
To another who knew him well in recent years, “the reality is that he was and is an oddball. He seemed to have no friends. He was easy to talk to – if you talked to him – but you’d never remember him again. He seemed to have no opinions of his own.” Another suggests that the marriage suited both of them. “Celine would never have married someone who would stand up to her formidable authority. It would take a brave man or woman to say ‘No’ to Celine once she set her mind on something.”
To one of Cawley’s closest friends, “they were good friends. They got on.” They met in September, were engaged by Christmas, and married the following July, in Howth church with a reception in her parents’ home at the Baily in Howth. With Celine, once she made up her mind, “everything was done quickly”, says an old friend, wistfully.
People who were close to her personally, talk about her almost reverently as a force of nature. A jolly, outgoing, funny child who went to Scoil Iosa in Malahide, followed by boarding school in Rathnew, they say some of her happiest days were between the ages of about nine to 13, when she and Juliette Hussey, her first cousin and lifelong friend, spent holidays in Hossegor, in southwest France, where Juliette’s mother took a house.
At 17, to her father’s consternation, she announced she wanted to be a model, although her mother, Brenda, played along, suggesting she go to a London training college. Spotted by Johnny Casanova of the Elite modelling agency, she went to New York, where she lived with John McEnroe’s family for a time – the tennis star’s father and Celine’s were business associates and friends – and travelled the world. There were a couple of “significant relationships, not flashy types – cheeky maybe”. A deeply tanned Texan fireman is particularly remembered from this period.
In her early 20s, “she was beginning to see the nonsense of the modelling life”, had her Bond girl moment in A View to a Kill, and returned to Ireland, aiming herself at the film production world. She could have done it the easy way, with the help of her father and brother Chris, with their blue-chip industry contacts and funding possibilities. But she started from scratch, going to work as a receptionist in Windmill Lane, where Gerry Poulson, head of GPA productions, spotted her potential, employed her as his personal assistant and taught her everything he knew.
In court, the bald evidence was that she founded Toytown Films, gave her husband a job when his own work had dried up two years into the marriage, made him a director and trained him in as a producer. In the good times, she was earning half a million a year and he one-fifth of that.
No one mentioned her bravery, determination and capacity for hard work. She started the company at home while pregnant with their daughter in 1992, effectively acquiring the goodwill of GPA and becoming the first company to set up in the newly deregulated market.
She was also an extraordinarily well-organised woman – “She’d have her taxes paid three months in advance” – but she could hardly have chosen a more ruthlessly competitive, male-dominated industry.
Her standards were high, she deemed nothing impossible, and there is no doubt she could be difficult, says one who worked closely with her. “She really knew her business and she didn’t suffer fools gladly . . . If she didn’t like somebody or thought they weren’t up to scratch, she wouldn’t have them hanging around. She wasn’t afraid to get rid of people. But she was no drama queen going around firing people either.”
Toytown thrived, producing commercials for world markets, and its prestigious client list came to include Carlsberg, Guinness, Volkswagen and Volvo. A memorable campaign was for Walker Crisps, starring Roy Keane. There were many personality clashes; she knew well that she wasn’t universally loved. A highly unusual feature of this murder trial was that almost everyone in court and around Dublin appeared to know someone who knew her. The picture was rarely flattering. A long line of sources talked of business meetings and scenes where she came across like a “tyrant”, including to her husband.
An image emerged of the victim as harridan, a woman who shouted and bullied her way to success, a ball-breaker who treated her husband as a lapdog. The tone of Garda questioning of her husband supported the picture of a domineering, emasculating woman. “Celine was the breadwinner, wasn’t she?” “I believe she was bossy enough?” “Did you always do what she told you?” “You were more of a gofer, weren’t you?” “She’d say jump, you’d say how high?”
It was obviously intended to spark a visceral reaction in her husband, in fairness. It is evident that the Cawley family hold the gardaí involved in the highest regard. And the officer in charge was a woman – Det Insp Angela Willis, promoted early in a man’s world, so who better to understand Celine Cawley?
Nonetheless, the line of questioning bolstered a sense that there was provocation in the mere fact of her bullish ambition and earning power. Would similar traits in a successful man elicit such comment? What might be described as “ambitious”, “driven” and “focused” in a man can translate to “ball-breaker”, “hard-nosed” and “thundering bitch” in a woman. “Isn’t that what they say about a woman who’s successful in business?” a friend of Cawley remarks sadly. “You wouldn’t hear it about a woman doctor. . .”
And there are other, quieter sources who insist there was plenty of smooth with the tough. For Celine Cawley, it was an article of faith to pay people properly and on time. Crews working up to the early hours would still get paid before heading home, with Cawley personally handing out the cheques. There is plenty of evidence that she had a gift for loyalty, for recognising raw talent and nurturing it. She might have been loud and bullish, but she was never patronising or demeaning, says one who worked closely with her; she gave responsibility beyond their years to people she had faith in.
The condemnatory chatter and line of questioning contrasted sharply with the official status accorded the other prominent woman in the case, Jean Treacy, the 31-year-old massage and beauty therapist from Nenagh, Co Tipperary. Her clandestine sexual trysts with her client in car parks and her place of work won her the kind of treatment normally accorded to terrorised participants in the witness protection programme. The day before her evidence, to make her fully comfortable with her environment, she received a familiarisation tour of the courthouse from a garda, as is the right of any witness. Then, on her evidence day, shrouded celebrity-style in large scarf and sunglasses, she was driven to court in a police vehicle, escorted through a side entrance and buffered by detectives in court.
Evidence revealed that Jean Treacy – who was introduced to Lillis by Celine – was herself engaged to be married when she invited Lillis to feel her racing pulse while he lay on her massage table; that she had fancied him for months beforehand and re-established contact with him many weeks after the killing with drink on her, seeking “closure”, as she put it. After gentle handling in the witness stand, she was smuggled out of the court and driven away at speed in a Garda vehicle up North Brunswick St, where a road block was set up to halt pursuers.
That was the deal agreed, and gardaí kept their end of it. “How else are we to persuade people to give evidence voluntarily?” asked a detective unconnected to the case, recalling police discomfort at the relentless media pursuit of Nicky Pelley, the mistress in the Rachel O’Reilly murder trial. Meanwhile, Jean Treacy’s wedding arrangements are said to be back on track.
The Garda treatment of Treacy triggered larger questions about who in such a case merits this level of protection, and why, and who decides. After all, every day, family, friends and witnesses on both sides, however aged, distressed or humiliated, are forced to negotiate the courts’ main entrance, a bank of cameras and a curious public. If this is a precedent and a future witness thus shielded wishes to sell his or her story, obviously the pay-off will be significantly greater thanks to the rarity of the photographs. Is this desirable?
Sources close to the Cawley family found many other aspects of the trial distressing, perceiving a system that allows itself to be “manipulated outrageously” by the accused. “The power you have to paint yourself as innocent, meek, kind, someone who wouldn’t hurt a fly . . . At times, it was like listening to a combination of a Mills Boon novel and the kind of horror movie a 10-year-old would make – a very bad one.”
Another source of distress was the requirement at short notice for the couple’s 17-year-old daughter to give evidence (by video link, from a room in the courts complex), a request understood to have come from the defence. It was hard to see the value of it or of the cross-examination. Usually, such statements are simply read to the court. Friends were aghast. “Above all else, Celine was a wonderful mother. Her daughter was everything to her, the light of her life.”
Among her close family – her brother Chris and his wife Sorca, her sister Susanna and her husband Andrew Coonan, her brother-in-law Rory Quigley who was married to her late sister, Barbara – Celine’s hugely practical, vigilant, humorous presence is profoundly missed. Despite suggestions in court that her husband handled the domestic side of things, a friend insists she ran the home and was “incredibly house-proud”.
She was the kind who would suddenly appear in your chaotic house, take command of your newborn baby and other squealing children and order you up to bed. She had several godchildren and kept a loving, beady eye on all her nieces and nephews. A nephew who wanted to dress like Jim Morrison (of The Doors) circa 1968, for his 18th birthday party had only to mention it and the skin-tight leather trousers, cowboy boots – real leather and properly vintage – and all the rest were couriered around.
“She was a bit of a bossy-boots at times but they all knew she was there for them . . . She really loved them and cared about them individually, and she helped several of them to get going in life in very important ways. When they went to her for work experience, she’d talk to the parents and would take time to figure out how they were. She’d take her guidance role very seriously.”
A source close to Rory Quigley and his children speaks in virtual tears at her unstinting devotion, generosity and vigilance through the years following her late sister Barbara’s death. While others stepped back delicately to give them space, Celine barrelled in, leaving a legacy of sustained care, love, fun and organisation: “There wasn’t anybody else in the world like her, she was a giant.” Every year, the Christmas trees of her loved ones would have a “mountain” of presents from the Lillis household. “There would be individual presents for each person and one from each of the dogs and the cat for every family member – and the present from the cat would not be insignificant. Even the Christmas after she died, there were presents from her; they’d already been bought and wrapped.”
Her Christmas Eve parties were much anticipated, especially by the children. But one old friend suggests that she had become less inclined in recent times to socialise outside of her own parties – “great, memorable parties”, says one regular – because she was acutely conscious of her weight problem, referred to several times in court as “marked” obesity. “Look, 32 per cent of women are obese and 50 per cent of men,” comments a friend, with finality.
More important to this friend was that Cawley’s long-term loyalty and gift of friendship were reflected in the attendance at her memorial Mass last year when almost her entire class from Rathnew turned up and Moira Healy recited Christina Rosetti’s touching poem, Remember. “She was a great storyteller, so clever and witty . . . You always felt the better for having spoken to her. She was such a big presence in our lives, such a loved presence.” Her social circle were her family, her friends – particularly Juliette Hussey and old school friends such as Moira Healy, Irene Meagher and Miriam Hamilton, her small team in Toytown who had soldiered with her for years, people such as the fashion designer and stylist Helen Cody, and others in the industry she nurtured such as the director John Hayes.
“She was an extraordinarily good and close friend, a proper good friend in the true sense. I have so much to thank her for,” said Cody after her death.
If the passive, dreamy Eamonn Lillis felt like a passenger beside this dynamo, it would hardly be surprising. The fund of unflattering impressions about her public treatment of him is complemented by unflattering impressions of the energy he brought to the marriage or the company of which she made him a director. But some suggest they had worked things out: “They weren’t that young when they met, so they met each other as they were and accepted each other as they were . . . She was the leader, the strong one . . . They were very affectionate towards one another . . . The idea portrayed over the past few weeks that he was downtrodden is not borne out by the facts. She always spoke about him with the highest regard; she never said a bad word about him. And no one in the family would have dreamt of saying a negative word about Eamonn to her.”
This “fierce defensiveness” of Eamonn within the family is raised by several sources close to them, although some concede that arguments between them were not unusual.
In fact, they suggest she was Eamonn’s great protector, and went to battle for him in many quiet ways. She worried about him. A few weeks before her death, she was ringing family members discreetly to discuss his cholesterol levels. When he complained of a bad back, it was Celine who introduced him to Jean Treacy for massage. She bought him gifts of centre-court tickets in Wimbledon and season tickets to Old Trafford. When he wanted to pursue his military interests by touring the Normandy battle fields or the walled town of Carcassonne – each time with her father – it was Celine who organised it. When James Cawley, his son and three sons-in-law attended a Davis Cup match in Madrid on October 18th (less than two months before the killing), Eamonn was already embarked on the affair with Jean Treacy, says a friend. “I think that affair just completely unbalanced him.”
In losing his wife, Eamonn Lillis also appears to have lost almost his entire social circle. It was evident after her death – when he was sheltered by Chris and Sorca Cawley – that the Cawley family were his main support, his strongest pillar then being Celine’s grief-stricken father. Others observe that there was no one around the Garda station for him when he was interviewed or under arrest. His sisters Elaine and Carmel, who live in England, were his daily supporters during the trial and it was a measure of them and the Cawley family that they were regularly seen chatting to one another.
His other trial companion was Gerry Kennedy who went surety for him, an old friend from his UCD days, now a freelance advertising copywriter, and on occasion, David Cassidy, another UCD alumnus.
The media have come under criticism in some quarters for the vast coverage given to this trial. Why this one, when other tragic cases around the courts attract no interest? As one sturdy regular in the queue for the public seats put it: “Ah look, this had the X factor . . . It had everything.” It’s human nature. It involved wealthy Dubliners with a hot tub, a life-size ornamental cow, a mistress and multiple houses. The small troupe of rather mortified civilian witnesses was quintessentially middle-class, of a kind who prefer to lead utterly private lives and are never sighted in the Central Criminal Court. It’s what made the trial so compelling for those who thronged Court 19, a fact that didn’t escape Mr Justice Barry White.
When the court was shown a 20-minute guided tour of the expansive Howth home, courtesy of a Garda video, he sent the jury out, saying angrily it was reminiscent of something from the OJ Simpson trial and demanding to know what the video had added, other than “whetting the ghoulish appetites of some members of the public”. Not to mention the rather sensational admission at the start (one even gardaí were not expecting) that the accused had concocted the story about the burglar in the garden.
Yet, as one hard-chaw journalist put it, was “it just another domestic”, another cautionary tale? After all, there was no Joe O’Reilly-style figure or gangster boss plotting the “perfect” crime. For all the media emphasis on Lillis’s designer garments (Ralph Lauren, Abercrombie Fitch) and prestigious vehicles, there was nothing that isn’t available at an outlet store somewhere. If nothing else, the video demonstrated that there was nothing ostentatious about the much-vaunted luxury home either. “With Celine, it would have been the opposite,” says a friend. Her “only indulgence” was a French property acquired five years ago, a beautiful four-bedroomed house just off the beach in Hossegor, the surfing haven in southwest France, where she had spent some of her happiest childhood years.
CAWLEY FAMILY: BACKGROUND
CELINE CAWLEY was the third of four children of James and Brenda Cawley, from Howth, Co Dublin.
James Cawley, now 80, was primarily a corporate lawyer and managing partner of Cawley Sheerin Wynne, one of Ireland 's top commercial practices in the 1970s and 1980s.
Cawley was one of the forces behind the setting up of the IFSC and a member of the board of Independent Newspapers for a time.
He was a friend and business associate of Anthony O'Reilly for more than 30 years, and O'Reilly was a partner in Cawley Sheerin Wynne.
The partnership was dissolved following a disagreement between Cawley and others in the firm.
Cawley's name featured briefly in planning tribunal hearings four years ago. He was a member of the Fianna Fáil general election fundraising committee and O'Reilly usually channelled his donations to the party at election times through Cawley, generally via Fitzwilton Ltd or Atlantic Resources.
However, in 1989, Cawley was told the subscription would be paid through Robin Rennicks to Ray Burke. Fitzwilton had recently acquired Rennickss firm, Rennicks Manufacturing.
Rennicks and another businessman gave a £30,000 cheque made out to cash to Burke at his home, which Fitzwilton has said was intended for Fianna Fáil.
Under pressure from Fianna Fáil, Burke later passed £10,000 to the party but kept the rest.
Cawley's wife, Brenda, died in May 2007.
Their eldest child, Barbara, who died 12 years ago, was married to Rory Quigley, a solicitor with a practice in Castleknock.
Celine's brother Chris is the founding partner and currently the executive chairman of advertising agency Cawley-Nea/TWBA, and is chairman of OMD Media. He is married to Irish artist Sorca O'Farrell.
The Cawleys' youngest child, Susanna, a lawyer, is married to solicitor Andrew Coonan, and they both practise as Coonan Cawley of Naas, Co Kildare, where James Cawley still practises.