Court hears man stabbed couple to death and `laid into' girlfriend

A 25-year-old man yesterday denied that he murdered two people and seriously assaulted another in a Co Roscommon house where …

A 25-year-old man yesterday denied that he murdered two people and seriously assaulted another in a Co Roscommon house where six children were sleeping.

In the Central Criminal Court in Dublin, the State alleged that Mr Mark Nash "laid into" his girlfriend and her married sister and brother-in-law and stabbed the couple to death in August last year.

Mr Nash (25), whose last address was in Clonliffe Road, Drumcondra, Dublin, pleaded not guilty to the murders of Mrs Catherine Doyle (28) and Mr Carl Doyle (29) at Caran, Ballintober, Castlerea, Co Roscommon, on August 16th, 1997.

He also denied unlawfully and maliciously causing grievous bodily harm with intent to Ms Sarah Jane Doyle. Opening the trial, prosecution counsel, Mr Michael Durack SC, with Ms Una Ni Raifeartaigh, told the jury that the background to the case lay with Sarah Jane Doyle, a young girl not yet 20, who lived with her family in Hartstown in Dublin.

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Sarah Jane left school when she was 15 or 16 and, after working locally, worked in fast-food restaurants in the city.

In March last year she had a baby, and about four weeks after the birth she and her sister went to a night-club where she first met the accused.

They were both parents of infants from previous relationships, Mr Durack said. Their relationship developed, and they moved with the two infants into a flat in Clonliffe Road which they shared with friends.

The jury would hear from witnesses of a row between them on August 13th last, during which there was "a lot of shouting and roaring" and a television was broken.

On August 15th, 1997, Mark Nash left work at about 5 p.m. and picked up Sarah Jane and the two infants from the flat, from where they set out to travel by train to her sister's house in Roscommon. Her sister, Catherine, and husband, Carl Doyle, and their four children had moved to Roscommon under a rural resettlement programme.

En route Mark Nash may have had two drinks and Sarah Jane a beer. They arrived between 8.30 p.m. and 9 p.m. and were collected from the station by Carl Doyle. On the way to his home, they stopped in Ballintober and purchased a bottle of vodka, a bottle of American whisky and some soft drinks.

By 9.30 p.m. they were sitting in the Doyles' living room, smoking and drinking. A flagon of cider was opened and they also took cannabis.

It appeared, said Mr Durack, that around midnight Carl Doyle had fallen asleep, and the two sisters had gone upstairs to sort out sleeping arrangements.

By this time Mark Nash had apparently been feeling unwell and had been in the toilet for around 45 minutes. He said later that, while there, he vomited out whatever he had taken.

Catherine and Sarah Jane Doyle were still in an upstairs bedroom, its door ajar, rearranging mattresses, when Mark Nash came up the stairs carrying "a metal item", a tool used to open the fuel cap on a Stanley range.

"He initially laid into Sarah Jane with this," Mr Durack told the jury, and something to the effect of "You're going to die" was said.

When Catherine attempted to intercede on her sister's behalf, the accused turned on her.

A number of blows were struck, and Sarah Jane was knocked out, Mr Durack continued. When she awakened, she found Catherine was no longer upstairs, but Mark Nash had come again and "laid into her again".

The prosecution alleges that the accused pushed Ms Doyle down the stairs and hit her again. As a result of the attack, she suffered a depressed fracture of her skull, bruising to her body and injuries to her leg.

At this stage, Sarah Jane "pretended to be dead", but after a while she "woke up" again and got herself out of the house.

"She dragged herself down the road to the nearest neighbours," Mr Durack said, a distance some put at a quarter of a mile.

The neighbours alerted gardai, who found Sarah Jane "covered in blood and in an extremely distressed state".

Gardai gained access through the back door of the Doyles' house, and on the floor in the dining room they found the body of Catherine Doyle. She had 16 wounds and had died from loss of blood. There was also some evidence of an attempt to strangle her.

When they went through to the living room, gardai found Carl Doyle sitting with his head tilted to one side, dead. He had at least four wounds to his left chest.

A search was then organised for Mark Nash, who had made his way across some fields, breaking into two houses along the way, and taking a racing cycle in one and clothes in another.

He then travelled to Castlerea, Dunmore and Tuam, until he was eventually arrested a couple of miles outside Galway city on the following day.

En route he had stolen a hammer from another house five miles from the scene of the crime and had stopped off in a number of other places in an attempt to fix a flat tyre.

He had also broken into the house of an elderly lady, whose son attempted to restrain him.

During this time, Mr Nash had been "very difficult to handle", Mr Durack said, and had made no attempt to give himself up.

He had since made a number of oral and written admissions to gardai and had written a number of letters to Sarah Jane Doyle in which he admitted killing Carl and Catherine Doyle and attacking Sarah Jane.

The prosecution counsel said he felt the jury would be satisfied there was no suggestion that either the deceased or the accused had been very drunk.

A post-mortem examination had found Carl Doyle had 159mg of alcohol in his blood while his wife had 231mg, as compared to the old drink-driving limit of 100mg.

In a statement Mark Nash said a £40 deal of cannabis had been bought, "but we don't know how much they had smoked", Mr Durack said. Mr Nash also stated that he had not taken ecstasy or other drugs in three months.

To "lay into" someone and give them a depressed fracture of the skull could not be done with anything other than intent, Mr Durack alleged.

When they had heard all the evidence the jury would be in no doubt that the accused intended to murder Carl and Catherine Doyle and to cause Sarah Jane grevious bodily harm.

The trial continues today before Ms Justice McGuinness, who warned the four male and eight female jurors not to allow their minds to be "contaminated" by publicity attending it.