Family of murder victim hear that accused husband lied to gardaí

THE FIRST murder trial in the new Courts of Criminal Justice got under way yesterday when a packed Court 19 heard evidence in the case against Eamonn Lillis (51), of Rowan Hill, Windgate Road, Howth, Co Dublin.

He is charged with the murder of his wife Celine Cawley, at their home on December 15th, 2008.

The couple were well known in advertising circles as co-directors of Toytown Films, a successful television commercials production company which made them both “wealthy”, said State prosecutor Mary Ellen Ring.

Ms Cawley’s father, Jim, her brother Chris and sister Susanna sat quietly in court, wincing occasionally, as Ms Ring told the jury that there would be evidence of a sexual relationship between Mr Lillis and a named woman in the months leading up to Ms Cawley’s death and of bloodstained clothes found afterwards in the family home.

The accused, dressed in a charcoal grey suit, black tie and white shirt, sat alert and still, fingering his reading glasses and looking towards the judge, as Ms Ring said the accused had first told gardaí he had returned home to find an intruder in a balaclava and gloves attacking his wife, before also attacking him and escaping through the garden.

She then went on to list evidence they would hear during the case, including items of male clothing found in various parts of the house with bloodstains that matched Celine Cawley’s DNA and a man’s watch with blood on the face and tissue embedded in the clasp, found on a bedside locker of a room used by Mr Lillis. Three mobile phones with three separate numbers were also found, which revealed “significant traffic” between Mr Lillis and a woman called Jean Tracey, with whom, it emerged, he had been in a relationship of an “intimate and sexual nature” in the months preceding the murder.

Counsel for Mr Lillis, Brendan Grehan, then rose to make “a number of admissions”, relating to such procedures as preservation of the crime scene, which will probably cut the duration of the case.

The final two admissions were that “the accused lied to the emergency services and gardaí about the circumstances in which Celine Cawley met her death” and that there was no burglary: “there was no other party present on the occasion when she suffered her injuries”.

Kevin Moran, a Dublin Fire Brigade dispatcher and controller, was among the seven police and fire officers who gave evidence, and the full nine- or 10-minute call he received from a “gasping” Eamonn Lillis was played to a sombre court.

For the first time, evidence supported by maps and photographs was displayed on video screens for the entire court to see.