Murder accused told gardaí he shot friend in back of his head in scuffle over a killing

A murder accused told gardaí that he shot his friend in the back of the head during a scuffle over the deceased allegedly asking him to kill his partner and make it look like “sexual abuse”.

The Central Criminal Court heard the evidence on Wednesday in the murder trial of Paul Wells Snr. The jury was watching a DVD of one of his garda interviews following his arrest on suspicion of murdering Kenneth O’Brien.

The 50-year-old of Barnamore Park in Finglas has admitted shooting dead the fellow Dubliner and dismembering his body. However, the father-of-five has pleaded not guilty to murdering the 33-year-old at his home in Barnamore Park on January 15th or 16th, 2016.

He claims the deceased had wanted him to murder Mr O’Brien’s partner, so that he could take their child back to Australia, where he had previously lived.

The jury began hearing the contents of his Garda interviews on Tuesday. He denied involvement in the first interviews. The gardaí then put to him the statement of his son, Paul Wells Jnr, and the jury was shown a DVD of what followed.

“You did try to explain what you had done, that you were sorry, that you had no choice,” remarked Det Garda Declan O’Brien in the interview. “So you must have been under some severe pressure to carry out the action that was carried out.”

He suggested that, leaving aside what happened to the body after Mr O’Brien was dead, there had been “a split-second decision” where he’d pulled the trigger at the back of his head and shot him.

“There was no going back from that,” noted the detective. “I honestly believe that you had to make that choice and you made it, a very hard one.”

He asked the accused what he had to say to that.

“No comment at this time,” he replied.

“You told Paul that you shot Kenneth in the head, that you had to take a chainsaw to him, because you couldn’t carry him,” continued the garda. “Paul, open up and talk to us about it.”

“I’m not saying anything at this time. I will talk to you,” he replied.

“I would have never hurt Kenneth. He was my friend,” he said later, explaining that he had no desire to hurt him.

“I didn’t plan to hurt him,” he continued, adding that he hadn’t wanted to hurt anybody.

“It wasn’t the plan, so then what happened?” asked the detective.

“I’ve nothing to say at this time,” he replied.

Towards the end of the six-hour interview, he asked if he could see or speak to Mr O’Brien’s partner or her sister.

“Why do you want to see them?” asked the garda.

“They need to know,” he replied. “The truth.”

He was asked what that was.

“I will tell you. I just need to be able to face them,” he said.

The officers told him they would talk to their boss.

On his way to his cell that night, he told one of the detectives that “this was much bigger than what happened to Kenneth”, that there was a lot of money involved, with somebody in Australia “very rich”.

He said “what happened to Kenneth” was tearing him asunder and asked a sergeant to tell his son that he was glad he’d turned him in.

He also told this sergeant that Mr O’Brien had wanted him to kill his partner, Eimear Dunne.

“I told him that in no way was I ever going to harm a woman, especially her,” he said. “I was supposed to meet Kenneth on the 15th with a view of organising the murder that day.”

He told detectives the following morning that he was supposed to meet Mr O’Brien in the city that afternoon, but decided against it. He said that Mr O’Brien came to his house just after 5pm. He brought him in, made coffee and they chatted, he said.

“It started to get dark,” he said. “And he then changed the subject to Eimear. He then asked me was I going to do that thing for him.”

Mr Wells said that he took this to mean killing her and, at one stage, the deceased had shown him a gun.

“I said to him that the whole thing was f***in’ crazy and unnecessary,” he said. “He was under some illusion that I was up for doing this ... I told him that there was no way that I would ever undertake under any circumstances such a thing, and I pleaded with him to reconsider.”

He said that the deceased had reminded him that “he had plans, that he didn’t want to stay in Ireland” and all he wanted was his young son.

“Also the fact that the house was also part of the package,” he continued. “I got a bit annoyed.”

However, he said Mr O’Brien “wasn’t having any of it”, and he felt pressure. He said that Mr O’Brien had wanted him to carry out the murder that evening in the Clondalkin home that he shared with Ms Dunne and their son.

“He would send me a text, but not write. It would be a smiley face. That was a signal that it was clear to go to the house and take a life,” he said, becoming upset.

“After I had shot her, he wanted me to, and this was the worst part for me aside from what he asked me,” he began. “I was to interfere with her clothing to give the impression that she’d been sexually abused,” he continued. “I f***ing lost it. And I recall pushing him violently.”

He said they struggled but that Mr O’Brien was a lot stronger than him, having “practised a bit of wrestling” in Australia.

“I ended up behind him, and the gun dropped to the floor,” he said. “He tried to grab the gun off the floor. I thought if he got the gun he’d shoot me. I’d never seen him like that before. I never thought it was in him. I panicked and got the gun first,” he continued.

“And I shot him, in the back of the head,” he said. “I panicked. I put the gun to his head. I pulled the trigger. I didn’t want to kill him. He was my friend.”

He said that his friend was killed instantly and that he passed out.

“I must have laid [sic] there with him for hours,” he said.

“After a while, I sort of started thinking about my survival and my family,” he said. “I thought about giving myself up, trying to explain what happened.”

However, he said all he could think about was his youngest son.

“I felt a little bit ashamed that I could be thinking of my son, when I was after taking the life of someone else’s,” he said. “But I didn’t mean it, didn’t intend to.”

He said that he had moved Mr O’Brien’s body into the shed at this stage. He described the blood flowing from his head and out the door, and an unpleasant smell causing him to vomit.

He said that he had tried to lift the body, but couldn’t.

“I was just wondering how I was going to get Ken out,” he said. “I was wondering how I was going to do it, bring him through the house. The place would be destroyed.”

He said he was also wondering where he’d bring him.

“It was like a carousel in my brain, the same thing over and over,” he added.

The trial continues this on Thursday.