A man who admitted kicking his girlfriend to death and keeping her body in his flat for three nights told gardai he wanted to tell them everything because he could not believe what he had done, the Central Criminal Court heard yesterday.
Laurence Callaghan (33) has pleaded guilty to the manslaughter but has denied the murder of Ms Janet Mooney (29) between September 17th and 19th, 1996, at the flat they shared in Harrington Street, Dublin.
The jury heard the killing resulted from an argument over a £5 cannabis deal.
On September 19th, Callaghan confessed what he had done to a friend, who rang the Garda. i. The following morning he was interviewed by Det Insp Declan Coburn at Kevin Street Garda station. Insp Coburn told Mr Sean Ryan SC, prosecuting, Callaghan told them: "I want to tell you what happened as I can't believe what I've done to Janet."
He said that after an afternoon spent drinking and smoking joints, he pulled her hair and shook her, asking her where a £5 hash deal was. She was getting ready for bed when the argument began. "I lost the head between the cider and hash. I kept kicking her. I just couldn't stop."
She then "seemed to go quiet all of a sudden", he told gardai.
"I murdered her. I kicked a lovely girl to death," he told them. "When I woke up the following morning, I had sex with her. It was only after I had sex with her that I realised she was dead."
Callaghan admitted he then moved the body to the bedroom, where he covered it with bedclothes, a curtain and his tweed jacket. He did so because he was "appalled by her appearance".
In a signed statement to gardai Callaghan said he had met Janet while living in Dublin city centre hostels over three years previously. After a fight in February 1995 outside one of the hostels, his mother got him the flat and Ms Mooney lived there with him.
After he kicked her, Callaghan said, he saw blood coming from her mouth but thought it was her gums bleeding. When she did not move, he thought she was "playacting".
"She seemed to be playing dead so I poured cold water on her face," he said. When she did not react, he poured hot water on it.
In his evidence, the State Pathologist, Dr John Harbison, said Ms Mooney died from a subdural haemorrhage caused by multiple injuries to the head and brain.
The pathologist found bleeding and bruising on Ms Mooney's chest, with six fractured ribs on each side, at least two of which had punctured the left lung.
Ms Mooney's blood alcohol level was almost three times the driving limit, and "it would undoubtedly have had a disabling effect on the deceased before her death".
The prosecution case ended yesterday. The defence case will be heard today before a jury and Mr Justice Carney.