Nerves betrayed in recounting details of a life, and the laying bare of lies

We learned more about Eamonn Lillis yesterday, and the pressures his marriage was under, writes KATHY SHERIDAN

DOGS HAVE been the running motif of the trial. Earlier in the week, Jean Treacy, the beauty therapist who had conducted trysts in a Mercedes jeep with Eamonn Lillis, claimed the tenor of the relationship changed after he invited her out to the Jeep to view his dog pictures on an iPod.

Yesterday, Mr Lillis told the court that it was an interest in dogs had brought himself and Celine Cawley together at the advertising festival in Kinsale in 1990.

They got chatting about his   German Shepherd and her German Shepherd Ridgeback Cross, following a football match she had organised.

Pictures of the family home, shown last week, featured a large dog basket at the centre of the kitchen and its occupant, Molly, Sam and Harry, have become familiar names to trial observers.

Evidence was heard that Lillis had taken them for a walk immediately before the fatal row on December 15th, 2008. Two witnesses this week referred to them as somewhat fearsome creatures.

Pauline Lynsky, whose sister is married to Ms Cawley’s brother, said if she was visiting Rowan Hill, she would ask Celine to take in the dogs because they were “quite intimidating”.

Maureen Pilsen, a woman who walked past the house regularly, said she was aware of the dogs because they would run over to the fence – “there’s a little dog that yaps and I’m afraid of him”.

Yesterday, the dogs reared their heads again when State prosecutor Mary Ellen Ring wondered where they had been during an extremely noisy, violent row, as described by Mr Lillis, between him and his wife, in the course of which Ms Cawley had emitted – in his words – “an almighty shriek”. Where was Harry at that point, asked Ms Ring? “I’ve no idea. He didn’t come out,” he answered. You hadn’t locked them up, she asked. “No,” he said.

During his testimony, his nerves were betrayed by occasional gulps, a thickening voice and a tendency to bite his lip. His low voice prompted the jury foreman to ask that he speak up and slow down. He took occasional sips of water and was mannerly enough to say “excuse me” when he coughed.

We learned a little more about him yesterday when his defence counsel, Brendan Grehan, led him through a brief resume of his life.

Speaking in a low, terse voice, he said he was 52, and was born in Terenure, Dublin. He had spent four years in UCD before going into advertising design and worked as an art director for most of his career.

That changed after he met his wife, and she had set up her own film production company when the one she worked for “went bust”. She had asked him to join her initially and he decided to go his own way but then his business went very quiet and after two years, he joined her company: “She said I could be a very good asset.”

They lived in two different homes in Howth before settling in Rowan Hill eight or nine years ago, a reflection of growing success. But the recession had obviously affected it in 2008.

There was no time pressure on Monday, December 15th, he said, as the company hadn’t had any work since the previous October. On that morning, he told Mary Ellen Ring, a row about his failure to feed mealworms to the robins had escalated when Cawley asked him why he hadn’t been bringing more work into the company. He considered this unfair – “there is no work in the recession”, he told the court. “And that progressed into I didn’t care for [their daughter] and didn’t care for her.”

Wasn’t he angry, challenged Ring, wasn’t he carrying a secret with him? “Let’s be clear,” she said. “You were seeing a woman on a regular basis . . .”

“That had absolutely nothing to do with it. I said some things to her [Celine] . . .” he said, gulping emotionally. Sometimes, when you know someone so well, you know what buttons to push, he said in emotional tones.

“I accused her of only being interested in her own image as Superwoman . . . that she didn’t appreciate the stuff [their daughter] and I had done and she didn’t appreciate the work I was doing around the house.”

Ring fired out a long series of questions, each of them listing lies told to a series of people by Eamonn Lillis after his wife’s death, beginning with his call to the emergency services.

Most he conceded to be lies; some he didn’t remember.

“I didn’t know what to do. I’d never been in a situation like that. I was taking Valium . . . sleeping pills. I was irrational . . .”

Hadn’t he lied to his wife about the affair, asked Ring? “I wasn’t lying . . . I wasn’t telling her lies . . .”

Didn’t he have a second phone for that purpose?

“I was deceiving her by not telling her. I didn’t lie to her directly.”