Evidence was heard yesterday from people connected in some way to the Cawley family or to Eamonn Lillis
THE DPP v Eamonn Lillis moved into a new phase yesterday when the fire officers, gardaí, medics and forensic experts who have occupied the court’s attention for a week moved aside and civilians took the stand.
The six women and one man, quintessentially of the Dublin middle classes for the most part but almost all distinguished by tired, haunted faces, may never have darkened a courtroom door for any purpose before, never mind the Central Criminal Court.
All were linked by location – the affluent suburb of Howth – or by some connection to the Cawley family. Throughout, Eamonn Lillis, who knew nearly all of them, kept his eyes on the evidence, betraying his feelings only with an occasional frenetic biting at his gum.
Here was Chris Cawley, the brother of Celine, whose Howth home provided shelter for Eamonn Lillis in the aftermath of the murder, as well as a gathering point for all-comers.
Mr Cawley recalled a conversation arising from a newspaper report a few days afterwards, which suggested that the murder weapon had been found. “Eamonn Lillis said to me that that was a non-story, a ridiculous story.” Everyone knew the brick was found, Lillis had said: “Sure didn’t I hold the brick in my own hand.”
Here were the two stricken sisters of Chris’s wife Sorcha, remembering their own conversations in the house with the accused on the afternoon of the murder, along with the sound of “raw grief” as Celine’s distraught daughter met her father on his return from the Garda station.
One sister, Paula Lynskey, a freelance television producer, gave an idea of the intimate circles in which they moved, both within the families – who had been friends for a long time – and within the village atmosphere of Howth. She had seen Eamonn Lillis returning from delivering his daughter to school that morning as she was heading there with her own children.
Paula had then gone to do a bit of Christmas shopping in Donaghmede, before having a chat with her sister, Sorcha, and then turning off her phone. It was later she heard the radio news about the middle-aged woman who died and who had a teenage daughter; she knew only one family on that road with a teenage daughter, she said softly.
She recalled Lillis’s description of the alleged burglar (since admitted to be untrue) as wearing gloves, and wondering how that tallied with scratches on his face.
Here was Paula’s other sister, Siobhan O’Farrell, who recalled being quite shocked at the scratching and bruising on Lillis’s face. Had she ever known him and Celine to have any arguments, asked Lillis’s counsel, Brendan Grehan? “No. Celine was very private,” said Ms O’Farrell with an air of finality.
Here was the poised deputy principal of an exclusive school, who – we heard last week – was an old college friend of the accused, now mounting the stand to say she had seen him earlier on the morning of his wife’s death and thought he “looked normal”.
Here was Pauline Frasier, an elegantly presented woman, who had been with her mother, a patient suffering from Alzheimer’s in St Vincent’s, until late the night before.
Ms Fraser was sleeping late on the morning of December 15th until awakened at 9.30am by two high-pitched screams – a “shriek”, followed 30 seconds later by another.
“It struck me as very odd because it’s a quiet road and the only time you would hear noise would be children coming home from school in the evening time, and I looked at my watch and it was 9.30.” How did it sound to her ? “I thought it was definitely somebody in trouble. It would have struck you as something had happened someone.”
And finally, here was Emma O’Beirne, a composed young woman who worked as a commercials producer for Celine Cawley’s company, Toytown Films. She did not concede to Mr Grehan’s suggestion that Ms Cawley was “dominant”. It was effectively Ms Cawley’s company and she was the main decision-maker, she said.
“Celine was strong; she was the boss . . . Eamonn would have taken a back seat and wouldn’t have been involved in the day-to-day running of the company . . . He would have been more involved in the home, picking up [their daughter] from school and dropping her off . . .”