Suspect in woman's murder in Dundalk arrested

GARDAÍ INVESTIGATING the beating to death of mother of three Jacqueline McDonagh in her Co Louth home were last night questioning the chief suspect in the case and are following a definite line of inquiry.

The man being held, who was known to the dead woman, was arrested in Dublin just after 5pm yesterday and was taken to Dundalk Garda station in Co Louth where the murder inquiry is based.

He is being detained under section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act which allows for his detention without charge for 24 hours. His initial period of detention runs for six hours and that was due to be extended by a further six hours late last night, after which his detention can be extended by 12 hours.

Detectives working on the case do not think the killing was in any way connected to a feud within the Traveller community, despite the fact that members of the dead woman’s family had been targeted as part of a dispute.

While the investigating team is also examining reports that there was a break-in at Mrs McDonagh’s home and she was beaten to death by intruders, progress has been slow in trying to find evidence to support that proposition.

The murder investigation is now focused on another line of inquiry, with gardaí now of the view the dead woman was killed by somebody known to her.

The man being questioned last night was identified as the chief suspect in the hours after news of the killing emerged. His movements had been monitored and gardaí arrested him yesterday afternoon.

Searches have been undertaken in an effort to find any weapon that may have been used to beat the victim to death. A postmortem on Mrs McDonagh’s remains found significant bruising on her body and face. However, the dead woman’s head had also been cut and gardaí are trying to establish if that was as a result of a weapon being used in the attack.

The 34-year-old was pronounced dead at her rented home on the College Manor estate in Dundalk, Co Louth, at 3.15am on Wednesday after gardaí and paramedics were called to the house.

Gardaí are now satisfied the woman died in the downstairs room of the house where she was found.

Her husband Michael Quinn McDonagh, who is well known in the underground world of bare knuckle fighting and appeared in an RTÉ documentary Knuckle about the banned fights, was in the family home at the time of the fatal attack on his wife. The couple’s three children – Mikey (4), Nikita (10) and Chloe (14) – were also in the house at the time.

Gardaí are hopeful that interviews with the family members will help shed light on the dead woman’s last moments.

The family have a large extended family based in counties Louth, Meath and Dublin and they had lived in Finglas, Dublin, before moving to Dundalk.

The investigation is being led by Supt Gerry Curley, who has appealed for anyone with information on the case to contact gardaí.