Tests show woman taxi-driver was battered to death

A post-mortem examination on the body of murdered taxi driver Ms Eileen Costello O'Shaughnessy (47) has shown she died from severe head injuries and that she was not sexually assaulted.

Last night, gardai in Galway said they urgently want to contact a 20-year-old woman who hitched a lift in the Knockdoemore area at around midnight on Sunday.

A motorist who gave her a lift said she appeared to be very upset and may have witnessed something which had prompted this.

Supt Tony Finnerty, of Mill Street Garda station, who is leading the murder investigation, said "considerable force and violence" had been used. He said gardai still had no definite line of inquiry and there was no obvious motive for the crime but he was confident of an early conclusion to the inquiry.

The post-mortem on Ms O'Shaughnessy was conducted yesterday at University College Galway Hospital by the State Pathologist, Dr John Harbison. Extensive searches also continued nine miles outside Galway in the townland of Knockdoemore, where the body was found at noon on Monday by a local farmer, and four miles farther down the Tuam-Galway road at a quarry in the townland of Corrandrum, where the owner reported footprints and blood.

Samples of blood were sent to Dublin for examination but Supt Finnerty said no link had as yet been established with the crime. Searches also continued three miles outside the city at the industrial estate where the abandoned Toyota Carina was first reported on Sunday night, and technical staff carried out an examination of the car.

The investigating team said it had received a considerable amount of information by telephone. House-to-house inquiries and checkpoints on the Tuam-Galway road on Monday night had also helped.

Ms O'Shaughnessy's movements from the time she picked up a fare bound for Claregalway at around 8 p.m. on Sunday remain a mystery but Supt Finnerty said the pick-up had been narrowed down to the Cross Street/Quay Street area.

He did not rule out a sexual motive earlier yesterday, although Ms O'Shaughnessy's body was fully clothed. Her money-belt was found in the car, along with some cash. He could not establish if some takings had been disturbed.

Supt Finnerty said he wished to reassure taxi-drivers, who had been of considerable assistance in the search after Ms O'Shaughnessy's car was reported abandoned. The attack was very unusual, he said, and the first of its type since he had been based in Mill Street. Taxi-drivers had a very effective crime prevention system which worked extremely well.

Ms O'Shaughnessy's family was being consoled yesterday as it was confirmed the removal would take place tomorrow evening, and the funeral in her home at Corofin, Co Galway, on Friday. The mother of two grown children was separated from her husband, Garda Tom O'Shaughnessy, who is based at Mill Street. Garda O'Shaughnessy was in Dublin on Monday when news broke of his wife's violent death. She had been living with her elderly mother, Ms Nora Costello, in Corofin, near Tuam.