Husband Convicted of Wife’s Murder

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Husband Convicted of Wife’s Murder

July 26, 2007

By Paddy Clancy

JOE O’Reilly, a 35-year-old advertising company executive convicted of murdering his wife, Rachel, in one of the most sensational trials of the past decade in Ireland, has been placed under suicide watch in a special segregation unit of the Midlands Prison at Portlaoise.

O’Reilly’s conviction followed a 20-day trial that was rarely off the front pages as details of his affair with a woman he planned to marry after killing his wife were placed before the jury.

The court also heard of an earlier affair during legal argument in the absence of the jury. O’Reilly was said to have told that mistress, Barbara Hackett, that this marriage was breaking up and it was unlikely he would get custody of his two children. The prosecution maintained this meant O’Reilly intended to get rid of his wife so he would have custody of his children.

But Mr. Justice Barry White did not permit Hackett to be called. The judge ruled that the affair and O’Reilly’s comments to her in 2003 happened too long before the murder.

Evidence of re-enactments by O’Reilly of the murder on six separate occasions in front of Rachel’s family and friends in the weeks after her death was also ruled inadmissible. O’Reilly demonstrated his “theory” that the killer knelt down as he repeatedly bashed Rachel’s head with an object while she lay on her bedroom floor.

He told relatives he believed the killer walked to the shower to wash the blood off his body, but heard Rachel moan and returned to the bedroom to “finish her off.”

The prosecution claimed O’Reilly’s re-enactment contained elements that only the killer could have known. But the judge agreed with a defense submission that O’Reilly did not need direct knowledge of the murder to conduct the re-enactment. The judge ruled details of the re-enactments should not be put to the jury.

The jury did, however, hear and opt to accept police evidence that checks on O’Reilly’s mobile phone calls and texts both to his new mistress, Nikki Pelley, and to others placed him close to the murder scene when his wife was killed at their home in October 2004, at the Naul, Dublin. O’Reilly had insisted he was at work in the Phibsboro area of Dublin city.

But a colleague, who gave evidence that initially part-supported O’Reilly’s claims, admitted under cross-examination that he may have been mistaken about the time.

Rachel O’Reilly, a 30-year-old mother of two, was brutally bludgeoned to death when she returned to her home after dropping off her two sons at school.

The brutality of the attack, along with heart-tugging pictures of Rachel and the children, captured the attention of the nation.

Interest, already keen, intensified when O’Reilly, appearing with members of Rachel’s family on the chart-topping Late, Late Show on RTE television two weeks after the murder, made an impassioned plea for the killer to give himself up.

Police later learned he spent that night at the south Dublin home of his lover, Pelley.

Detectives reckoned that was hardly the behavior of a man in mourning for his wife. They had already discovered e-mail exchanges between O’Reilly and his sister in which he said he was repulsed by his wife and wanted to end the marriage, but was worried he would not get custody of the children.

After the murder verdict was delivered, Rose Callely, the mother of Rachel O’Reilly, said her family was haunted by what had happened every day. She added in a prepared statement that the family was trying to come to terms with the horrific reality that they can do nothing to bring Rachel back.

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