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Dublin man sentenced to life for wife’s murder KILLER
Brian Kearney has started a life sentence in prison after being convicted
of the murder of his wife Siobhán at their family home in south
Dublin two years ago.
A jury of eight women and four men returned a majority guilty decision
of 11-1 after almost six hours of deliberation on the 13th day of the
trial.
The 51-year-old electrical contractor had pleaded not guilty to the charge
of murdering his 38-year-old wife at their home at Knocknashee in Goatstown
in February 2006.
The decision of the jury was greeted with a low-key murmur of gasps and
tears in the court after judge Mr Justice Barry White had warned all parties
against any emotional outburst.
During the trial it was claimed by the prosecution that Kearney had attempted
to disguise the fact that he had strangled his wife by trying to make
her death look like suicide.
But gardaí became suspicious that she had been murdered almost
immediately after her body was discovered in a locked upstairs bedroom.
A broken flex from a Dyson vacuum cleaner had been found wrapped around
her body.
The trial heard expert evidence the flex could not have supported Siobhán’s
weight for long enough to allow her to take her own life.
It is believed that Kearney strangled his wife by using the vacuum flex
as a ligature before trying to hoist her with the cable over the en suite
door of the bedroom to make her death look like suicide.
Evidence was also provided by relatives and friends of the dead woman
that she was seeking a legal separation from her husband in the days before
her death after their four-year marriage had broken down.
Although Kearney is worth an estimated ?4.6million it emerged during the
trial he was overstretched in his borrowings for a number of investments
— including the purchase of a hotel in Majorca for ?2.2million in
2002.
Outside the court Siobhán’s sister Aisling McLaughlin read
a victim impact statement on behalf of her family which the judge had
refused permission to be delivered in court.
It is expected Kearney’s legal team will attempt to overturn the
verdict by lodging an application to the Court of Criminal Appeal within
the deadline of three weeks.
THE statement read by Aisling McLaughlin:
“The faith and the trust that we have had in our criminal justice
system has not been misplaced and we have not been let down.
“Siobhán has got justice; we have got justice and Siobhán’s
murderer has got justice and for that we are most thankful.
“Since that day, Tuesday, February 28, 2006 our lives have been
utterly destroyed by this brutal and pointless act of savagery from which
they cannot, nor ever will, be the same.
“As a very close family we have been haunted by the fact that we
were not able to help Siobhán that morning — that she was
alone in the last and the worst minutes of her life unaware that the place
she felt safest in was, in fact, the most treacherous.
“We are so blessed to have known and to have had someone as special
as Seánie in our lives. But we miss her every hour of every day
and the unbearable longing to see her, to hold her and to protect her
never leaves you even though you know it’s too late.
“But Siobhán has been with us every day since that day. She
has never moved and she continues to live in each one of us.
“She is strong and she has given us extraordinary strength to keep
going.
“Siobhán needs peace now — to sleep peacefully knowing
that everything that can be done has been done.” |
