A neighbour of a 22-year-old Cork man on trial for the rape and murder of beautician Rachel Kiely has claimed the accused told him the dead woman had been “beaten and raped” on the evening her body was found.

Shortly after an ambulance arrived at the scene where a 22-year-old woman was found lying in dense undergrowth in a park in Co Cork an 18-year-old local man told three of his neighbours the woman had been "beaten and raped".