‘There was a fierce decency to Wayne’

RAY O’DONOGHUE was in his bedroom on the morning of January 16 when his eldest son Wayne walked in. He was crying and he told his father he loved him.

“I love you. I’m sorry. It was an accident.”

The words must be seared into Ray O’Donoghue’s mind.

Wayne told his father what had happened and his father immediately rang his wife who had gone out.

“Please say it isn’t true,” she sobbed when she got back to the family home.

Therese O’Donoghue and her husband were at Cork Courthouse every day of the 10-day trial. Wayne’s mother often looked teary and closed her eyes for long spells when distressing evidence about the killing was read into court. Ray O’Donoghue, like Robert’s father, Mark, remained stoic and stared ahead.

The O’Donoghue’s son isn’t dead, but their loss has been seismic. They moved house immediately after Wayne was arrested. They haven’t spent a night in the house since, neighbours said.

They had taken part in the search. Their son had been the last to see Robert alive. They had watched him go about his life as normal, still meeting his girlfriend, Rebecca Dennehy, more or less every day.

The eight-day search for Robert had gripped the whole country as everyone worried how a little boy could have disappeared in broad daylight from a country road. Their son consoled Robert’s mother, Majella on the night of the disappearance and reassuring her that he would be found. At Majella’s request, he identified Robert’s bike when it was found hours later and he searched until the early hours of the morning. At one stage, Majella told him he was “too good”.

Their son completed a garda questionnaire in the days after the killing and was interviewed on three occasions. Gardaí reported that he always appeared “normal” and there were never signs of “tension”.

“Normal” was a word we heard a lot about O’Donoghue from friends and fellow searchers, who took to the stand, repeatedly saying that they didn’t find anything suspicious about him in the days after Robert’s disappearance.

Detective Sergeant Brian Goulding recalled being approached by the accused at a search control point in the East Cork Golf Club.

“He stated to me in an aggressive manner that an hour’s daylight was being lost by the time everyone was briefed and deployed. I explained we had to brief gardaí and army before we briefed others. He was not happy with my reply. He turned and walked away.”

Inspector Martin Dorney also described an occasion where O’Donoghue approached him when the search had to be called off because of bad weather. O’Donoghue said that the search should continue.

So against this backdrop, and the tragedy unfolding before their eyes next door, when O’Donoghue came into his parent’s bedroom on the morning of January 16 and confessed, the world as Ray and Therese O’Donoghue knew it, collapsed. They stuck by their son. They got him legal representation. They rang the guards. And they have stuck by their son ever since.

His then Leaving Cert girlfriend, the blonde, petite Rebecca Dennehy, spent more time with him during the eight days Robert’s body was missing than anyone else. In court, she admitted to seeing him “probably nearly every day” during the search. They continuously rang and texted each other - getting on particularly well during the Christmas holidays.

“There were times when he was really quiet and seemed into himself,” she said. Normally, she said, they both talked non-stop. They had a “touchy-feely” relationship and used to kiss a lot and hold hands. As the search progressed, her boyfriend seemed “agitated”.

Friends remember O’Donoghue’s friendship with Robert. He frequently got texts from Robert Holohan, the “young fella” as he used to call him, when they were in the pub at night - again asking him to take him to McDonald’s.

“He had everything going for him, brains, education and charm,” said one woman. “I remember often seeing him at Mass on a Sunday with his girlfriend.”

Up to last January, O’Donoghue had led a perfectly uneventful life. Born in 1984, he had lived in Midleton all his life - his parents moved there in 1980. He is the eldest of three boys - the younger two Timmy and Nicky are in their late teens.

The family was never short of money - Ray O’Donoghue has a car sales business in East Cork and Therese was an only child from a well-known and wealthy local family.

O’Donoghue attended Midleton CBS Primary School where he was described as a good, enthusiastic student. After sixth class, he attended CBS Secondary School.

A strong honours candidate, there was never any doubt he would go to college. “He was a model student. He was commended twice in senior cycle.... He was also commended for his involvement in the local diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes. He was a fine young man,” said CBS Secondary school principal Denis Ring.

Described as soccer-mad by many, he played soccer with Midleton FC where he was described as “average not fantastic”. His position was full back and he was “mad about the game”.

While Wayne clearly spent a great deal of his spare time with his girlfriend, he also had a close group of friends who had grown up around Midleton with him.

“They’re a nice bunch of lads, mostly middle class and in college somewhere or another,” said a local woman who knows them well.

O’Donoghue was far from a spoilt child, according to friends of the family. People remember how he told them that he was ordered to give back a present, a sum of money, once to his grandparents as his mother “thought it too much”. He drove a 1997 car and had a number of “bangers” before.

The car was a must as, still living at home, O’Donoghue had to travel nearly 40 miles every day to and from Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) where he was studying structural engineering.

Early in the trial, the jury heard how Wayne, as he had a car, often got stuck with taxiing his brothers around. On the day of Robert’s death, he had been asked to bring Timmy to work at Super Valu and then Timmy rang his brother soon afterwards to ask him to collect an exercise bike he’d bought. House rules also meant that the boys had to take turns on a weekly basis at walking the family dog.

There were no handouts at home and he worked part time and full-time through the summer at the Goose’s Acre pub before it closed down.

“Wayne was very popular with the people who drank in the ‘The Goose’. He’d always chat away. He had that bit of old style chivalry where he’d chat away to old people too. So many people of his generation haven’t been brought up to have that kind of manners,” one former regular noted. Other employees said he was a “grafter” who had a “great sense of humour”.

“As far as women were concerned, he had it and he knew it. He was full of charm and didn’t have to try with women. Not unlike many young boys of his age, he loved himself,” she joked.

“I’d never in my life seen him in a fight or heard of him in a fight. He was an achiever and hated when people gave up on things. He was a partier all right but the kind of lad that would go out and get hammered and then not drink for the next few nights if he was in the pub watching a match or anything,” another said.

“I know it sounds strange to say now but I would have always said there was a fierce decency to Wayne. He had a fierce sense of fairplay and would get really annoyed if he thought people were being treated unfairly.”