January 6 - December 14

ON the first day of the trial, Wayne O’Donoghue nervously held rosary beads between his fingers, and as the jury came back into court yesterday to give their verdict, he blessed himself.

Between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, there is a sorrowful mystery.

What really happened on that day, January 4, 2005, when Robert Holohan, an 11-year-old boy, was killed by his 20-year-old friend and next-door neighbour Wayne O’Donoghue?

O’Donoghue admitted manslaughter at the outset of the trial and in the course of interviews with gardaí.

So this case was always an investigation of his intent when he put his arm around Robert’s neck on January 4. O’Donoghue said it was a tragic accident. The prosecution said he meant it.

A jury of seven women and five men had to decide. Yesterday, after a 10-day trial, they took just four hours and 21 minutes to declare O’Donoghue not guilty of murder and guilty of manslaughter.

His sentence will not be decided until January 24 at a court in Ennis. But in the meantime, his solicitor, Frank Buttimer, says O’Donoghue’s thoughts are with Mark and Majella Holohan.

Two families. Two sons. Two sides to the story.

Majella never had any issue with her son’s friendship with O’Donoghue. He may have been nine years older, but he was also their neighbour. If anything, she thought O’Donoghue was a positive and calming influence on her exuberant eldest son who had a tendency to be hyper.

She spoke to people about O’Donoghue being “a rock of sense” and a good friend to Robert.

The two families lived just 60 feet apart in the townland of Ballyedmond, more than two miles from Midleton. Home for Robert was a mock-Tudor dormer bungalow while the O’Donoghue household was a modest, older bungalow.

All around them was more one-off housing, but everyone in Ballyedmond knew each other.

Neighbours say, despite the age gap, you would often see the two boys kicking a football or pucking a sliotar on the lawn outside the Holohan house or in the endless fields near their homes.

The two were often to be found sprawled out in the Holohan or O’Donoghue homes engrossed in some PlayStation game. Other days, they might pass a few hours at the local pool hall in Midleton.

Sometimes Robert’s friend, 13-year-old Heather Harte, or ‘Heads’ as he called her, would knock around with them.

Robert used to pester O’Donoghue a lot for lifts into town, as he had a car.

At Robert’s age, the natural urge of most country kids is to be “in town” - the countryside, no matter how outdoorsy you are, can suddenly appear boring.

For Robert, Midleton’s big attractions were ‘Fat Albert’s’ pool hall and then McDonalds - which had opened just months previously.

It was Robert’s request on January 4 to be driven to McDonald’s that triggered the incident which led to his death.

Manchester United were playing Spurs on the night Robert was killed. John Hutch Junior had been friends with O’Donoghue all through school. He was watching the match in Cissy Young’s bar on the Bandon Road in Cork when O’Donoghue called that night to say Robert was missing and asking if “I could think of anywhere he could be”.

Another friend, Robin O’Shea, watched the same game in a Midleton pub. He spotted O’Donoghue driving through town and he rang him on his mobile, where O’Donoghue told him he and his brother Timmy were looking for Robert

“He seemed normal,” he said.

It was this normality that became the central feature of the trial. We heard that within a few hours of killing Robert, O’Donoghue spoke to Robert’s mother on the phone.

That evening he called to the house and rang Robert’s mobile while standing in the kitchen with the boy’s mother beside him.

He told Majella: “Don’t worry, he’ll answer for me.’’

We heard evidence of O’Donoghue ringing his girlfriend after the accident, saying he’d be over after he’d finished “college stuff”.

We heard he called over later and watched The Simpsons and played PlayStation. Then he walked the family dog.

Later, as the above left picture shows, he took part in the search. For 12 days he kept his secret.

The prosecution said this coolness hinted at a fault in O’Donoghue’s character.

The defence said it was all part of the panic O’Donoghue suffered having accidentally killed his friend.

O’Donoghue’s girlfriend, Rebecca Dennehy, said he wasn’t himself in the days after Robert disappeared.

In his confession to gardaí on January 16, O’Donoghue said Robert called to his home on the afternoon of January 4 and asked him to take him to McDonalds.

O’Donoghue said the traffic was too heavy.

“He called me an asshole and I told him to f**k off and he went away. This would be normal between us and no offence was intended or taken,” the statement read.

The court was told how the doorbell rang a while later. It was Robert. He came into the house looking for a can of Coke. He asked to go to McDonalds but O’Donoghue again said no. The youngster went outside and began to “pop” pebbles at O’Donoghue’s car.

“I walked over to him to give him a nudge and told him to f**k off.”

Robert, he said, threw pebbles at the back of his head until O’Donoghue “walked over to him and put my right arm around his neck and jerked him away from the bike towards the car”.

“I released the grip with my right hand and was still holding him with my left hand at the scruff of his neck. Nothing was said between us.

“I moved my left hand up to his Adam’s apple. I said: ‘Will you stop the f**king stones?’ ... I can’t say how tight or for how long I held him but I did not intend to cause any harm or injury ... When I released my left hand from his throat he just fell to the ground. I didn’t realise he had been hurt.”

In his closing speech, defence senior counsel Blaise O’Carroll spoke of Robert and O’Donoghue’s friendship as “beautiful”.

But it was because of this friendship that this Christmas, the Holohan family will be without their little boy, who lies in a grave in Midleton.

The O’Donoghue family will also spend Christmas without their son - he is behind bars.