Reliving the nightmare of Robert's death
Never once did they leave Court Two at the Washington Street courthouse in Cork when the Central Criminal Court was in session. Even when the evidence was at its most devastating they stayed.
Mostly they were stoic as the tiniest details of the family's nightmare were revealed. But at times it seemed too much.
There were so many moments: Robert playing happily on his beloved BMX; calling for his friend, Heather, by asking "is 'Heads' there?"; the happy and banal stuff of his last day alive becoming evidence in a murder case.
Then there were his last moments alive. Only Wayne O'Donoghue and Robert were there. Only O'Donoghue survived to tell what happened.
He said he got angry with Robert, who threw stones at his car and at him for not taking him to McDonald's for a milkshake. O'Donoghue caught Robert in an arm-lock. Then he put his hand to Robert's throat. Then Robert fell down dead.
O'Donoghue said he carried his body into the house. The prosecution said when the body was found Robert had no shoes on. They asked the jury to note that Robert was expected to take off his shoes when he walked into the O'Donoghue house.
O'Donoghue then dumped the body in heavy undergrowth 15 miles away, near Inch strand.
The prosecution said the accused was cool and calculated after the death - O'Donoghue said he had panicked.
One of the biggest searches ever undertaken in Ireland began.
On January 12, the body was found, partly with the help of advanced technology that tracked the phone in Robert's pocket. Burnt sticks were found under the body of the dead boy. The tail of his shirt and parts of his pants and underpants were burned.
On January 16, the day after the funeral, Wayne O'Donoghue told his father he had killed Robert and gardaí were called.
In a raw confession, Wayne O'Donoghue said: "I'm a murderer. I'm sorry." Interviews following legal advice to the accused were punctuated with the declaimer: "There was no intent, like."
He was charged with manslaughter. The charge was later substituted with murder. On November 29 the 10-day trial began.
THE prosecution in the Robert Holohan murder trial opened the trial by telling the court that Wayne O'Donoghue killed the schoolboy, put plastic bags over the body, threw it into a ditch, and later took part in the search for the boy's remains.
Shane Murphy, senior counsel for the prosecution, said the jury would have to decide whether O'Donoghue's actions were calm and collected or characterised by panic.
O'Donoghue, a 21-year-old engineering student, of Ballyedmond, Midleton, Cork, was arraigned on a single count of murdering 11-year-old Robert Holohan in Ballyedmond, on January 4, 2005.
Robert's mother, Majella, last saw her son at 2.30pm that day leaving home on his new BMX bike.
O'Donoghue stood in the dock, in a grey suit with pale shirt and dark tie, and offered the plea: "Not guilty to murder and guilty to manslaughter."
Mr Murphy then said: "What is the natural and probable consequence of a 20-year-old man applying force to an 11-year-old boy around the throat? What did Wayne O'Donoghue think he was doing when he applied force to that part of Robert Holohan's body? The State's case is that Wayne O'Donoghue intended to kill or cause serious injury to Robert Holohan at that time."
THE court heard that O'Donoghue stood beside the boy's mother hours after his death and told her not to worry as he rang Robert's mobile phone.
Mrs Holohan rang O'Donoghue at about 5.30pm on January 4 and asked him if he had seen Robert. "He said he had not seen him since half-past two that afternoon," she said.
Later that evening, as the search for Robert was extended, neighbours, including O'Donoghue, were in the Holohan home.
She said O'Donoghue said to her: "Don't worry. You will find him alright. I'll try him on my mobile."
She said he rang her son's number and put the phone up to his ear and said there was no answer.
"Robert adored Wayne. He looked up to him as if he was an older brother. We never had any problem with any of the O'Donoghue family," she told the court.
At one stage when the search was going on Mrs Holohan recalled speaking to O'Donoghue again: "I thanked him. I said he was too good."
Describing Robert, she said: "He was very extrovert. He loved GAA, loved horses. He was an outdoor person, an energetic boy... He loved cycling his bike and going on his roller blades. Any 11-year-old would do the same. I would say he was a replica of myself. He loved life. He loved animals. He thought everyone was beautiful and everything was wonderful. He was full of the joys of life. No worries or anything like that. He was a typical 11-year-old."
Robert's father, Mark, was questioned about his late son's temper tantrums and Mr Holohan said there were times he had to slap him on the legs and tell him to stop.
THE trial heard how O'Donoghue looked into his bathroom mirror with a knife held to his own throat as Robert Holohan lay dead on the floor.
O'Donoghue was in a state of panic and was contemplating suicide.
He decided to get rid of the body first and then kill himself by hanging himself from a tree in the garden when everyone was gone to bed.
In a statement to gardaí which was read out in court, he said: "I am deeply sorry for what has happened. Robert was my friend, he was like a brother to me.
"If I could switch roles with him I would. There was never any intention to harm him. What happened was a fluke or accident.
"I am sorry I did not come forward to explain what happened earlier."
Looking at the front-page coverage of Robert's funeral he could not bear it any longer and went home to confess to his father, Ray, that he had killed Robert.
"I asked him to go. I gave him a nudge. I pulled him away from his bike. I put my right hand around his neck... I grabbed him by the throat with my left hand and said will you stop throwing the f**king stones. I could not say how long I had my left hand to his throat. When I took my hand away he fell down. I don't know how long I held him. It seemed very short.
"I didn't mean to cause him any harm or injury. I called, 'Rob'. There was no response. I had no problem lifting him. I brought him in the front door (it was around 3.30pm and nobody else was home). I laid him on the bathroom floor. I called his name a few times I threw some water on his face. I listened for breathing. At this stage I believe he may have died. "
He put two black bags over the body and drove it away in the boot of the car and disposed of it in a remote area of rough ground near Inch strand. On the way he threw the bike onto the side of a ditch in another area.
O'DONOGHUE'S girlfriend testified that he left flowers at the scene on the day that Robert's body was found and stopped to say a prayer.
On January 12, Rebecca Dennehy had bought flowers and drove with O'Donoghue to the isolated area near Inch strand. She stayed in the car.
"Wayne got out and put the flowers down and said a prayer," she testified.
Crying in the witness box, she said: "I love Wayne to bits. I still feel the same way about him today. I cannot comprehend how it happened. Wayne is such a good person. It broke my heart to hear it. Wayne always treated me like a queen from the day I met him."
She said that she noticed a difference in O'Donoghue's relationship with her after January 4 - he was less talkative and less inclined to hug and hold hands.
O'DONOGHUE told gardaí that people looking at the case from the outside would say he should have called the gardaí or an ambulance or his parents when he killed his 11-year-old neighbour.
In interviews with detectives on January 17, the day after he confessed to killing Robert, he said that panic had set in and he went around in a daze.
During the question and answer session which was screened in court, he described throwing water on Robert Holohan's face after he carried his body into the bathroom of the O'Donoghue house.
He was hoping it might revive him.
"It is hard to describe the feeling. I didn't know what to do. I know people looking at it from the outside say I should have rung the police, you should have rung the ambulance, you should have rung your parents.
"It is hard to describe what it is like. It didn't even come into my mind that I'd better ring the ambulance. I was in total shock. I stayed for a minute or two. I was in a daze. It is hard to describe what I was thinking."
He said this was the moment where he considered suicide and held a knife to his throat as he looked into the bathroom mirror.
"I don't know why I didn't. I was probably a coward... Something came over me, a family who love me and a girlfriend who I love," he said.
He denied the suggestion that he 'flipped the lid' the moment before Robert Holohan was killed. And he denied that his relationship, as a 20-year-old, with an 11-year-old was unusual in the context of a country area where he was the eldest of a group of children who had all been friendly with each other.
STATE pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy testified that the cause of Robert Holohan's death was asphyxia due to neck compression.
Dr Cassidy found a pattern of deep neck bruises of the neck consistent with manual strangulation.
Although Dr Cassidy found evidence during her post-mortem examination of fire damage to Robert's clothing, she found no evidence of burn marks to the body. She also found an injury to the mouth.
"This may have been caused by a blow to the mouth or a hand held over the mouth," Dr Cassidy told the court.
How long the boy was held by the neck was very difficult to determine, according to Dr Cassidy. She said that if the injured party was struggling he would use up the available oxygen very quickly.
The mechanism of death would also be complicated by pressure against the injured party's chest during a struggle which might prevent him from breathing effectively.
Minor injuries around the trunk of the deceased suggested that if he was on the ground before his death someone might have been sitting astride his chest.
Robert's body was found in heavy undergrowth.
"There was no evidence of ligature to the neck, nothing tied around the neck," she said.
Superficial signs of the boy's necklace compressed into his neck were found. "Neck compression was for sufficient time to cause asphyxia but force of compression was not severe enough to break small bones in the neck and larynx," she said.
Detective Garda Sean O'Brien of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation said to the accused during a videotaped interview: "I think you went out there with the petrol to set fire to the body."
The accused replied that the detective was entitled to his opinion but that he did not. O'Donoghue always claimed that he tried to set fire to plastic at the scene but not to the body.
DR CASSIDY agreed during cross-examination that her findings corroborated the account of Robert Holohan's death given by O'Donoghue.
Dr Jack Crane, the North's State Pathologist, had said that: "There was no real evidence that Robert struggled violently against his attacker.
"In this case there is certainly no evidence of sexual assault, no evidence of a violent struggle between the two parties, ie that they were fighting."
However, Dr Cassidy differed with her colleague over the significance of mouth injuries suffered by the deceased. She repeated her assertion that they were possibly caused by a blow or a hand held firmly over the mouth. She said the trauma to the mouth was definite.
Defence counsel Blaise O'Carroll SC put it to Dr Cassidy that the back injuries she found on Robert could have occurred when he was pushed forcibly against a car, and not necessarily against the ground. She agreed.
The court also heard evidence that Robert photographed the bedroom wall of O'Donoghue on his new Nokia phone. The time logged for that picture was 7.32am on December 28, 2005 - a week before he died.
DR CRANE was called by the defence to give his view that: "The arm-lock episode may have resulted in the demise of this young boy."
In the context of O'Donoghue's account of catching the child in a headlock first and then putting his hand to the boy's throat afterwards, Dr Crane said: "There were no apparent external injuries to the neck that you might find if the victim was trying to remove the assailant's hands."
Dr Cassidy referred to rib injuries consistent with the possibility of someone sitting astride the boy's chest. Dr Crane commented: "The injuries she describes to the chest would not be injuries I would expect to find if an assailant was kneeling on this boy's chest."
Dr Cassidy found pinpoint haemorrhages on the body which she said could have resulted from 15-30 seconds of neck compression. Dr Crane said there was no scientific basis for this and added: "We do not know how long it takes for these haemorrhages to occur. They can occur within seconds."
THE moment of Robert Holohan's death was described as one of the most extraordinary events to occur in Ireland in 2005.
The 'coolness' of the accused man, Wayne O'Donoghue, was emphasised by the prosecution.
His 'panic' was stressed by the defence. Both sides wrestled with the word, 'intention'.
Prosecution senior counsel Shane Murphy said the accused's degree of coolness was remarkable.
"He carried on everyday activities of looking at the television and walking the dog while the whole world around him was convulsed with the desire to find Robert. Wayne O'Donoghue says he dug a hole and kept digging.
"If Wayne O'Donoghue dug a hole in this case on day one he spent the next eight days filling in that hole, concealing it from the rest of the world in a very careful way," Mr Murphy said.
Defence counsel Mr O'Carroll, who described the death of Robert Holohan as one of the most extraordinary events of the year, complained that the prosecution wanted the jury to have a dark interpretation of every event in the case.
THE seven women and five men of the jury retired to consider their verdict.
Mr Justice Paul Carney addressed them and formally put them in charge of the case at noon.
They returned a verdict of not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter. Sentencing was adjourned until January 24, 2006, at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Ennis.
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