‘I love Wayne to bits. I still feel the same way about him today’

WAYNE O’DONOGHUE left flowers at the scene on the day Robert Holohan’s body was found and he stopped to say a prayer.

On that day last January 12, the man accused of murdering the 11-year-old was with his girlfriend, Rebecca Dennehy, who testified in his trial at the Central Criminal Court in Cork yesterday.

Wayne O’Donoghue drove to the isolated area near Inch Strand where Robert’s remains were found eight days after his death. Rebecca Dennehy had bought flowers. She stayed in the car.

“Wayne got out and put the flowers down and said a prayer,” she testified.

The accused got back into the car where Ms Dennehy said there was a dead silence.

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. He was always there for me if I needed him any time day or night.”

She described him as brilliant, caring and genuine. As a person she could not fault him.

After 12 days of thinking that her boyfriend was upset at the disappearance and death of Robert, Ms Dennehy was brought to Wayne O’Donoghue’s house before midnight on January 16 to hear that he was responsible for the boy’s death.

“He looked wrecked. He was tired from crying and he was still crying. He was shaking. It was horrible,” she said.

The young couple knew each other for years and started going out together in May 2004. She said they chatted constantly, as well as hugging, kissing and holding hands and that she had fallen in love with him. In the hours before Robert Holohan’s death the accused had been telling her that she needed to knuckle down with her study for the Leaving Cert, and called around that day to draw up a study timetable.

He rang her later, a short time after Robert’s death, and he sounded normal to her. A couple of hours after that he was sitting in her house watching The Simpsons and he seemed fine with “just chit-chat”. They later walked the O’Donoghue family dog.

At two o’clock on the morning after Robert’s disappearance, she got another phone call from Wayne O’Donoghue while he was out with other neighbours searching.

“He said Robert called up earlier and asked him to bring him to McDonald’s.

“Wayne said he couldn’t because traffic was too bad. He did say to me, ‘I feel like it is my fault. If I had taken him to McDonald’s maybe he would still be around.’ He seemed upset and worried.”