O’Reilly laid trail for experts to unravel
By deliberately making up appointments away from the north county Dublin home he shared with Rachel and sending texts to her phone when she was already dead, he unwittingly laid the trail for technical experts to unravel.
Now retired assistant commissioner Martin Donnellan, who oversaw the case, stressed the importance of the mobile phone evidence which used records of transmissions to and from O’Reilly’s handset to prove he was not where he said he was on the morning Rachel died.
Such evidence, previously feared susceptible to technical glitches, was never accepted by a court before but it was vital in the absence of witnesses or any watertight forensic evidence of the attack.
It could prove a landmark for future criminal investigations. “Management and engineers from O2 [the mobile phone company] played an absolutely crucial part in this investigation,” the former assistant commissioner said.
“The vast majority of the evidence was circumstantial but when you put all the pieces together, what really put it to bed was the efforts given by the O2 engineers.”
One phone message in particular was damning for O’Reilly, showing he was moving between north county Dublin and the city centre shortly after Rachel’s death when he claimed he never left the city. “He thought he was a clever man but maybe he was too clever for his own good.”
O’Reilly’s defence initially objected to the evidence but in the end, the only point they pursued in the appeal was that no proof was produced in court that O2 was a licenced operator and so all phone records coming from it should be disregarded.
The three appeal court judges dismissed the argument, as they did the four other appeal grounds. They took two and a half months to reach those decisions and explained them in a 34-page judgment.
The judgment was not unexpected and Rachel O’Reilly’s parents, Jim and Rose Callaly, felt confident enough to carry with them a prepared statement welcoming the outcome. “I never had any doubt, never,” Rose said.
She added, however, that the pain of Rachel’s loss never ended. “Rachel has never left our sides since the day she was taken from us. I thought after the trial that we would move on but I realise now that’s never going to happen. That part of our life is with us forever and it’s something we have to learn to live with.”
Rachel’s birth mother, Teresa Lowe, who gave her up for adoption as a baby, said she was “thrilled” with the verdict. “Rachel can sleep in peace,” she said.
Rachel’s birth sister, Sandra Lowe, also welcomed the outcome. “It’s the end of a very long journey, very arduous for all her family and friends. Today is the end of the legal side of things. It means that we can focus now on thinking of Rachel and Luke and Adam,” she added, referring to Rachel’s young sons, who were just four and two when their mum was murdered in October, 2004.
The children have been with Joe’s mother Ann since July 2007 but their long-term care is the subject of a legal dispute.
His trial heard O’Reilly planned to get custody of them after killing Rachel and set up home with his lover, Nikki Pelley.
