No evidence against woman, murder trial told

THE lawyer for the woman on trial for several weeks for the murder of a young Corkman whose body was found in a field in Kerry claimed yesterday there was absolutely no evidence against her.

“There is no evidence, good, bad or indifferent, that she was involved in the murder of John McManus,” Tim O’Leary said in respect of Gillian Purcell at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork.

Gillian Purcell, aged 34, of Simon, Anderson’s Quay, Cork, and formerly of Hollyhill, Cork, and John Walsh, aged 45, originally from Ballinlough, Cork, and more recently of Cork Street, Mitchelstown, both deny murdering John McManus on a date unknown between October 28 and November 7, 2008, at flat 1, 3 Verdon Place, Wellington Road, Cork.