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.

Mr O’Leary added there was direct evidence showing that she was not involved.

“The most stunning piece of evidence, oddly enough, is the recorded phone call (between the two accused when Walsh is in prison and Purcell is at home). They don’t know it’s being recorded. He is ringing her at home.

“It is the first time they have spoken since he was arrested and he says to her, he goes, ‘I am sorry for all the shit. He pulled a blade on me, I think. I had to get it off him. He was smashing around the flat. I don’t know whether he banged his head’.”

Mr O’Leary argued: “He (Walsh) is telling her what happened. How could that possibly make sense if she was there?”

Prosecution counsel Tom Creed said Purcell lied about the number of times she was in the late Mr McManus’s flat. He said she was there the day he was killed and the day before that.

Mr Creed referred to a number of items of circumstantial evidence against her and said Purcell gave no explanation for Mr McManus’s blood being found on her crutch.

The case will continue today.