‘She was the best and someone to look up to’
Jill’s cousin Joy McKeon, 20, said the family were happy to have received “some sort of justice”, but that no matter what the sentence, they were never going to get Jill back.
Joy, who like Jill, has an interest in media, was with her father Michael, speaking at their home in Drogheda, Co Louth, after the sentencing of Adrian Bayley to life in prison for Jill’s rape and murder.
Joy, who is studying film and broadcasting at Dublin Institute of Technology, said her cousin, who had visited them just weeks before her murder last September, “was just hilarious… I am sad she is gone but I know she would kick my ass if she knew I was sitting around doing nothing”.
For the future generations of McKeons she said her cousin’s memory will be kept alive.
“She is never really gone because we keep her in our hearts and mind and we will tell people about her; we will tell our children and grandchildren about her and say to them you had a cousin Jillian and she was the best and someone to look up to.”
Joy’s father Michael revealed he will travel to Australia next month to visit his brother George and other members of the family.
Michael said that while there is relief that the legal process has finished, the length of the sentence is in some way “just incidental in the sense that he [Bayley] was the man that he was; he should never have been let out. So it doesn’t really matter what amount of time [he got]... parole or no parole... the man should never have been walking the streets”.
He said the reporting restrictions had effected how the family was able to grieve but they are happy with the police and the prosecution in Australia.
“Up until now there was a suppression order on all the information around him, so in many ways a lot of people were stuck with information that they could not discuss. Now they can actually move on and discuss life and discuss Jillian’s life to the full, they can talk to people in their communities now and [that] is all the natural process of bereavement.”
He said the huge outpouring of support for the family in Melbourne had meant a lot to the family, who knew the horror of Jill’s death, “wasn’t typical of what happens in Melbourne”.
“You knew the people of Australia and Melbourne did not want that within their communities; you could see similarities to Irish society in that you would not want that in Irish society [either].”
Michael said he and his wife Liz will visit Australia in three weeks’ time and the family now, “need space and time to try and manage themselves, manage their health, and deal with it in some way”.
