Elaine’s father: Architect refused request to kill her

The father of murdered Elaine O’Hara has spoken of his shock when his daughter told him that the married Foxrock architect she was seeing had refused her request to kill her.

Ms O’Hara’s father was giving evidence to the Central Criminal Court on the second day of the trial of architect Graham Dwyer, aged 42, who is charged with murdering her.

The Cork-born father of two is charged with murdering Dubliner Ms O’Hara, aged 36, on August 22, 2012, hours after she was discharged from St Edmundsbury Hospital in Lucan, where she had been a psychiatric patient.

Mr Dwyer of Kerrymout Close, Foxrock, Dublin, has pleaded not guilty to murdering the childcare worker at Killakee, Rathfarnham.

Frank O’Hara testified that following an argument in early 2008, his daughter told him she was seeing a married architect from Foxrock. “She said: ‘He ties me up and masturbates over me... We haven’t had sex’,” he recalled.

“I was shocked,” he said, adding that they hadn’t discussed it again, apart from her telling him that it was over at one stage.

He added that she had said, over the years, that she had a play in mind. “It might have been unsavoury,” he said. “I suggested she write it down and show it to her psychologist.” He said she was “always worried” about this play.

Under cross-examination by Remy Farrell SC, he agreed he had told gardaí that his daughter would often say something to try to shock him.

Mr Farrell also asked him about something else he had told gardaí about that relationship: “I think I remember her saying also that she had asked him to kill her but he wouldn’t,” he had said in a statement. “I was shattered after hearing the news.”