Nurse advised O’Hara to tell gardaí of man
The court also heard from a friend, who warned her that she was “playing a dangerous game” by allowing a man she had met online to cut her.
The witnesses were giving evidence on the 15th day of Mr Dwyer’s trial at the Central Criminal Court.
The 42-year-old is charged with Ms O’Hara’s murder at Killakee, Rathfarnham, on August 22, 2012, hours after she was discharged from a mental health hospital.
The Cork-born father of three of Kerrymount Close, Foxrock, Dublin, has pleaded not guilty to murdering the 36-year-old childcare worker on that date.
Rosetta Callan testified that she had worked as a nurse in St Edmundsbury’s Hospital, Lucan, for 44 years before retiring.
She said she was on night duty on August 21, 2012, the day before Elaine O’Hara was to be discharged. She said that she went into Ms O’Hara’s bedroom at around 11pm.
“She was kind of quiet,” she recalled, adding that she had asked Ms O’Hara what was up.
“She said she was just pissed off. I sat on the bed to see if she wanted to talk to me. That’s when she started telling me about this person she had met.”
Ms Callan explained that it was a man that Ms O’Hara had met but that she had not told her his name. Both of them were interested in bondage, said the witness.
“She said he was nearby and she passed the house every day. She said he had a key to her apartment,” she continued.
“I said why didn’t she go to the guards if he was harassing her. But, she said she wouldn’t go because he had young children.”
Ms O’Hara said “she loved kids”, she added.
“She said he was constantly coming to her apartment and that’s when she got… She kind of got a little tearful,” she recalled, adding that she was “kind of laughing” at the same time.
Ms Callan said the conversation lasted about 45 minutes.
Edna Lillis testified that she had met Ms O’Hara
in 2007 and that they had become friends.
They met up quite a few times, but lost touch a few years ago when Ms Lillis changed her mobile phone and lost her number.
“She showed me her stomach,” she recalled of their last meeting, shortly before they lost touch.
Prosecutor Seán Guerin SC asked her what she saw.
“Cuts,” she replied. “They were recent cuts, about three or four inches long, fresh and right across the stomach.”
She said they weren’t that deep but “very obvious”.
“She told me she’d met someone on the internet and he liked to cut her, and she was having some sort of relationship with him whereby he cut her,” she explained.
“I told her she was playing a dangerous game,” said Ms Lillis.
However, Ms O’Hara told her it was someone to pay attention to her.
“Elaine just wanted to be loved. She just wanted some attention,” explained the witness.
“I told her to keep notes of her meetings with this person and she said she was. I said to keep notes of his name, address, and various details in case something happened.”
Ms Lillis said that Ms O’Hara had never got over the loss of her mother. The court had heard that Mrs O’Hara had died some years earlier.
Under cross-examination by Ronan Kennedy BL, defending, she confirmed that she had contacted gardaí in September 2013 after she heard about her friend’s death.
She said she could not be sure when she had last met Ms O’Hara but that it could have been the end of 2011 or the beginning of 2012.
She agreed that the relationship Ms O’Hara had with this man was purely physical. She was asked if her friend had enjoyed it.
“Well, she enjoyed being hurt physically,” she replied.
She said that Ms O’Hara was not afraid of the man at the time.
“But she was a bit wary of him,” she added.
She agreed that she got the impression that both Ms O’Hara and this man had got sexual satisfaction from what they did.
She was asked about a statement she gave to gardaí in which she gave the man’s name as Peter.
“For some reason, the night I gave my statement, the name, Peter, was in the back of my mind,” she recalled.
“I knew he was an architect but I didn’t know his definite name.”
The trial has heard that Ms O’Hara was last seen in Shanganagh, South Dublin on the evening of August 22. Her skeletal remains were discovered at Killakee on Friday, September 13, 2013. A cause of death could not be determined.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Tony Hunt and a jury of five women and seven men.
