Dwyer’s wife: Spade found near O’Hara’s body was from our garden

Graham Dwyer’s wife has told his trial she recognised a spade found near Elaine O’Hara’s remains as one she had noticed missing from their garden.

While giving evidence on the 25th day of her husband’s trial for murder at the Central Criminal Court yesterday, Gemma Dwyer was shown a photograph of a spade which, the court heard, was discovered in a wooded area close to where Ms O’Hara’s remains were found on September 13, 2013.

When asked did she recognise it, she replied: “I do. The spade from our garden.”

Ms Dwyer, who like her husband is an architect, said the stickers were familiar as well as “spatters of orangey red paint on it”.

She confirmed that she recalled a time a spade was missing from their garden. “It’s something that came to mind after the arrest,” she said.

Ms Dwyer said she often used the spade to clear a neighbour’s dog’s droppings from the back garden, but noticed it was missing in the summer of 2013. She said: “I mentioned it to Graham a number of times and, in the end, I just used a plastic spade from the sand pit.”

She was then asked about a different spade found in her garden. She said that she noticed it after the gardaí had searched their home and had presumed that the officers had left it behind.

She said this was not the spade that had been missing in the summer of 2013.

She was then shown a photograph of a swing set in the garden, taken on March 5, 2011. She identified a spade beside the swing as “our spade”, the one that was missing in the summer of 2013.

Ms Dwyer confirmed she had received a letter from her husband in which he referred to Elaine O’Hara as “that awful girl”.

In the letter he also claimed he had saved her life once and said he “should have gone to the police when she went missing”.

He told his wife not to believe gardaí, that they had “no evidence apart from my name and someone else’s phone number in that awful girl’s diary”.

Ms Dwyer also confirmed that on September 13, 2013, — the day Elaine O’Dwyer’s body was discovered — she and her husband were in a restaurant celebrating their birthdays which fall on that day. She confirmed she was aware this was the day the remains were found.