My husband beat me, murder accused tells court

A Dublin civil servant accused of murdering her husband has told the Central Criminal Court he first stuck her violently two weeks before their wedding.

Dolores O’Neill (aged 50) has pleaded not guilty to the murder of 46-year-old Declan O’Neill on or about July 22, 2002 at their home in Coolamber Park, Knocklyon in Dublin.

She told Mr Felix McEnroy SC, defending, that money had been a problem throughout the marriage, that there was tension over the mortgage and there were times when the ESB and phone had been cut off.

Ms O’Neill returned to work after having her first son with a relative providing childcare.

However, she told the court her husband asked her to quit and so she did.

"He loved the idea of coming in and having his meals on the table and the fire lit," she said.

The defendant recounted tearfully one occasion where a cheque she wrote in the local supermarket bounced.

"It was only £25 but it bounced and I was very ashamed."

After that she asked him for cash instead of a chequebook and took an evening and weekend job selling mass cards for £2 an hour. She organised the bills to be paid out of her account.

Ms O’Neill described how the family’s money problems were as a result of her husband’s drinking.

"He’d go off on a Thursday when he got paid and we wouldn’t see him until Saturday," she said.

One Saturday morning, she said, when he was lying in a drunken state on the bed, she asked him for money for groceries. Visibly upset, she told the court that all that was left in his pockets from his weekly wages was £20 and some small change. When she questioned him about it, he accused her of taking the rest.

Ms O’Neill was emotional as she recounted the final hours of her husband’s life. She explained that after a weekend of tension, she went into his room to get some laundry. He jumped up and started shouting at her and calling her a "f**king bitch".

She said he pushed her so the arch of her back was against a table and then, clasping his hand around her throat, forced her head back against the wall behind it.

She said she couldn’t control her head as he was banging it against the wall and she could feel her throat closing in.

He was shouting and spitting in her face, she said, and when she tried to push him off, he threatened to give her another black eye to match the first.

She eventually managed to push him off, and as he landed on the bed and she lost her balance, she said "I just saw the hammer and picked it up. Jesus, oh God, Jesus"

Ms O’Neill told the court she didn’t remember much about what happened after that, and when cross-examined by Mr Roger Sweetman she said she couldn’t remember anything about the knife later found at the scene, but did not deny using it.

Yesterday, the former State Pathologist Professor John Harbison testified that Declan O’Neill died from multiple hammer blows to the head, but had also received more than 20 knife wounds to the neck.

The trial continues this afternoon before Mr Justice Paul Carney and a jury of six men and six women