Jury expected to retire in husband murder case

The jury in the trial of a Dublin civil servant accused of murdering her husband is expected to retire later today to consider its verdict.

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, Dublin.

Mr Justice Paul Carney is expected to conclude his charge to the jury later today before sending them out to consider their verdict.

Mrs O' Neill, in evidence, has told the court her husband assaulted her on their honeymoon: "I suppose it was an excuse to be drinking during the day. He had me over the balcony with his hand around my throat."

By the end of the marriage, she explained her husband would strike out for "the least thing". He was also violent with her older son, she said, almost breaking his arm when he stepped in to protect his mother.

Mrs 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 IR£20 and some small change. When she questioned him about it, he accused her of taking the rest.

Mrs O'Neill was emotional as she recounted the final weeks and hours of her husband's life. She explained that he had become so violent, she had begun to make up stories to explain her injuries.

She recalled one occasion when he punched her. She said she did not know her nose was bleeding until later when her son told her.

"It was always very tense when Declan was in the house," she told the court: "You could cut the air with a knife…If I'd walk into our room without knocking, he'd say I was barging in.''

Mr O'Neill moved out of the family home a few months before he died, moving in with a woman he described as a "dominatrix". The accused explained that getting money to run the home was also difficult then, with her phoning on Wednesdays to organise a meeting the following day, his payday.

"What are you at me for now? Why are you phoning me?" is the way she said he would answer the phone. At this stage, she said, there was no heating in the house and the mortgage was months in arrears.

"I'd have to meet him in a pub and he'd throw the money at me," she recalled, adding that he would become angry if she did not have an alcoholic drink for which she would have to pay. She also said her husband's lack of contact with her sons during this time was particularly upsetting.

Mr O'Neill moved back into Coolamber Park on June 24, 2002, and suggested he, his wife, and younger son spend a weekend in Cork. Mrs O'Neill agreed, telling the court: "I just wanted to try one last time to make it as a family."

Mrs O'Neill described the trip to Cork as tense. She brought some of her CDs for the journey, but said her husband wore earplugs so he would not have to hear the music.

That night in the hotel, she said she woke in the early hours with her husband kissing her. "I kissed him back and on the shoulder," she said: "He jumped up and called me a 'f**ing bitch. Trying to leave your mark on me.'"

When she asked what was going on, she said he struck her and she spent the rest of the night in the bathroom, cooling her face with a flannel. The family returned to Dublin, with both mother and son travelling in the back seat and no conversation.

Mrs O'Neill said that the next morning, after a couple of attempts with make up, she decided her face was too bruised to go to work, and called her office. Her older son told her to go to the doctor to be photographed before the injury faded.

That evening, the accused said she divided the food that was left in the house between her husband and sons, taking Declan O'Neill's to him in his room. She said when she arrived back up afterwards with tea for him, he demanded: "What the f**k are you in here again for?"

Later, her sons asked her for a lift to the cinema, and having no petrol in her own car, she approached her husband to borrow his. "Jesus Christ. You're in on top of me again. What the fu**ing hell is wrong with your car?" is the response she said she received.

She said he eventually gave her the keys in return for cigarettes, and on returning the keys and cigarettes to him later, he said he "didn't move home for her to be in on top of me. Out."

Mrs O'Neill said she received a similar response when she brought him tea later and tried to discuss things with him.

That night, she told the court through her tears, while the boys were still at the cinema, 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 banged 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."

Mrs O'Neill told the court she did not remember much about what happened after that, and when cross-examined by Mr Roger Sweetman SC, prosecuting, she said she could not remember anything about the knife, later found at the scene.

However, she did not deny using it. The former State Pathologist, Professor John Harbison, testified that Declan O'Neill died as a result of multiple hammer blows to the head, but had also received more than 20 knife wounds to the neck.