Court hears of conflicting evidence in Kilkenny murder case

The Central Criminal Court has heard that a Kilkenny teenager told different stories to gardaí and to friends about an injury he sustained around the time of a murder of which he’s accused.

Mark Costigan (aged 18) of Aylsbury in Kilkenny has pleaded not guilty to the murder of 36-year-old Christine Quinn at her home in the city two years ago. Mrs Quinn had been stabbed 35 times when found dead on December 5, 2002 at her home on Greenfields Road.

Today, the accused’s friend, Arron Rowe, told the court that when asked, Mr Costigan told him he had injured himself playing soccer.

The witness, who was in the same class as Costigan in December 2002, also admitted to the court that the woodwoork class was not yet using electric saws at the time of the murder. Mr Costigan had told gardaí he received the severe injuries to his hands from a jigsaw in the class.

Detective Garda Liam Maher, who interviewed the accused after his arrest on New Year’s Eve, 2002, also continued to give evidence today.

Mr Alexander Owens, SC, for the State read from the notes, which said the accused got home from town around 5.30pm on the day of the murder.

Mr Costigan said he had been in town for the afternoon with three other boys, at one stage playing games in Gamesworld. He denied having bought a game there that day or having ever used a voucher in Gamesworld.

He also said in the interview that he did not have his hand injury that night, and that he had cut it on a jigsaw in school since then.

He made a "glib remark" the detective said, that his woodwork teacher did not know, because "Mr Tierney doesn’t go into class".

Mr Costigan said there was not much blood, so no mess would have been left behind in the woodwork room. After his injury, he said, he got some tissue in the bathroom, before going to a pharmacy down town to buy a bandage. He had since disposed of this, he said.

The accused told the gardaí that when he got home that evening, he rang his friend, Christopher Lannigan, who told him Christine Quinn was dead.

Christopher called over and the two boys went to the Lannigan home.

They watched the commotion at the Quinns’ house from Christopher’s mother’s room. He also admitted in his statement that his former friend, Christopher, had stopped calling him since then.

Detective Maher also told the court that his first contact with the accused was in taking his first statement on December 11, 2002, at which stage there were no leads in the case.

He saw him again a few days later to clarify something in his statement.

His next contact with Costigan was on December 20, 2002 at which stage the detective had contacted the boy’s school and had become "curious about his right hand".

Evidence of an injured Mark Costigan using a bloody €50 note to buy a game in Gamesworld was taken on December 22, 2002, and the following day, his teacher, Olive Keyes, told the gardaí that Costigan had no injury to his hand in class on the morning of the murder.

The court heard that it was on December 30, 2002 that the gardaí first moved against him and a search warrant was applied for. The detective admitted that by this stage "there was a worry that there was a killer out there".

The accused was arrested for Christine Quinn’s murder on December 31, 2002 at the home of his mother, Jean Costigan, in O’Loughlin Court, Kilkenny.

The court was also shown a number of exhibits retrieved that day in a search of Mrs Costigan’s house.

The jury saw two cases of Playstation 2 games, called Games of 2002 and LA Manager 2003, which the court has already heard the accused bought on the evening of the murder.

Inside the LA Manager case was a disc entitled 8 Mile, while the LA Manager game was in the other case.