Clare murder accused 'making up' voices in head, court told

The 54 year-old man accused of hacking to death a taxi driver in Clare was "making up" stories about voices telling him to commit the killing, a forensic psychiatrist told a jury in the Central Criminal Court today.

Dr Harry Kennedy, director of the Central Mental Hospital, was giving evidence in the trial of Anthony Kelly, a native of Ruan, Co Clare with and address at Emlagh na Muck, Emlagh More, Waterville, Co Kerry who has pleaded not guilty to murdering father-of-four Liam Moloney (aged 56) in Ruan, Co Clare, on February 11, 2005.

The defence has admitted the killing but says the accused was suffering from a mental disorder at the time.

Mr Kelly has admitted to six other charges including robbing items belonging to the deceased, setting fire to his car and unlawful possession of a firearm.

Dr Kennedy told prosecuting counsel, Mr Tom O’Connell SC, that he did not believe the accused was suffering from a mental disorder at the time of the killing.

He said he disagreed with the defence psychiatrist who diagnosed the accused as suffering from alcoholic hallucinosis.

Asked whether it was possible for psychiatrists to be deceived, he said: “All psychiatrists can be deceived.” He added: “Anyone can.”

Dr Kennedy said the voices the accused heard were not real hallucinations.

He said they were "pseudo hallucinations" which could have stemmed from his sustained alcohol abuse in the months leading up to the killing.

He described these as "a phenomenon the person recognises as coming from themselves".

“They are really just a way of describing worrying or depressing thoughts,” he explained.

He said he believed the accused had a "complex and interesting personality" and that he tended to tell "elaborate and pretend stories".

He also said: "He is certainly capable of making up symptoms and syndromes."

Asked by defence counsel, Mr Brendan Grehan SC, whether he believed the accused had been "making up" stories about voices telling him to commit the story, he replied: "I think most of the symptoms, or nearly all of the symptoms he describes, have been made up."

“I think what he’s out to do is to convince clinicians he was having hallucinations,” he added.

He said he believed Mr Kelly was unreliable because he had faked his own kidnapping in the US, and lured the victim to Ruan by pretending his fictitious Swedish girlfriend was going to meet them.

He said it didn’t matter that the accused himself told him about these incidents because they would have been known to him anyway from the book of evidence and the accused would have been aware of this.

He described the Mr Kelly as "garrulous, aggressive, charming and engaging.’

“He’s rather like a salesman in the way he treats people,” he added.

He said the distinction between true hallucinations and the ones the accused claims to have experienced, was that genuine hallucinations appear like "real experience originating in external reality" compared to voices which "came to him".

Referring to one voice which the accused claimed told him to kill the victim, Dr Kennedy said: “That is not how people with real mental illnesses describe it and ordinarily, it is how people with no illness might make up a symptom if they didn’t know better.”

“He doesn’t describe voices telling him to do things, he describes his own thoughts,” he said.

He admitted there are cases where people with mental illnesses hear voices from within their own head, but said the accused’s description did not fit these "transmitter-like voices".

He noted one instance when the accused described how he felt like he was "burning up with rage", claiming he felt "like a wild animal".

Dr Kennedy said: “He’s simply describing being angry...It appears an attempt to claim illness as some form of excuse,” he said.

The trial before Mr Justice Paul Carney and a jury of five men and seven women continues tomorrow.