Man accused of murdering pensioner in his home

A homeless man has gone on trial at the Central Criminal Court, charged with murdering an elderly man in his Dublin City Centre home.

Stephen Byrne (aged 36) has pleaded not guilty to killing 70-year-old William Traynor on June 17, 2007 at a house on St Francis Terrace, Bow Street, where he had lived all his life.

Mr Edward Comyn SC, prosecuting, told the jury of seven women and five men that Mr Traynor was attacked in his home on Sunday June 17 and died of the resulting injuries two days later in hospital.

Mr Comyn said Mr Traynor was a lonely man, who lived in squalid conditions, had a disability and used a crutch. He relied on the Capuchin Day Centre across the street to sustain him, as did the accused, he said.

“This is a very sad case indeed, involving people who required the assistance of others in order to exist,” he said, before the jury saw photographs of the inside of the house. It later heard that there was no furniture upstairs, plaster was falling off ceilings and that it was necessary to go outside to get to the toilet.

Neighbour Bernadette McVeigh told the court that she was hanging out washing in her back garden about 5.30pm that Sunday evening, when she heard a voice in Mr Traynor’s back yard.

She said she heard a male voice saying: “Get up. Where is it?” Ms McVeigh said it wasn’t the voice of Mr Traynor, who she had known 30 years.

“I went back inside and saw smoke coming out of Willie’s (Traynor) garden,” she continued. “I went upstairs and looked out and saw a gulf of fire coming out his back window.”

The first fire-fighter on the scene was Paul O’Brien, who told the court he found the front door unlocked and missing a panel. He said he passed by a shopping trolley in the hall and quickly extinguished some burning rubbish beside a crate in the back room. He moved one of several gas cylinders in the house out of the way.

Mr O’Brien said he then found Mr Traynor lying face down on a sheet of plywood in the front room, bruised and unconscious. He said his breathing was shallow and his head was resting on the edge of a bucket into which he was bleeding. There was a free-standing bath and construction debris in the room.

Mr Traynor was taken by ambulance to hospital and pronounced dead on the Tuesday morning.

Mr Comyn said that the post-mortem examination found that he died of blunt force trauma to the head, resulting in a fragmented skull and brain damage. This was consistent with a blow to the head by a heavy object.

“It’s the prosecution’s case that these injuries were the result of the attack and that this attack was carried out by Stephen Byrne,” he said.

He said the motive was unclear and that it was not known how the fire started or what was used as the weapon. However, he said there were many objects inside the house that could have been used to kill Mr Traynor.

The trial continues before Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy.