Murder-accused 'snapped' when woman said baby was not his

A murder accused said he snapped and grabbed the dead woman's throat when she told him the child she was carrying was not his and that she was going to have an abortion.

Father-of-one Stephen Cahoon (aged 37) of Harvey Street, Derry was giving evidence at the Central Criminal Court in his trial for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Jean Teresa Quigley.

He admits killing the mother-of-four but has pleaded not guilty to murdering the 30-year-old at her home at Cornshell Fields, Shantallow, Derry on July 26, 2008.

Cahoon told the court that his mobile rang while he was having sex with Ms Quigley at 3.22 that morning. He said this was their second time to have sex that night using handcuffs and parcel tape to tie each other up.

Afterwards, he said, she asked him to check who had phoned him. He claimed that when he told her it was his friend, Sandra Wilson, Ms Quigley told him to get out.

“I said; Why? I’ve done nothing. I don’t want to go. You said you’d let me stay,” he said.

“She said she’d had enough and wanted me to go. She started screaming: ‘f*** off, get out’. I know I should have gone,” he said. “I said no, I want to stay here with you and the baby.”

“She started screaming: ‘It’s not f****** yours’ and that she was going to have an abortion,” he claimed. “She kept saying it.”

He said he asked her to stop, that it wasn’t true.

“I just grabbed her by the throat. I wanted her to be quiet, to stop saying that,” he said. “I didn’t mean to kill her. She just riled me up. I snapped.”

He said he pressed down on her neck for about a minute with one hand.

“I didn’t think she was dead until I saw the stuff coming out of her mouth,” he said, describing it as ‘blood and frothy stuff’.

“I kneeled over the top of her. I wasn’t using my weight to hold her down,” he said, confirming to his defence barrister, Michael O’Higgins SC, that she was struggling.

“When I took my hand off, I realised she wasn’t saying anything, she wasn’t moving. I started shaking her and calling her name,” he said.

“I heard a noise coming from her mouth. I turned her over and there was more stuff coming out,” he said, adding that he wiped her mouth with a sock and tried to give her CPR.

He said that when the CPR didn’t work, he panicked.

“I couldn’t believe she was dead. I knew it was an accident,” he said. “I thought, how could she be dead after a minute of me holding her like that. I just stood there praying that she might be alright.”

He said that after five minutes, he realised she was dead.

“I was shocked. I didn’t know what to think. What have I just done?” he said. “What can I say?”

He said he went to the toilet, dressed and left the house around 4.15am. He grabbed a key on the way out, locked the door from the outside and threw the key away.

He said he walked around and sat in a park for a while before settling at a bus stop for a couple of hours.

“I just cried and tried to think was it real,” he said, explaining that he got a taxi home and fell asleep for a while, before taking a bus to Letterkenny and another to Galway.

He stayed in two B&Bs in Galway for about a week before travelling to Donegal Town, where he slept rough.

He said he got it into his head that Jean was really dead when he heard someone mention her being buried.

“I bought four 12-packs of paracetamol and took them,” he said. When he woke up the following day he bought two ties, which he had tied together when arrested by gardaí on August 5.

The trial continues before Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy and a jury of seven women and five men.