Murder accused spends third day in witness box

The chief prosecution witness in a cold-case murder trial has today denied that she helped to beat her father to death after he called her then fiancé a "nigger" or "darkie".

Veronica McGrath of Lower Coole, Westmeath, spent her third day in the witness box at the Central Criminal Court in the murder trial of her ex-husband and mother.

McGrath (aged 61) has pleaded not guilty to murdering her 43-year-old husband, Bernard Brian McGrath, at their home in Lower Coole 23 years ago.

Colin Pinder (aged 47) of Liverpool, England has pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to the manslaughter on a date unknown between March 10 and April 18, 1987.

His 41-year-old ex-wife claims she saw the two defendants killing her father and burying him in a shallow grave.

Conor Devally SC, defending Mr Pinder, suggested to the mother-of-six that a row erupted when her father came home and found his wife, daughter and Mr Pinder, of whom he did not approve.

“He came at him and called him either a darkie or nigger, said he wanted him out of the house and was struck very hard by Mr Pinder,” said Mr Devally. “Your father was hit hard and hit the range.”

“Mr Pinder thought he’d killed him and said so, and between the three of you, you decided not to call the police,” continued Mr Devally. “Mr Pinder panicked.”

He said that Mr McGrath was moved outside and all three thought he was dead.

“Your mother went out and found he was still alive,” he said. “Mr Pinder was goaded into hitting him again by your mother, who told him he’d end up in prison.”

“You came out and you and your mother took turns to hit your father,” he said.

Ms McGrath said this was absolutely not true.

“My father was not in the house that evening,” she said.

“Do you remember telling Colin that he’d never see your baby if he called the police?” asked Mr Devally.

“No,” she responded, insisting that she did not know she was pregnant until after they were married sometime later. She denied using her pregnancy to persuade Mr Pinder to move to Ireland and marry her in the first place.

Ms McGrath insisted her father had nothing against Mr Pinder.

“He mixed with every creed and nationality. He was a well-travelled man and he was no racist,” she said.

She said it was not the case that she and Mr Pinder were allowed to move from a caravan into the family home only after her father had died.

“I recollect now that myself and Colin, after the death of my father, would go to the caravan on a nightly basis and my mother and the boys stayed with a neighbour at night,” she said.

She was asked why her mother and the boys would stay with a neighbour.

“I recollect my mother telling me that when she stayed with (the neighbour), that she would [perform a sex act on him],” she replied.

Mr Devally put it to her that the story of the killing she had told the jury was something that she and maybe her mother had ‘cooked up’ in the years that followed. She denied this.

Ms McGrath earlier admitted a number of deceptions, including that she helped get a barring order on her father after he was dead.

“My mother then asked me to give her a love bite on her cheek so it would look like a bruise,” she told gardaí in 1993.

“The purpose was to say my father had hit her and to apply for a barring order,” she explained to the court.

She had told gardaí that she and her mother then went to a female solicitor in Granard to get the barring order.

“It was two days after my Dad died,” read the statement.

Mr Devally then read out a funding application written by Ms McGrath some time after 1990, in which she said her son’s father was violent toward her. She agreed that this man never showed her violence and that this story for money was false.

The trial continues.