Daughter kept awake by memory of father's head on a hayfork, court told

A woman who claims she saw her father beaten to death 23 years ago says she used to have trouble sleeping because she could see his head on the hayfork.

Veronica McGrath was giving evidence for the fifth day in the cold-case murder trial of her mother and ex-husband for the alleged murder of her father.

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

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

“I was very traumatised, upset, depressed and suicidal,” the 41-year-old told the Central Criminal Court.

Conor Devally SC, defending Mr Pinder, asked the mother of six if this was because she felt guilt about her involvement in her father’s death.

“It wasn’t guilt I was feeling. I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing my father’s head on the hayfork,” she said, later telling the prosecution that this was during the burning of her father’s body.

“I seen Colin Pinder hold a hayfork in the field beside the fire. I seen a very bright, glowing, orange, circular object,” she said, explaining that she took this to be her father’s head.

Ms McGrath agreed with Mr Devally that Mr Pinder had taken an overdose of his epilepsy medication some time after the burning of the body and accepted that this was because he couldn’t live with what he had done.

Two of the victim’s sons also gave evidence today. Brian McGrath was in his early teens when his father died.

“She said she had a hard life with him,” he said of asking his mother about his father.

He recalled rows between his parents but no violence and couldn’t remember what the arguments were about. He also recalled one occasion when his father struck him and his two brothers.

“He was strict but he wasn’t a bad man,” he said.

Mr McGrath remembered that when Mr Pinder moved to Coole that he used to take the three boys fishing.

“He was more like a buddy than an older man,” he said.

Andrew McGrath could remember tension between his parents about his sister and Mr Pinder among other things.

He recalled going to England with his mother and brothers once, and leaving his sister and Mr Pinder in Coole. He recalled Mr Pinder running to give him a hug on their return home.

He said that he later used to ask his mother where his father was but she would say she didn’t know.

He said that in 1993 she told him that she had called to visit his sister and Colin Pinder in their caravan one night and had said she wished her husband was dead.

“She said that Colin said: ‘I have the very thing to do it’… an implement in a drawer,” he recalled.

Mr McGrath said that up until about a year ago he had been living in the family home in Coole with his sisters’ two sons, his mother and her partner, but that he had to leave as his sister had got a protection order against him.

The trial also heard from the McGrath family’s next-door neighbour, Michael White. He recalled seeing a fire in the McGrath garden one evening in late spring or early summer. He couldn’t say what year this was, but that it was after Brian McGrath disappeared.

“I reckon it would be about six or eight feet in diameter,” he said, adding that he didn’t think it was unusual.

He said he also came across disturbed earth in the garden one day. He estimated this measured about five feet by 18 inches.

The farmer said he remembered a few disagreements between Mrs and Mr McGrath.

“Vera and Brian came into our house one day and said they’d a row and kicked the shins off each other. It seemed very trivial. They were laughing,” he said. “There were guards called on a number of occasions.”

Mr White said he had been friendly with Mr McGrath before he was committed to a psychiatric hospital for a short time in the mid 80s. However he said he had very little communication with him afterwards.

“He seemed more distant when he came back out,” he explained, agreeing with Mr Devally that he was a changed person.

The trial will continues Mr Justice John Edwards and the jury of four women and eight men.