Jury to view 10 hours of video footage in Cork murder trial

The jury in the trial of a 47-year-old man charged with the murder of a Cork woman at her home on Easter Sunday last year have watched extensive video evidence of his garda interviews for the second successive day.

Derrick Daly, who originally hails from Enfield in Co Meath but who has an address at St Vincent's Hostel in Cork city, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Catherine Smart (aged 57) on April 4, 2010.

Emergency services responding to a 999 call placed by Daly discovered the body of the mother-of-three on the floor of her house in Bailick Court, Midleton. She had been subjected to a violent assault and died from multiple blunt force injuries to the head.

The video evidence is expected to be completed by Monday, by which time the jury will have viewed more than 10 hours of footage recorded by gardaí over the course of seven interviews held with the accused man at Middleton garda station.

During the interviews, Daly gave a number of accounts to gardaí of having left the house he shared with Catherine Smart in Bailick Court early on the Sunday morning to visit a local Lidl shop, returning approximately 25 minutes later to find her dead. He denied any altercation or argument had occurred.

The jury heard that although Daly had been living with Catherine Smart for a year-and-a-half prior to her death, they did not have a sexual relationship.

On the night before she died, the victim had been out socialising in a number of pubs in Midleton.

In the early hours of Easter Sunday morning, she was walked to her door by a male friend, who encountered an intoxicated Daly in the house.

Gardaí also had an encounter with a highly intoxicated Daly on the same morning, having called to Bailick Court in answer to a complaint from Catherine Smart that she was locked out of her house.

The jury heard evidence from the State Pathologist, Dr Marie Cassidy, that a broken blood-stained hurley and the door of a microwave oven found close to the victim could have been used to inflict the series of injuries on her head which led to her death.

The trial continues in front of Mr Justice Garrett Sheehan and a jury of seven women and five men.