Murder jury hear mobile phone evidence

A jury in a Dublin murder trial at the Central Criminal Court spent today hearing highly technical mobile phone evidence.

Paul Kelly of O’Brien Hall in the inner city died after being shot nine times with a hand gun and twice with a shot gun in a Clontarf apartment building.

The trial has already heard that the 26-year-old victim died of catastrophic injuries to a number of his organs due to multiple gunshot wounds.

Michael Taylor (aged 31) of Summerhill in Dublin city has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Kelly on April 6, 2007 at Winston Ville apartments on Charlemont Road in Clontarf.

Detective Garda Anthony Maloney testified that gardaí seized a number of mobile phones during the murder investigation, including one from the defendant’s father, Michael Taylor Snr, and one from the defendant’s sister, Jamie Taylor.

Det. Gda Maloney agreed with Michael O’Higgins SC, defending, that it was ‘unfortunate’ that full records hadn’t been sought for one of the numbers being attributed to the defendant. This was due to a breakdown in communication between Gardaí, he said.

He agreed that such records could have shown in which area of the city the number might have been used at the time of the murder.

Mr O’Higgins said the prosecution would try to connect three mobile phone numbers to his client.

He said it wanted to connect one of the numbers to him by showing it rang Smart Telecom about the service it was providing to the defendant’s girlfriend, Joanne Flood. It would also try to connect this number to him by showing a number of calls it made to Crumlin Garda station, he added.

He said the prosecution would try to connect all three numbers to each other because they had been used in the same handset.

The jury heard on Thursday that multiple shotgun pellets were found in the victim’s head at post-mortem, while several 9mm bullets were found in his trunk.

The trial will continue on Tuesday before Mr Justice Barry White and a jury of nine men and three women.