How a row 'all about the house, house, house' led to a sister murdering her brother

When a dying Cork man changed his will in 2013, it was the first act in a narrative that concluded five years later with Helen Jones and Keith O'Hara murdering Paul Jones, writes Liam Heylin

Helen Jones (pictured), sister of murder victim Paul Jones, could have lived out her life at Cahergal Avenue.

When a dying Cork man who was known as The Horse called his solicitor to his bedside to change his will a week after his wife died, it was the start of a chain of events that ended years later with his daughter stabbing one of his sons to death in the hallway of his cottage home in the city.

Solicitor Kevin Hegarty had been the Jones family solicitor for many years and he responded to the call from William Jones, a hardworking man known as The Horse, to oversee the re-writing of his will. It wasn’t the first time that William Jones had re-written his will. He had done so a number of times over the years. But the one he wrote on May 27, 2013, was his final will and he was dead less than two months later.

As Brendan Grehan, defending Helen Jones, remarked in his closing speech at the end of the four-week trial, “Many a property dispute dates back to people who are long since in their graves.” 

Gardaí and a forensic team at the house where the body of Paul Jones was discovered on Saturday. September 7, 2018. Photo: Dan Linehan

In the will at the heart of this case, William Jones left his home at 27 Cahergal Avenue, Mayfield, Cork, not to his three adult children but to his two sons, Paul and Liam. There was a provision that Helen could continue to live there.

Indeed, the lawyer for the woman on trial suggested that the will was not all that divisive. After all, Helen Jones could have lived out her life at Cahergal Avenue. Certainly, if she married she would have had to move out. But obviously, the simplest way around that was not to marry. 

In any event, there was division and, indeed, a court case was due to be heard in May 2019 between the siblings, with Paul and Liam on one side and Helen on the other. It was not until the day of that civil trial that an agreement was reached in the hallways of the courthouse on Washington St. In effect, it was agreed to sell the house, Helen was to get €50,000 from the sale, and the balance divided equally between the two brothers.

So the house was put on the market in May 2018 – four months before Paul Jones’s murder - at an asking price of €199,000. The top offer was €180,000. Helen was happy with that offer but the auctioneer could only act on the instructions of the person who had employed him for the sale, and that was Liam Jones. And he wasn’t happy that it was enough. 

He went further and told the auctioneer he was going to take it off the market through that company and get another auctioneer. By now the dispute between Helen and her two brothers was really unravelling.

Nicola Barry, who works at Dunnes Stores on St Patrick’s St, Cork, met Keith O’Hara and Helen Jones in the store on August 30, 2019 – just days before Paul Jones was killed. Ms Barry said Helen Jones told her what was happening: “She was having terrible trouble with her brother and she spent nine grand on solicitor’s fees. Keith said he was going to pay for not handing over the house. And Helen said the same… 

She was saying she was entitled to the house — I can’t remember what she said, it was all about the house, house, house… She said she was going up to her brother’s house.

It was suggested by the defence that this reference to her brother could have been about Paul or Liam. The jury in the murder trial at the Central Criminal Court never heard from Liam Jones even though he was listed as a witness in the book of evidence. But Liam Jones did speak in the district court following the killing of his brother, Paul. He came to court as a witness for the State against the application for bail by Helen Jones two years ago.

Liam Jones testified that he was in fear of his sister.

“I have cancer and every time she sees me, she calls me cancer balls and says ‘I hope you die roaring.’ I am afraid a petrol bomb will come through the window," Liam Jones said during his sister’s application for bail.

Looking back on that application for bail in October 2019, the argument about the house was still very much to the fore. Helen Jones did something at that court hearing which she chose not to do in the murder trial — she gave evidence.

Eddie Burke, solicitor, cross-examined Liam Jones on that day and suggested he wanted his sister kept in custody so that he could sell the family home. Mr Jones said that was not the reason. He said there was a court agreement that the house would be sold, the proceeds divided between the siblings and that Helen Jones could stay in the house until that happened.

Helen Jones (pictured), sister of murder victim Paul Jones, could have lived out her life at Cahergal Avenue.

In the course of her bail application, Helen Jones said her brothers Liam and Paul bullied her in court: “The boys wanted me out on my ear and I said buy me out.” 

Asked about the allegation that she made insulting comments about him having cancer and threatening him, she said: “I am just in shock at that. I never threatened Liam.” 

Liam might have been the first to say that he was in fear of Helen but he wasn’t the last. Her partner at the time of the murder, and for several months beforehand, Keith O’Hara testified memorably in the murder trial that on the night that Paul Jones was murdered, he (Keith O’Hara) was in fear of being “victim number two.” He said that was the only reason he never called an ambulance for Paul Jones as he lay in a pool of blood in the hallway of his home on Bandon Road.

Life of Paul Jones

Lifelong friend of Paul Jones, Martina Jones shed some light on her late friend, describing him as a gentle giant and someone who would gladly do anything for you. The deceased in a murder trial is sometimes called the silent witness speaking from beyond the grave. And in the course of the trial, we also learned something from the last living images of Paul Jones. 

He walked to the chemist to collect his bag of prescription tablets — which told of a multitude of serious health problems. And then he arrived in his local off-licence to get alcohol and have a chat with the man behind the counter. The toxicology report in post mortem showed that he had three times the alcohol limit for driving at the time of his death. 

And Paul Jones’s remains spoke too. They spoke of an extremely violent death where his skull was split open through the bone with one forceful blow and he was stabbed in and around the torso 25 times. Seven of those stab wounds were at least 10 centimetres deep.

Various testimonies from different witnesses presented pieces of a jigsaw of the last moments of the life of Paul Jones (pictured) before he was murdered by his sister Helen and her partner Keith O'Hara.

The last moments of his life were also witnessed — mostly by people who observed isolated bits and pieces as they passed his home on the night in question. None of these created a full and total picture of what happened in the minutes around 9.45pm that night. But for the jury they presented pieces of a jigsaw which they had to put together in the course of their deliberations.

One of the key witnesses was Pat Moynihan who literally found himself with a ringside seat to the beginnings of the terrible event. 

“I parked right outside the house. So I could see Paul (Jones) facing me. He was wearing nothing only his boxer shorts. Keith is in the passenger seat with me. I think Helen is gone into the house.” 

He said Keith got out of the car later and that he had been paid €20 at the start of the journey to take them from Cahergal Avenue to Bandon Road and back to Cahergal Avenue. Keith O’Hara would later testify that the trip to Bandon Road was in the nature of a diversion and that it was Helen Jones who told the driver to take them there but that the original purpose of the trip was to go to Noonan Road to buy hash.

Mr Moynihan said: “They were yapping, that’s all. They were kind of yelling. At the start I thought it was going to be a bit of wrestling. 

I thought I would ring Togher garda station. I got no answer. Then I thought it might be a minor thing.

Perhaps the most extraordinarily fortuitous evidence came from a couple who pulled up in a car and then were on the street across the road from 108 Bandon Road before, during and after the incident — simply because they had difficulty with the door lock of the house they were trying to enter.

Student Jack Ivory and his girlfriend Leona Murphy both described what they saw even as they tried not to pay too much attention to what was unfolding across the street. 

Jack Ivory said: “The woman walked out in front of the car in a dressing gown and bare feet. She looked quite angry, quite sour, at the time… There was a man at the door of the house in boxer shorts… A man, a bit younger than the woman, got out of the taxi and came up in the direction of the house.

“The man in the boxers let out a moan. The younger man made some kind of taunt. He (man in underpants) was flat on his back in the hallway. We could make out from the tops of his legs down. The woman is standing over him, speaking quite aggressively to him still — a foot either side of his body — looking down on him, maybe around his knees or slightly higher than that.

“You could hear the man on the ground moaning. It sounded like he was in a bit of pain… The prominent voice was the woman at the door. She sounded quite aggressive, quite angry. We could hear the man who was at the door moaning like he was getting a bit of a beating.” 

Leona Murphy said: “I was trying my hardest not to look at them. After a while, I turned and looked. Whatever way I glanced at the house the man standing at the door was on the floor. I could see the souls of his feet. He was on the ground — the woman standing over him. 

She was leaning over him roaring in his face. She was roaring ‘rat’. There were sentences — I am not sure what the sentences were but I could hear the word ‘rat’ a few times. 

"She was more or less roaring in his face — as close as you could get if you were crouching.” 

Ivan Keeley was on the way to Lennox’s chipper with his mother and described what he saw at the doorway of the house on Bandon Road.

“The man in the doorway, I believe he was holding something in his hand – a shoe or a belt or something. The man in the doorway, I believe he did lunge towards the woman. I am not sure if they started fighting. The man with the woman stepped in to intervene… to get in between the man and the woman.” 

This witness’s mother, Anna Horgan Keeley, said of the woman she saw around the front of the house, “The lady said, ‘stop’, I am not sure who she said it to or what she was referring to, but that is the only word that sticks in my mind.” 

Emily O’Sullivan, a student, who was walking by, said: “All I remember was blood — it was just everywhere. The woman looked very casual, like she was at home after getting out of bed or something. She was mumbling at the man on the ground. I cannot remember exactly what she said but it was to the effect, ‘That is what you get’. I think she said something along the lines of, ‘You got off light.” 

Taxi-driver Daniel Chidi-Ibe picked up Helen Jones and Keith O’Hara around the corner from 108 Bandon Road a few minutes later. 

He described the man as “looking very down, like someone who does not have enough energy. To get in the car it took him much longer. I noticed blood on his trousers. I offered to help him. He said, ‘No’. I saw fresh blood on his hand.” 

Long-time friend of Helen Jones, Breda O’Reilly, said: “Helen asked me to ring all the hospitals for her. I said he (Paul Jones) is not in the Mercy, he is not in the Regional (CUH) and he’s not in the South Infirmary. 

Helen looked at Keith. I don’t know which one of them said it but one of them turned around and said, ‘I don’t know did we kill him’.

After the last pieces of forensic and other evidence closed the prosecution case, the trial erupted into life when Keith O’Hara got into the witness box to give evidence. He admitted he had lied to gardaí in an interview when he told them he and Helen Jones were at home in bed at the relevant time watching the prison drama, Orange Is The New Black.

Now in the witness box, we were hearing for the first time ever one of the accused saying he did strike Paul Jones in the head, but he went further and blamed Helen Jones — the woman to whom he was engaged to be married — for murdering her brother.

Paul Jones was murdered on Wednesday, September 4. His body was discovered on Saturday, September 7. On that same Saturday, Keith O’Hara was in a tattoo parlour having the name, Helen, tattooed to his neck. As he sat in the dock throughout the murder trial looking straight ahead, Helen Jones’s seat was three metres away at right angles to O’Hara, so that he was directly in her line of sight throughout their trial for murder. 

Even when the judge and jury left the room each day and the accused consulted briefly with their legal teams, there was no interaction between Helen Jones and Keith O’Hara. They never spoke to each other in the dock.

On the day Paul Jones's body was found, Keith O’Hara (pictured) was in a tattoo parlour having the name, Helen, tattooed to his neck.

When O’Hara left the dock for the witness box, he played down their marriage plans, saying they flirted with the idea of getting engaged, even though he did buy her a ring. If nothing else rang out from his evidence, it was that as far as he was concerned, he did not kill Paul Jones, but that Helen Jones did. 

Describing his one-time fiancée, he said: “Your client murdered her brother. The dogs and the cat and the rat all know Helen killed her brother.” 

The jury took the view, despite Helen Jones’s silence and Keith O’Hara’s colourful efforts to persuade them otherwise, that both of them murdered Paul Jones.

And the two of them are left now, with a lifetime behind bars to think about whether the witness who met them in Dunnes Stores a few days before the murder had the measure of it when she said: “It was all about the house, house, house.”