How Ruth Lawrence became a double murderer
Ruth Lawrence (pictured) has been found guilty of murdering Anthony Keegan and Eoin O'Connor. File picture: Collins Courts
The text message was ominous.
At 5.57pm on the evening of April 22, 2014, Eoin O'Connor typed a message to a family member which read: “have to go to the country, Woodlands in Ballyjamesduff, if anything happens to me".
Just a few hours earlier, Eoin and his partner Karen Roche had been in Smyths Toys with their youngest daughter, picking out presents for her fifth birthday.
After leaving the toy shop, the couple went home to Saint Teresa's Gardens in Dublin to blow out the candles on the child's birthday cake before Eoin set off for Cavan with his close friend Anthony Keegan around 5.30pm.
"I never saw him again," Ms Roche would tell a Central Criminal Court jury.
The trial was told that Eoin was a drug dealer. Ms Roche said she was aware in general terms of Eoin's "line of work" and found in the week leading up to his disappearance that the 32-year-old wasn't himself — he had been very quiet and had not appeared in the right frame of mind.
Eoin had also been in Ballyjamesduff the previous day, Easter Monday, and told his partner on the way home that he had found "the fellas" he was looking for.
When Ms Roche and Eoin were in the city centre on the day he disappeared, he had taken a phone call around 3.50pm which she said he didn't seem happy about. Eoin told his partner he would have to return to Cavan that evening.
Roofer Rory O'Connor was at a local football match in Coolock when he last spoke to Eoin - his younger brother - at around 7.30pm that night.
Rory was immediately worried when he found out where Eoin was. He told the court that he knew Eoin was owed money by two men living in Ballyjamesduff - a small-time drug dealer named Jason Symes and a bigger fish - South African national Neville van der Westhuizen.
When the game ended, Rory rang Eoin's phone at around 8.45pm but got no answer. He also found it unusual that Eoin hadn't replied to his text messages, as his younger brother would always keep in contact with him.
Another brother, Brian O'Connor, texted Eoin between 8.30pm and 9pm that night and Eoin replied that he was waiting on "somebody to turn up".
When Brian texted Eoin at 9.45pm to say he was getting worried and asked if he was OK, he got a response back saying: "yeah".
Brian told the jury:
The court heard that Eoin's phone just rang out after this point.
Such was Rory O'Connor's growing concern that he drove his van at 2am to Jason Symes' house in the Woodlands estate in Ballyjamesduff in search of his brother.
When he got no answer, Rory drove past the local garda station in Bailieborough to see if the car Eoin had been driving - his mother's 2004 silver Ford Focus - was parked outside. It was nowhere to be seen. Rory told officers he was worried about his brother, before driving back to Dublin around 5am.
Rory knew that Eoin had been selling cannabis for the past year-and-a-half to low-level drug dealer Jason Symes and understood that Symes and Neville van der Westhuizen owed Eoin "a substantive debt".
Neville in fact owed Eoin in the region of €70,000 and an immediate payment of €15K was to be forthcoming. Eoin was under pressure for the substantial amount of money, as he in turn had to pay cash "up the line".
Eoin had told his brother Brian that he had met Jason Symes the previous day on Easter Monday and "everything was sorted".
"Eoin said he was told by Jay Symes to call back the following day and he would have half or some of the money," Brian told the jury.
Concerned about the whereabouts of their sibling, the O'Connor brothers returned to Jason Symes' home on the evening of April 23 but got no answer. A neighbour directed them to another house close by, where Jason's son Sean Symes lived with his partner and children.
In a garda statement, Sean Symes said that when he went to answer the door on that Wednesday night, "all of them lads...about ten men" were there.
"There were two cars full in total, about ten men. The fella at the door had acne, brown hair, blue eyes, stocky fellow, late 20's or 30's. He asked me where my Da was. 'Have you a number for him? I can't get hold of him'".
Sean rang his father Jason and told him "there's a lot of fellas up here looking for you" before he handed the phone to Eoin's brother.
"I heard him say this is Eoin's brother, you owe us €15k and where's my brother? Don't be acting stupid."
Sean continued: "Eoin's brother said 'I'm not threatening you' but I felt threatened. The witness said he was told: 'It's not the money at this stage, It's my brother. I want my brother back. I'm not down here to threaten you. I just want to find my brother'."
Rory made an official missing person report for his brother at Santry Garda Station at 9.45pm the following night.
A further statement was taken from Sean Symes in relation to another visit made to his home on May 24, 2014.
Sean said he heard banging on the front door of his house and ran upstairs to open the window. He saw around 15 men outside, including Eoin O'Connor's brother Rory.
"I could see Rory banging on the door. I knew it to be Rory as he had been at my house on Wednesday, April 23 to see where my Dad was," said Sean.
"I could see three lads jump over the side gate of the house. One of them was roaring up threats at me saying he's going to come into the house..that the guards 'won't stop me...you won't stop me..you won't see me come in...I'm going to get you, you skinny dying c**t' and all that shit....he was really really agitated..a strong Dublin accent..there was just so many of them".
Sean said he opened the window to Rory and asked: "What's wrong?"
"He [Rory] said 'come down the stairs and open the door'. I said 'I'm not opening the door, I'm terrified of you. I'll talk to you from here'. He said 'where's your Da?'...I said 'I don't know, the last I heard he was in England'".
"Then he [Rory] says 'when's the last time you heard from him'. I said: 'the day after you were up'. Then he started calling me a liar. He called me a liar again, saying he was going to cut my fingers and toes off and slit my throat in front of my kids.
Sean said as Rory was leaving in his car, he pointed up at him with a very angry look on his face, put the key up to his neck and brought it across, saying he was going to slit his throat.
Other neighbours of Jason Symes said "two car loads of lads" had parked up outside Jason's house on the night of April 23 and were trying to get into it.
A neighbour said one of Eoin O'Connor's brothers was going from door to door to see if there was any sign of his missing relative. He said there were always callers to Jason Symes home in Woodlands as he was selling drugs; "everything dodgy with this fella".
The witness said that after Eoin O’Connor and Anthony Keegan went missing, there were "a lot of guys hanging around" and putting up posters around the town of the two missing men. "We heard stories of people getting kidnapped and getting put into cars."
When gardaí spoke to Jason Symes on the night of April 23, he told them he had been buying and selling a small amount of drugs for Eoin O'Connor and had settled a small bill the previous day.
Anthony Keegan, who was also known as 'Bod', had grown up with Eoin in Coolock on Dublin's northside. He had gone with Eoin to Cavan that night and was there "in a supporting role" in case there was any trouble.
Margaret Keegan last spoke to her adopted brother Anthony just after 6pm on April 22. Anthony told her the coverage on his phone wasn't great and the call suddenly dropped. When she tried to ring back, she couldn't get through and it went to voicemail.
Later she attempted to ring her brother three times but the phone was dead.
Margaret described Anthony as "always a bit mad" and told the court that he had been "in and out for doing sentences", as the adoption had affected him. He was attending a Father Peter McVerry course to assist and rehabilitate people with drug issues at the time he went missing.
When Margaret went onto Facebook the following morning, she saw messages from the O'Connor brothers from the previous night, indicating that Eoin was missing and Anthony had gone with him to Ballyjamesduff. Margaret knew her brother looked up to Eoin and would have done anything for him.
When she found out that Eoin and Anthony had gone to Cavan to collect €15K from Jason Symes, Margaret went to Mountjoy Garda Station on April 23 and filed a missing person report.
Neville van der Westhuizen has been living in Co Cavan for several years prior to 2014. His father Peter had moved from Durban in South Africa to Ballyjamesduff in 2000, with Neville following him three years later. The father and son had worked in the 'Liffey Meats' processing plant in Co Cavan.
Neville, his father said, would not keep in contact with him much and he only heard from him when he needed something.
Peter van der Westhuizen said he knew Neville had a partner - a "quiet" girl named Ruth who had worked in the nearby Crover House Hotel and was also a tattoo artist.
In December 2013, Ruth and Neville began renting Patrick's Cottage, which is on the Westmeath side of Lough Sheelin, a picturesque lake measuring 7km by 4km that straddles the borders of that county and neighbouring Meath and Cavan.
The couple were said to have been relaxed and affectionate with each other. The prosecution told the jury that the pair had entered into a symbiotic relationship.
The trial was told that Ruth and Neville were in a Dublin pub in 2013 when a plan was formed to rob drugs from Eoin O'Connor's house.
The jury heard that a person identified in court only as Mr CD - who had initially put Eoin O'Connor in touch with Neville - wanted Eoin's drugs stolen as retribution.
Also in the pub that night was Stacey Symes and her father Jason, who began selling 'weed' for Neville in Ballyjamesduff following the meeting. Stacey was attending a post-Leaving Certificate course at the time and the jury was told she sold "insignificant quantities" of cannabis on campus.
The Symes would become protected witnesses, having come forward to An Garda Síochána in 2014 to give voluntary statements about Ruth and Neville's involvement in the murders of the two missing men.
Stacey told the jury:
She said Mr CD had suggested that the drugs would be stolen.
In her evidence, Stacey also recalled a trip to Dublin before Easter 2014 when Neville collected a gun.
She said Neville was sitting beside her in the car with a gun on his lap, which he told her was loaded. Stacey couldn't see the weapon and just heard a clicking noise. She said Neville later took the gun apart and cleaned it when she dropped him home that evening.
The Symes alleged that they were left for hours in Burger King on O'Connell Street on Good Friday April 18, 2014, when Ruth and Neville used Stacey's Nissan Micra car to rob drugs from Eoin O'Connor's house.
On the way home, Jason Symes said they came across a checkpoint on the Navan Road.
"I thought the gardaí would pull the car in and I wouldn't be sitting here if that was the case and those two boys would be alive," said Jason Symes.
The car was not pulled over however and the group returned to Patrick's Cottage that night. Stacey told the jury she saw what she thought was 'a brick of white' [cocaine] amongst "bags and bags of stuff" but didn't know where it came from.
Jason Symes testified that Eoin O'Connor had visited his house on Easter Monday, April 21 as he owed the drug dealer "stupid money" for cigarettes. He said Eoin was trying to make contact with Neville, as he [Neville] owed him €15K.
Stacey, who was also present in the kitchen that morning, said her father had telephoned Neville, who was "stonewalling, trying to tell him not to let Eoin know where he was".
On the same day not far away, Ruth Lawrence was inquiring of her landlord whether she could hire a boat to go out on Lough Sheelin as the weather was good.
Boat builder Declan McCabe said that when he was collecting the rent that day, Ruth had asked about a boat with a cabin but all he had was a lake boat.
"Maybe she wanted some shelter but no reason was given," he told the jury.
Ruth also asked Mr McCabe about an engine and he said he could borrow an electric motor for her. When he suggested a boat with oars, Ruth told him that Neville had a bad back and wouldn't be able for much rowing.
The following evening, April 22, Eoin O'Connor, wearing a blue 'Helly Hansen' jacket, a Chelsea football top and grey tracksuit bottoms, drove himself and Anthony Keegan to Ballyjamesduff in his mother's Ford Focus to meet up with Neville van der Westhuizen.
The trial heard that the men's phones had used cell sites in Dublin at 5.43pm before travelling in a northwesterly direction, which was consistent with a journey along the N3.
At 6.05pm Eoin sent a family member a text message saying: "He won't meet if anyone with me, bod is with me and I've someone halfway."
There was a phone call between Eoin and Neville around 7.10pm, where it is assumed a specific meeting point was suggested.
Ruth's phone and another phone associated with the couple had used cell sites consistent with travelling towards Cavan town and being in Cavan town after 6.25pm on the same evening. The last activity on Ruth's phone was at 7.36pm, with no activity after that.
The last contact on Anthony's mobile phone was at 8.32pm, while the last text Eoin received was at 8.38pm.
The prosecution's contention was that it was difficult "to pinpoint the precise moment" when both men were murdered, but it seemed likely it was later on the evening of April 22.
It was the State's case that both Eoin and Anthony were shot in a field not far from Patrick's Cottage before the bodies were moved to Inchicup island on Lough Sheelin later that night.
Stacey and Jason Symes went to Patrick's Cottage the following evening - April 23 - as she said her father had received a phone call informing him that there were men at his house looking for Eoin O'Connor.
The atmosphere in the cottage that night was described by the Symes as extremely intense and "just mayhem".
When she walked in the door, Ms Symes said she was greeted by Latvian national Vytautis Bitaris, who was "hyper, like he was on speed". She said the "foreign fella freaked out", grabbed a machete and "started flying around the house with it".
Stacey described Neville and Ruth as "quite hypey", with Ruth trying to talk to her and Neville trying to talk to her father.
"I think we were sitting around in the kitchen, they were coked out of their head," Jason Symes would tell the jury.
Stacey said in evidence:
When asked again by the prosecutor what she could remember hearing about the shooting, the protected witness said "just that Ruth shot him, he twisted, it went wrong and Neville took over".
Stacey told defence counsel: "As far as I was aware, she [Ruth] was standing in front of me and said she twisted, and I remember her going in front of me with this movement [the witness gestured] but she is not a murderer because Neville murdered the two of them."
Jason Symes recalled there was "something said about 'the job is done or it's done'" in relation to what had happened to the two men.
"Ruth said that whatever she'd done, she'd done and that's it and I think he took over; I'm not sure."
"You said something about a twist?" asked the prosecutor. "Like a headlock, that's what she mentioned," replied Mr Symes.
Former Chief State Pathologist Professor Marie Cassidy would tell the jury that she conducted a post mortem on Eoin O'Connor's remains and identified three gunshot wounds; one to the head, one to the abdomen and another to the left hand.
Referring to the gunshot wound to the head, the witness said the bullet had entered through the left earlobe and continued in through the skull. The bullet, she said, had come to a rest inside the skull cavity and its partially fragmented remains were located there.
The gunshot wound to the abdominal wall was near the stomach button. The bullet had continued into the pelvic cavity and travelled from the front of the body towards the back, exiting from the left upper buttock. The gunshot wound to the left index finger had left a large gaping hole at the tip of finger, fracturing the bone.
In her evidence, Prof. Cassidy said the gunshot wound to the head was the fatal injury, whereas the bullet through the abdomen was "a potentially fatal wound".
The cause of death, she said, was the gunshot wound to the head with a contributory factor being the gunshot injury to the abdomen.
Prof Cassidy said it was likely the gunshot wound to the abdomen had occurred first, before the fatal gunshot to the head. She said the injury to the brain would have caused immediate collapse and rapid death.
"Are the three wounds consistent with three gunshots?" asked the prosecutor. "It could have been two shots, he could have been protecting the abdomen or raising his hand to his head," said Prof Cassidy.
In his closing speech, prosecuting counsel Michael O'Higgins SC referred back to the Symes' testimony about the shooting of Mr O'Connor in the stomach area - the twisting and headlock details.
He asked the jury to consider: "How is all this information coming forward if it wasn't heard?"
In her evidence, Stacey said gardaí rang and wanted to see her father at Cavan Garda Station. She said Neville had instructed Jason to "say certain things".
When they later returned to Patrick's Cottage, Stacey said the couple told her they had put Eoin O'Connor under a tree and asked for their help to move the bodies.
"Ruth kept pointing behind me down towards the field down towards the water...they said there was a ledge and they had to swim...she said they had to put them [the bodies] on top of each other and under a tree and that's where they were.....When the boys were found, they were found on an island," continued Stacey.
Stacey said the bodies were to be moved by boat. "Ruth wanted her and me on the boat, so if someone saw it, it looked like two girls on a boat."
Stacey recalled her father saying he couldn't go near the bodies because he would get sick. "He wouldn't be able to do something like that. I shook my head."
The witness was insistent when it was put to her by defence counsel that Ruth Lawrence never said she had shot anyone or had a gun.
"She did," stated Stacey.
Stacey also said Ruth had shown her "a little black" gun in her bedroom and had demonstrated how to load the bullets. The witness told the defence that the accused "was in the countryside with a gun; that's not a normal thing".
Ruth enjoyed "whatever it [the gun] was doing for her", Stacey would tell the trial.
Jason Symes also said Ruth had carried around "a little black gun" and would put it down the back of her trousers.
Mr Bitaris testified that Neville had asked him to do some cleaning or building around the cottage on the day after the men were last seen alive.
When he arrived, Mr Bitaris said he had noticed a fire burning between the house and the sheds and had seen bags of clothes. It was the prosecution case that these clothes belonged to Ruth and Neville, as the deceased had been fully dressed when their bodies were found.
Later that evening, Mr Bitaris said he had helped load four "big stones" or H-blocks into the boot of Neville's car.
Ruth and Neville had also picked up an electric engine from their landlord, Mr McCabe. When they returned the engine the next day however, Ruth told Mr McCabe: "we didn't really go out so thanks anyways".
When Mr McCabe checked the state of the engine's battery it was green, meaning very little battery was used.
The State had argued the couple were aware that Inchicup island was not a safe location for the men's remains "in anything but the short term".
It is believed that there was a plan for the men's bodies to be put in a boat, weighed down with the H-blocks and sunk in a part of the lake where there was much deeper water but this had never materialised.
The trial was told that Neville, Ruth and the two Symes then fled the area. They slept in a disused house in the town of Ashbourne for a few hours on April 25 before travelling to Rosslare Port in Co Wexford that evening. There they boarded the 8.45pm sailing to Fishguard in Wales before continuing on to London.
Within a few days Ruth and Neville flew to South Africa, while the Symes were dropped off at a homeless shelter before eventually returning to Ireland.
When Declan McCabe accompanied gardaí to Patrick's Cottage later that week on April 29, three machetes were found in a front barn, with another discovered in the living room of the cottage. Coal bags were located in the front lounge area of the cottage and H-blocks weighing 40 kilos were found at the rear.
The Ford Focus car Eoin O'Connor had driven was found at Lough Owel car park on the N4 in Westmeath on April 25. The car was facing away from the lake, which piqued the garda's interest as most vehicles were parked facing the water.
It was the prosecution case that Eoin's car had been "dumped" there by Ruth Lawrence between 3.20am and 8.10am on the morning of April 23.
Eoin's mobile phone was located in the driver's door and had been switched off, with an unsent text message on the device stored at 8.38pm. The message had no recipient and read: "still waiting on him, phone off again".
Pat Smith told the jury that he was fishing on Lough Sheelin some weeks later on May 18, 2014, when he noticed a "dreadful smell coming off" one of the lake's 10 islands that lay about 100 meters off shore.
Mr Smith said he had moved in close to Inchicup island "for cover" from the winds when he got the stench of rotten flesh. He had to pull the boat away from the shoreline because of the strength of the odour.
The witness said he became suspicious because the previous week, he had seen The Garda Water Unit "diving elsewhere" while searching for the "two bodies, the missing men". He made contact with gardaí and told them that, in his view as a former butcher, the decaying odour "was not related to animals".
On May 26, now retired senior dog handler Garda Paul Conroy and his specially trained German Shepherd 'Dfor' were brought onto Inchicup island, where the sniffer dog gave "an indication" at tarpaulin covered in undergrowth.
Mr Conroy told the jury that as he approached the area, he could see "some sort of covering of plastic or tarpaulin" measuring six feet long and three to four feet wide, which was covered in branches.
He said the tarpaulin was tied up, so he gave his knife to a scenes of crime officer, who cut it open.
He said an arm with some clothing on it then fell out.
Inchicup Island was declared a crime scene, with the bodies of Eoin O'Connor and Anthony Keegan escorted off the island on a garda water unit boat on May 27, 2014.
There was a ripped coal sack on Anthony's upper body, while blue plastic tarpaulin covered with metal rings was on the lower part. There was a coal bag on the victim's feet. The body had been tied with a white pleated rope, which had been sloped over the neck and down the back before being looped over the lower legs.
Eoin's body was found wrapped in dark blue nylon material and had been secured with light blue nylon rope wound around the neck, mid-trunk and legs.
Anthony had died from two gunshot wounds to the head and neck, which the prosecution called "targeted shots".
It was the prosecution case that Anthony had been fatally shot first, as he was there as Eoin's protector and was thus the person most likely to be shot first.
In her evidence, Stacey told the jury that Ruth Lawrence thought it was funny that Anthony Keegan had said he would die for his friend Eoin.
The Symes came forward to gardaí in 2014 when they returned to Ireland and gave voluntary statements about Ruth and Neville's involvement in the murders of the men.
An arrest warrant was issued for Ruth Lawrence in 2016 but she was not extradited from South Africa until 2023, nearly a decade after the men's bodies were found.
The trial heard that Lawrence had spent some time over the previous decade both staying in and working at women's refuges in the South African cities of Pretoria and Bloemfontein. A South African pastor gave evidence in her defence that Ruth had feared she would become a victim of human trafficking.
Neville van der Westhuizen is currently serving a 15-year sentence in Westville Prison in Durban, having been convicted in 2020 on six counts of kidnapping, attempted murder and the murder. An application to extradite him to Ireland to face trial will take place when he has finished serving his sentence in South Africa.
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