Ballincollig murder victim failed to return from walk, court hears
The mother of a 22-year-old Cork woman allegedly raped and murdered by a local teenager has told the Central Criminal Court that she began to get worried after the family dogs her daughter had been walking arrived back home without her.
Mrs Rose Kiely was giving evidence in the trial of a 22-year-old man who denies the murder but admits the manslaughter of Rachel Kiely whose strangled body was found on waste ground on October 26, 2000 at the Regional Park in Ballincollig.
He also denies raping Ms Kiely on the same occasion when he was 16-years-old.
Mrs Kiely told Mr Patrick J McCarthy SC, prosecuting, that her daughter used to walk the family’s two dogs in the nearby Regional Park on most days.
On the evening of her death she said she watched her daughter leave through a gap in the fence into the park with one of the dogs, the smaller one catching up with her.
She said her husband had been due back at around 5pm and she was getting the evening meal ready.
She asked her daughter to stop and have some dinner, but she said she would have it when she got back.
At about 5.40pm that evening Mrs Kiely said the dogs scratched on the front door.
“Normally she would bring them in on the back way. Rachel wasn’t there and I began to get worried,” she said.
She wanted to go out and look for her daughter but waited until her husband got back from work before heading out into the park with her youngest daughter Elizabeth.
Mrs Kiely said Elizabeth said she had heard a scream or a cry. She suggested it might have come from the playing field but her daughter said it sounded low to the ground, which made the witness think this was unusual.
Later on she said it was beginning to get dark so she decided to go back. She was going back the way she had come when she met the accused.
“I said ‘Hi’ and then he said ‘Hi’,” she told Mr McCarthy. She then went home before taking the car and continuing to search for the daughter.
When she returned home again her husband suggested they call the gardaí. A group of people also began searching for her and she bought “four or five or six torches” from a local shop.
She said Rachel had had a boyfriend who was part of a group of people from the Jehovas Witness community but said she had never seen her in the company of the accused.
Asked by Mr Brendan Grehan SC, defending, whether she had given evidence to gardai about her daughter Elizabeth saying she had heard a scream, Mrs Kiely replied: “I did. That was in my statement I’m sure it was.”
However when Mr Grehan put it to her that in the statement Elizabeth had given to the gardaí she did not mention this matter, Mrs Kiely replied: “We were in such a state of shock that night we just put it out of our minds.”
She admitted it was a week or a fortnight later that her daughter had claimed the scream was Rachel's.
“That’s why I stood and called Rachel’s name,” she said.
Opening the case before the jury Mr McCarthy SC told them that despite the accused’s change of plea to guilty to manslaughter, he would still be calling on the same evidence as if he had pleaded not guilty.
He said both Ms Kiely and the accused lived very close to the Regional Park and would have “known each other to see at least".
The accused, along with a large number of other people, had filled out a garda questionnaire about his movements that night and had told a number of lies, he said.
It was contended by the prosecution that this was: “Indicative of guilt on the part of the accused in respect of both offences.”
He said the jury would also hear forensic evidence which “unambiguously links the accused to the deceased.”
Mr McCarthy said the Kiely family were active members of the Jehovas Witness congregation in Cork and a number of members of that group and her family along with the gardaí had been out searching for her that evening.
Her body was eventually found near the ruins of an old building in the park. He said it was also contended by the prosecution that the accused had made an effort to hide the body, which had been “moved a distance after death". He alleged the accused had also raped Ms Kiely.
“Forensic tests yielded the presence of semen in the body of the deceased."
He said this evidence was “clearly and unambiguously” linked to the deceased. “The semen was his semen,” he said.
“There is no doubt as far as the prosecution is concerned that intercourse had taken place.”
The then State pathologist would give the cause of death as “asphyxiation due to manual strangulation".
Another witness, Sergeant Tony Crockett, said he was in the park later that evening with the deceased’s father when her body was discovered.
He said the deceased was lying on her left hand side under some brambles and was in the foetal position.
Her jumper was over her head above her face, her leggings were intact and her body was still warm.
Her lips were blue and slightly open and she had an abrasion on her nose. He said he pulled the jumper from her face to check if she was alive but “once I could get no pulse or breath I left the body as it is and preserved the scene straight away".
The trial continues tomorrow before Mr Justice Barry White.
