Jury returns unanimous guilty verdict in Shane Geoghegan murder trial

Barry Doyle, a father-of-three from Portland Row, Dublin, had pleaded not guilty to his murder at Clonmore, Kilteragh, Dooradoyle.

However, a jury today found him guilty after a four-week trial at the Central Criminal Court.

The trial heard that Mr Geoghegan had captained Garryowen in a match on Saturday November 8. Afterwards he visited a friend a short walk from the home he shared with his girlfriend, Jenna Barry, who gave evidence early in the trial.

She last saw her boyfriend about two hours before he died. She received a text message from him just before 1am, and was expecting him home shortly afterwards.

She then heard two loud bangs and looked out the front door.

“I saw a person running down the middle of the road to a navy people carrier,” she recalled. “The wheels were turning and screeching and someone was shouting: ‘Drive, drive’.”

“I sent Shane a text message saying: ‘I think there’s been a shooting’. I tried to ring him as well but there was no answer,” she said.

Doyle had shot him five times as he made his way home to Ms Barry.

Several other people also heard shots and screaming and saw the getaway car. Gardaí were called and found Mr Geoghegan lying dead on the back doorstep of a house across the road from his own home.

A post-mortem exam showed that he died from gunshot injuries to his head and trunk.

He suffered five gunshots in total; one of the head wounds would have been instantly fatal. He had internal injuries to his brain, right lung, ribs and pelvis.

The jury heard that three bullets were recovered from Mr Geoghegan’s body and a number of discharged and un-discharged cartridge cases were found at the crime scene. Their pattern indicated that the shooter was moving towards Mr Geoghegan as he was firing the gun.

Ballistics experts testified that a 9mm semi-automatic Glock gun was used. It was never recovered.

The court heard that Doyle moved from Dublin to Limerick in June 2008. He left Ireland shortly after the murder but returned around Christmas that year. He was arrested in February 2009 and interviewed 23 times.

In his 15th garda interview and after a consultation with his solicitor, Doyle confessed to the murder. He would not name anyone else involved but admitted that he had never met Mr Geoghegan, who he described as an innocent man.

Doyle gave a detailed description of the shooting and drew a map of the crime scene, which matched what ballistics experts found.

He said he had followed his victim around to the back of the house, after hearing his heavy breathing and that Mr Geoghegan had pleaded with him to stop.

The court also heard that after interview 15, Doyle took a set of white, plastic rosary beads from around his neck and asked the Gardaí to give them to his victim’s mother.

Videos of him making his confessions were shown to the jury. However, he pleaded not guilty when his case came to trial and the defence claimed that his confessions were the result of inducement.

His legal team said the Gardaí made threats and promises regarding Victoria Gunnery, the mother of Barry Doyle’s daughter. Ms Gunnery was in custody at the same time as Doyle on suspicion of possessing information.

The trial heard that their baby had a hole in her heart and that Doyle thought that she was going for a check-up on the morning they were arrested. The defence said he was told she would be released from custody if he confessed.

The prosecution denied this and pointed to the detail in the confessions and the other evidence.

Doyle told Gardaí that the gun had jammed at the scene and that he had manually ejected two bullets in order to keep firing. This was borne out by the discovery of two live rounds among the discharged cases.

The jury also heard from April Collins, who said that on the night before the murder, she had heard Doyle being told to kill a man called John McNamara. The court later heard that Mr McNamara lived four doors away from Mr Geoghegan.

She said that it was John Dundon who gave the order to kill and told Barry Doyle what John McNamara looked like.

“The gun is there. You kill him,” he told Doyle, she said.

She said that she met John Dundon and Doyle in the hours after the shooting at a car park behind a restaurant.

She said John Dundon first said John McNamara was dead but later asked Doyle to describe the man he killed. She said that Doyle described him and insisted he’d got the right man.

Mobile phone records put Doyle in the area of the restaurant at that time.

The trial then heard from Victoria Gunnery, the mother of Doyle’s sick child.

She said he turned his phone off at 8.30pm that November 8. When she later asked him why, he told her to read the teletext.

She did, saw that a man had been murdered in Limerick, and texted him, calling him a scumbag.

He replied: “Did you read the teletext?”

She said he then went away for a while and rang her from Amsterdam.

“He asked what the papers were saying about the murder,” she testified. “I said: ‘They know it’s you because it’s a very, very close associate of Patrick Doyle,” she recalled, referring to the defendant’s deceased brother.

“They have no proof,” was Doyle’s response.

She said that when he returned before the New Year, she asked him how he was going to live with himself “for doing that to an innocent fella”.

She said he replied that “if it wasn’t the wrong fella, there wouldn’t be so much hype”.

The jury of eight men and three women deliberated for almost six hours over two days before reaching a unanimous verdict and Mr Justice Garrett Sheehan imposed the mandatory life sentence.

The court heard that the Geoghegan family did not wish to make a victim impact statement because they felt that the crime spoke for itself.

Superintendent John Scanlan said afterwards that it was a sad time for the Geoghegan family, not a moment for triumph.

“It’s a good result for the decent people of Limerick,” he said. However he said this was an on-going criminal investigation.

“There are other persons, who will have to be considered,” he said.

This was the second time Doyle stood trial for Shane Geoghegan’s murder. Last year a jury failed to reach a decision after deliberating for four days.

A previous jury had been discharged before the trial opened, when a detective recognised one of the jurors as being a member of a criminal gang.

The family and friends of Shane Geoghegan finally left the Criminal Courts of Justice in Dublin yesterday, as Doyle was led away to spend life behind bars.