‘Kenneth had planned fresh start with me and our son’
THE partner of a man who was shot, dismembered and dumped in a canal has told how they were looking forward to a new beginning as a family when he was murdered.
Paul Wells Sr has been sentenced to life in prison for murdering father-of-one Kenneth O’Brien by shooting him in the back of the head before dismembering his body with a chainsaw and dumping his remains in the Grand Canal.
Wells, 50, claimed Mr O’Brien, 33, had wanted him to murder his partner so he could take their child back to Australia, where he had previously lived.
But in her victim impact statement yesterday Mr O’Brien’s partner Eimear Dunne said they were looking forward to starting a new chapter in their lives after he returned from Australia.
She said: ‘On the 17th of December 2015, Kenneth came home from Australia for good. This was our fresh start, our new beginning: Kenneth, myself and the apple of our eye,’ their fouryear-old son.
‘Kenneth went to Australia to earn money for us as a family to better our lives. My birthday was on Thursday January 14th 2016. We celebrated that day as a family,’ she recalled.
She said they had planned to spend the weekend celebrating but that never happened because Mr O’Brien never came home.
‘When I received that text from someone pretending to be Kenneth, I knew it wasn’t from him. I knew that Kenneth didn’t send that message and I knew something was very wrong,’ she said.
‘I cannot put into words the feelings I experienced over the next few days and months after finding out that Kenneth had been murdered in the most gruesome of ways.’
She said that no mother should have to do what she had to do, in telling their boy his father was never coming home.
‘I put aside my grief to care for our grieving child. The impact that this murder has had on an innocent four-year-old is immeasurable,’ she explained.
She said she would do everything in her power to make sure her partner’s memory would be kept alive and that their son would remember all the good things about him.
‘Kenneth was a family man, who idolised our son. They were like two peas in a pod,’ she said.
She added: ‘It breaks my heart that Kenneth will never get to see him grow up, to celebrate his birthdays, Christmases, will never get to see him be the wonderful boy that he is growing up to be.’
Mr O’Brien’s parents Gerry and Susan said words could not describe the trauma they went through when they discovered how he had died.
Mr O’Brien’s father said: ‘The worst part of it all was being told our son was a torso in a suitcase. The utter disregard shown for our child as a human being and the barbaric nature in which he was treated and discarded, it was an affront to all who knew him.
‘We couldn’t function until the rest of Ken was found and could be given a proper burial. We still have never recovered his hands.’
Wells, who sat angled away from his victim’s family throughout the trial, turned to face them after the sentencing. ‘I’m very sorry,’ he told them before being taken to begin his life sentence.
Despite the cover-up, the evidence led gardaí to Wells, who argued that he had acted in self defence when he shot Mr O’Brien in the back of the head.
He continued with this account, even after a post mortem found that the gun had been held up against his victim’s head.
Wells, of Barnamore Park, Finglas, admitted shooting Mr O’Brien and dismembering his body. However, the father-of-five pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr O’Brien at his home in Barnamore Park on January 15 or 16, 2016. He claimed that Mr O’Brien had wanted him to murder his partner so he could take their child back to Australia where he had previously lived.
He told gardaí that Mr O’Brien had brought a gun to his house for this purpose on the evening of January 15, but that he didn’t want to do it.
He said that a scuffle ensued when Mr O’Brien suggested he make it look like a sexual assault. He said the gun fell, they both tried to get it, but that he got to it first and shot Mr O’Brien.
He said he then panicked, ‘chopped Mr O’Brien into pieces’ with a chainsaw he had lent him, before putting his torso into a suitcase and dumping it in the Grand Canal at Ardclough village in Co. Kildare.
Remains dumped in Grand Canal