Killer makeover
The south Dublin cottage Eamonn Lillis bought while in jail is now being sold for €310,000
‘Quaint, traditional, full of charm and character’
WIFE-KILLER Eamonn Lillis has put his onebedroom cottage up for sale just six months after moving in, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Lillis, who was released from prison last year in a blaze of publicity, has returned to England to stay with his sister. The tiny cottage in Kilternan, south Dublin, is named ‘Hillview’ and was put on the market this week.
Viewings are already taking place and estate agents are hoping the property, which Lillis bought for €285,000 from behind bars in 2014, will sell for around €310,000.
This week the MoS visited the 41sq.m cottage, which is now lying empty. A tiny entranceway leads to a bedroom to the right and a combined living room and kitchen to the left. A step leads down to the bathroom, which opens out into a huge southfacing garden.
The garden is seen as the cottage’s ‘selling point’ and the estate agent said the ‘man who owned it’ thought ‘long and hard’ about doubling the size of the cottage and ‘flipping it on’ for more profit.
Since moving into the cottage in January, Lillis has painted the old, exposed brickwork white in the living room and bathroom and boarded up two open fireplaces.
Estate agent Des Lalor Auctioneers described the property as a ‘quaint, traditional cottage, which is full of charm and character’.
It added that it has ‘potential to extend’ into the large south-westfacing garden, which has views of the Dublin Mountains.
Lillis, 58, was convicted of the manslaughter of Celine Cawley in 2008 after killing her with a brick.
The former TV advertising director had been living in the cottage after spending time in Southampton with his sister. It is now understood he has gone back to England for ‘personal reasons’ after deciding life wasn’t working out as planned in Dublin.
Killer Lillis fled Ireland immediately following his release in April 2015. He was met by photographers and journalists at Dublin Airport the morning of his release from Wheatfield Prison.
The father-of-one came back to Ireland in January and was seen driving around in a Limerick-registered Mini Cooper, and furniture shopping for his new home. The cottage is modest compared with the plush €1.5m Rowan Hill property in Howth, which he shared with Ms Cawley before she died.
Lillis was able to call on a €1.3m fund he acquired while serving his jail term in Wheatfield Prison.
The fund included the €425,000 share he received from the sale of the marital home and €385,000 from the winding down of the TV company Ms Cawley established.
Lillis was jailed for six years and 11 months in February 2010, but served just under five years and two months. He killed his wife during a row at their house on Windgate Road in Howth in December 2008. Lillis had originally claimed that an intruder had murdered his wife; it was not until the first day of a three-week trial he conceded there was no intruder.