From a gruesome find in Wicklow to a seven-week murder trial
A CHANCE discovery by a family enjoying a picnic near the Sally Gap led to one of the most disturbing murder trials in the recent history of the state.
On June 10, 2017, a woman spotted what she thought was ‘a piece of a pig’ over a bank at the side of the road but thought no more of it until she and her family stumbled upon it a second time while looking for a stolen handbag.
At that point, the family summoned the gardaí to the scene along the Military Road in Enniskerry and kick-started a gruesome search.
The same day, walkers had discovered what they thought were animal organs near Glenmacnass Waterfall. The following day, when they heard a radio report of a body part being found in the area, they returned to the scene and called gardaí.
The shock reverberated throughout Wicklow as gardaí descended on this quiet, beautiful part of the county and yet more body parts were found between June 11 and 14.
At first, it was believed that the remains were that of a young man in his mid- to late20s but when Kieran Greene walked into Rathfarnham Garda Station on June 12, the true nature of this horrifying crime became clear.
Over seven weeks of winter, the contrasts of Patricia O’Connor’s formidable personality were outlined for a Central Criminal Court jury. The retired hospital worker was a ‘straight shooter’, her son had set-out, ‘a determined lady’.
‘If you were in the wrong, she would tell you were in the wrong and if you needed a kick in the arse, she’d give you one,’ Richard O’Connor told the trial.
At 61, Patricia remained in good fettle. Richard described an active person who was ‘handy in the garden’ and ‘physically very competent’, despite her small stature.
The man who shared her home for 10 years before bludgeoning her to death and dismembering her body, however, painted a less-varnished portrait. Life with Patricia O’Connor, Kieran Greene told interviewing detectives, had been ‘a nightmare’.
Greene told gardai that his partner’s mother was a verbally abusive person who had threatened to have his family killed. She also told his daughters that they should be raped, Greene had claimed.
The children in the house would hide under the kitchen table in fear of her and she would throw out their Christmas toys, Greene said. Patricia had called them all ‘leeches’ and would not let them get mattresses for their beds, he told gardai.
It was with a description of this highly-charged home life that the prosecution team opened their case to the jury.
Inside the modest Rathfarnham house, nine people and three generations of the same family shared four bedrooms. Patricia O’Connor shared her home with her husband Gus, their daughter Louise and her partner of ten years Kieran Greene along with their three young children. Louise’s two older children with her previous partner, Keith Johnston, were also living in the four-bedroom house.
Senior counsel Roisin Lacey told the jury that the living conditions in Mountainview Park were cramped and tensions were high. It was stressful, she said, and there were ‘interpersonal conflicts’ between the family.
Richard O’Connor conceded there had been a ‘fair bit of friction’ in the ‘packed’ house, which he said stemmed from his sister Louise and her family living there and not helping out with the usual upkeep. His mother had worked as a cleaner in Beaumont Hospital and ‘hated laziness’, he explained.
Richard told the court that as his mother had not contacted him for his birthday on May 30, he got in touch with his sister Louise the next day to find out if everything was alright. Louise told him that their mother had taken a suitcase and ‘stormed out of the house in anger’ on the evening of May 29, following an argument.
Louise described to Richard that she had heard her mother shouting abuse and saying ‘I’ll be back when that old fella pops his clogs’ in a reference to their father Gus. As he had not heard from his mother, Richard O’Connor called to Mountainview Park two days later and met with Louise, their father Gus and Kieran Greene.
Richard and his father agreed that they would report his mother as missing to gardai. Louise, he said, did not want them to report anything. Despite her objections, Richard and Gus went to Rathfarnham Garda Station on June 1 and made a missing person report.
A GRIM DISCOVERY
On the evening of June 10, a family having a picnic at a place called Old Boley close to the Sally Gap in Wicklow made a grim discovery. Witness Christine Murphy described how she ‘came across something’ over a bank at the side of the road.
It was a human torso, which she described as looking like animal remains.
On the same day, two walkers at Glenmacnass Waterfall saw what they thought were animal organs on a rock on the embankment. In all, the trial heard that 15 separate body parts were found at nine different locations over a 30km range in the Dublin and Wicklow mountains between June 10 and 14.
At the time, gardai believed the body parts belonged to a male in his twenties, as initial measurements of the bones indicated as much.
Former Deputy State Pathologist, Dr Michael Curtis, gave evidence that he performed post-mortems on the parts that were recovered. It was his opinion that the deceased’s head was struck a minimum of three blows with a solid implement, resulting in five scalp lacerations. He gave the cause of death as being blunt force trauma to the head.
There were no defensive wounds on the body.
WANTED THEM ALL DEAD
Late on the evening of June 12, Garda PJ Foley noticed a man ‘of nervous disposition’ sitting alone in the waiting room of Rathfarnham Garda Station. The man came to the front desk of the station and said he wanted to speak to someone in charge. He told Gda Foley that the body parts found up the mountains were those of Mrs O’Connor.
Giving his name as Kieran Greene, the man described having a physical row with Patricia O’Connor in the bathroom of their house, whereby she hit him with a hurley and he reacted by pushing her and she fell back. The accused man said there was blood everywhere and he had taken her body up the mountains when she became unresponsive.
The member in charge of the station that evening, Detective Sergeant Lucy Myles, said that Greene told her he had ‘done something terrible’ to his partner’s mother. ‘The stuff up the mountains was me,’ he had said. Greene told Det Sgt Myles that he had scattered the body parts in the Dublin mountains, cut them up and ‘threw them all over the place up there’.
When Kieran Greene was asked why he had killed Patricia O’Connor, he replied: ‘I was getting out of the shower when she came in and she started shouting and screaming at me. She then picked up one of the kid’s hurls outside the bathroom door and started hitting me. I grabbed it and hit her back. Next thing I remember is coming around and she was lying on the floor with blood everywhere.’
In several voluntary statements to gardai on June 12 and 13, Kieran Greene described to gardai what had happened next.
He said that after Mrs O’Connor became unresponsive, he carried her upstairs to her bedroom, something he described as a ‘bleeding miracle’ as she was heavier than he was. An hour later he put her in the boot of her own Toyota Corolla car and drove her to Wexford, where he dug a shallow grave and covered her with clay.
Greene said he began to panic a few days later that a farmer would find the body, so he returned to Wexford to ‘cut her up’ using a hacksaw before he scattered the body parts and the tools in the mountains.
Kieran Greene told gardai that what had happened ‘was eating him up’, that he could not sleep and felt ‘sick, weird and horrible.’ He said he had handed himself in as he could not live with the guilt and he ‘kept seeing’ his children’s faces.
Greene claimed he was the only one involved in the physical altercation and had acted alone in removing Patricia O’Connor’s body from the house, burying her and subsequently returning to dismember her.
On June 13, on the same day that Patricia O’Connor’s remains were identified using dental records, Kieran Greene brought gardai to the corn field at Killeagh, in Blackwater, Co Wexford to show them where he had buried the body. He was asked by gardai to wait at the gate as they walked into the field to observe the disturbed earth.
Greene was arrested at 7.30pm that night for murdering Mrs O’Connor after gardai found ‘light brown hair’ in the shallow grave. Forensic evidence indicated ‘moderate support’ for the hair having originated from Mrs O’Connor.
In his interviews with gardai, Greene described the ‘nightmare of a life’ inside the house at Mountainview Park and claimed that Patricia O’Connor had wanted them all dead, ‘down to the kids’. He believed she had tried to kill her husband Gus on a previous occasion by pushing him down the stairs.
Greene said he ‘felt free’ after burying her as his kids would now be safe and their grandmother would no longer be able to pick on them.
Referring to his partner Louise, Kieran Greene said she was allergic to penicillin and on occasion suffered a reaction after taking a sip of coke. ‘Within minutes her lips swelled up. I think she [Patricia O’Connor] was trying to kill us but couldn’t prove it,’ he said, adding that they would all be safer if she was gone.
When Kieran Greene was formally charged with the murder of Mrs O’Connor, he replied: ‘It was self-defence’.
During the trial, Richard O’Connor agreed with Kieran Greene’s defence counsel that he had described the accused as ‘a fool and a moron’. His sister Louise, he said, ‘wore the
GREENE SAID HE BEGAN TO PANIC A FEW DAYS LATER THAT A FARMER WOULD FIND THE BODY, SO HE RETURNED TO WEXFORD TO ‘CUT HER UP’ USING A HACKSAW BEFORE HE SCATTERED THE BODY PARTS AND THE TOOLS IN THE MOUNTAINS
trousers’ in that relationship.
Kieran Greene’s mother Joan Greene gave evidence that her son had received extra tuition at primary school level and an assessment at seven years old found him to be about ‘two and a half years behind’. She also said that he had no previous girlfriends prior to meeting Louise.
A RUSE
As part of the investigation, gardai took possession of CCTV footage from a neighbour’s house which became ‘a central plank’ of the prosecution’s case. The system covered both the front and back of Mrs O’Connor’s home and the evidence differed as to whether the family were aware there were cameras covering both entrances.
When gardai showed Louise clips from her neighbour’s CCTV camera, which offered a view of the rear of the O’Connor’s house, she expressed surprise: ‘Nice. Is that not against the law, recording into our house? Invasion of privacy or something? F**king disgraceful.’
However, in her third interview with gardai, Stephanie claimed she was aware her neighbour’s CCTV camera covered their front and back garden.
It was the prosecution case that Patricia was murdered between 6.37pm and 6.57pm on May 29. CCTV footage showed Louise O’Connor, her daughter Stephanie and the younger children leaving the house at 6.53pm on May 29 and not returning again until 9.04pm.
Further footage showed a female dressed in a hooded jacket leaving the front entrance of the house at 9.34pm and walking quickly down the driveway with a suitcase in her hand. At 10.05pm that night, a female with a suitcase appeared at the left-hand side of the house and went in the back door.
It was the State’s case that, in order to cover up the murder, Stephanie O’Connor dressed up as her grandmother as ‘a ruse’ to pretend she had stormed out of the house on the night of May 29. The prosecution’s contention was that Mrs O’Connor was already dead in the house at the time.
In September 2017, Louise, Stephanie and Gus O’Connor were arrested on suspicion of murdering Mrs O’Connor. Louise began her interviews by protesting that she did not understand the reason for her arrest: ‘You have someone for murder, he put his hands up’.
Her mother, she told officers, had been ‘extremely hard to live with’ since her retirement from her job in Beaumont Hospital the previous year, and she said the family were ‘constantly on eggshells’ around her.
She gave a similar account to her partner of life in Mountainview Park. ‘There are nine people in the house, getting a shower is like a miracle,’ she remarked.
Louise said that her mother would tell her and her daughter Stephanie ‘every day’ that they should have been ‘aborted’ and that they were ‘retarded’. She claimed her mother had tried to ‘beat the head off her’ with a teapot on May 29 and there were also arguments about Patricia O’Connor smoking cannabis.
She said Mrs O’Connor ‘kicked the cat around the house’ and would tell her and her children that they were retarded and to leave. Mr Greene, she said, ‘got it’ from her mother as well.
Louise told detectives that she [Louise] was diagnosed with Graves’ disease four or five years previously. ‘Ma said I could use ‘Graves’ rage’ to kill my father and we’d split the proceeds. I said no way, I’m not going to prison,’ she said.
Nevertheless, at one point in her interviews Louise told gardai: ‘Despite everything I really loved my mother and it’s really tough.’
Louise said that on the evening of May 29, she went with her children and her father to Nutgrove Park as she did not want to fight with her mother. She couldn’t say what time they all got home but was in the toilet when she heard the door slam and her mother leaving the house, she outlined.
‘She was always getting up and going off, she was shouting ‘I’ll be back when the bastard pops his clogs’,’ – a reference to her husband Gus. Louise added that she ‘hadn’t a clue’ where her mother was going to and that she did not call after her.
Two weeks later they found out Mr Greene had killed her mother, Louise said. He told her he had ‘lost it’ and that her mother had lashed out at him with a hurl. He said he was sorry for having hurt her mother and did not mean to do it. Louise said Greene told her he had to hand himself in as he could not live with it.
Asked why Kieran Greene was seen on CCTV footage closing the curtains when she and her children left the house to go to the park, the motherof-five replied: ‘Why you asking me, maybe he is dancing around naked after the shower’.
‘If you are saying we left so he could do something, you’re sadly mistaken’. She called Mr Greene ‘a fucking nut’, who she said had destroyed their family.
Pressed by detectives as to why she left the house to go to the park in the evening time, Louise replied that she wanted ‘to get peace from my mum’. She denied she had left the house to get ‘permanent peace’.
Louise also denied to gardai that the person recorded walking out the front door of the house at 9.34pm was her daughter Stephanie. ‘I know my mother left the house, I heard her shouting,’ she insisted.
Gardai put to her that the footage in fact showed Stephanie walking out of the house. ‘That’s my ma walking out,’ she replied, adding that if her mother had been dead when she got home, she would have ‘punched Kieran’s lights out’.
Louise’s defence team, led by senior counsel Michael Bowman, had argued there was ‘no smoking gun establishing her guilt’ but Ms Lacey reminded the jury: ‘Louise is quite clear that it is her mother leaving the house, there is no equivocation, no ambiguity and no margin for error’.
Despite there being no direct evidence of Louise acquiescing to her daughter disguising herself, the prosecution said the jury could infer this from the coincidence in timing. Louise was seen on CCTV walking out of the house a minute after the female figure left at 9.34pm and again five minutes before the figure returned.
If the jury were satisfied that the person leaving with the suitcase was Stephanie then what Louise had told gardai was a lie and she was a ‘vital link’ in the contrivance, the prosecution said.
In a voluntary statement to gardai in June 2017, Stephanie O’Connor described how her grandmother had retired a year earlier and only rarely ventured outside. ‘When she had good days she was great, when she had bad times she was terrible,’ she said.
She said that Patricia ‘sucked the life out’ of Louise and made life very difficult, adding that her grandmother hung over them the fact that she could throw them out of the house at anytime. She said Patricia O’Connor liked to make people unhappy.
In her September interviews, Stephanie said it was ‘surreal’ when the ‘truth came out’ and Mr Greene told her mother what had happened. She said she felt ‘confused, shocked and angry’, when she found out what had happened to her grandmother and had avoided the newspapers.
Stephanie told gardai that she was the person recorded going back into the house with the suitcase at 10.05pm. She said she was was bringing in a bag from the shed for her mother but could not remember how she got out there. Richard O’Connor also identified his niece Stephanie as the person going into the rear of the house and closing the back door behind her.
Stephanie denied to gardai that she had killed or assisting anyone in killing her grandmother.
Keith Johnston said he was aware of a ‘big blow up’ in Mountainview on May 29. He said he fixed a step and tiles in the bathroom of the house but did not get Mr Greene to help as he is ‘useless’.
‘I kind of thought when doing that, that I could be potentially cleaning up a crime scene. There was a nagging thought in the back of my head but I thought nothing of it,’ Johnston told gardai.
In the course of the trial, the jury also viewed CCTV footage of Kieran Greene purchasing a number of tools, in the company of Keith Johnston, in several DIY shops on June 9.
Greene bought 30 extra-strong black rubbish sacks,
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