From a gruesome find to a seven-week murder trial
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two pairs of builders’ brick gloves, a tenon saw, two adjustable hacksaws and a light-duty protection sheet in B&Q. He purchased two small fibreglass-handled axes each with a 600-gram head and knife blades in Woodies. Two pairs of green wellington boots in size nines were bought in Shoe Zone in Tallaght and a jerry can, a tow rope, two knives and vinyl tape were purchased in Mr Price.
It was the prosecution’s case that Mrs O’Connor was still in the shallow grave and had not yet been dismembered when Keith Johnston assisted Greene in purchasing these tools.
In his interviews, Keith Johnston agreed that he went on a ‘shopping spree’ with Kieran Greene the day before the first part of Mrs O’Connor’s remains were found but he told gardai that he had not ‘put two and two together’ and did not know why Kieran Greene bought these items.
Keith Johnston said he was in Mountainview Park on June 12, when Kieran Greene started to cry and told his family that he had killed Mrs O’Connor. ‘I said to him he was going to have to hand himself in. What else he going to do, he couldn’t go on the run,’ said Keith Johnston.
A SEA-CHANGE
Six months after his original confession, and while he was on remand in Cloverhill Prison, Kieran Greene asked to see gardai ‘to get something off his chest’, in what the prosecution described as a ‘sea-change’ in the case.
On December 12, 2017, Greene told gardai what he had originally said in June was not correct and that other family members had been involved in the death of Patricia O’Connor.
He recounted again how Mrs O’Connor had attacked him in bathroom with a hurley and hit him in the arm, stomach and side. ‘We were grabbing and struggling with the hurl and I got it off her and hit her about two times I’d say. She grabbed the hurl again and she was hitting me with the two of us holding it. She got it back, winded me in the stomach and I went down on the ground,’ he explained.
However, Greene went on to tell gardai that at this point he heard Gus O’Connor come down the stairs. He said Mr O’Connor admonished his wife and asked: ‘What the fuck are you doing?’. He said Mrs O’Connor swung the hurley in an attempt to hit Gus but missed.
Greene claimed Gus hit Patricia twice on the head with a crowbar and she fell on the bathroom floor. When she hit the bathroom floor, Greene said Mr O’Connor told him: ‘I’m defending you so you can take the rap for this.’ He said they both panicked and he brought her body upstairs to the bedroom.
A few minutes afterwards, Greene said Louise came down the stairs after hearing the noise and they told her what happened. ‘She said we can’t leave her here and we brought her back down the stairs and put her in the boot of the Corolla,’ he said. Kieran Greene said he got a shovel and drove to Wexford, where he he dug a hole and buried her on farmland.
When he returned to the house, Greene claimed Louise was cleaning the bathroom and he told her that her mother was buried.
Greene also told gardai that Keith Johnston was informed a day or two later and he had asked him for help as he had ‘never been in this predicament before’. He said Johnston had assisted him in buying various tools in DIY stores on June 9.
Later that night, he and Johnston drove to Wexford and dug the body up, he said. Greene alleged that Johnston then spent three to four hours dismembering the body with a saw before the two of them disposed of the body parts in black bags up the Wicklow mountains.
Greene said Johnston told him: ‘I know this is on you brother. I’ve a background in drugs and can’t get into anymore trouble.’ Greene said he was persuaded to take the blame and Johnston told him: ‘They will probably go easy on you.’
He said Johnston had later disposed of the tools in Dodder Valley Park in Tallaght and burnt the clothes they had been wearing.
As a result of the December interview, gardai searched Dodder Valley Park on January 2, 2018 and found two hacksaws and a hatchet within the undergrowth. One of the hacksaws had human hair caught in the blade, which was forensically linked to Mrs O’Connor.
A day or two later, Johnston came to the house and scraped the grout off the tiles in the bathroom and painted walls in the house, Kieran Greene said. He also said Stephanie O’Connor had dressed up as her grandmother to make it look like Patricia O’Connor had gone missing.
Kieran Greene told gardai that he was persuaded to take the blame for killing and dismembering his partner’s mother, saying: ‘We all agreed I take the blame, why I don’t know’.
He said he felt like this was all planned and he was ‘set up’, as his girlfriend Louise subsequently started going back out with her ex-partner Keith Johnston.
Furthermore, Greene told gardai: ‘It’s not fair, I’m facing a murder trial. They are out there and I’m taking the rap for it. The only reason I didn’t say anything sooner was because I was afraid for the kids, now if they get arrested the kids will go up to me Ma and Da and sister.’
The jury of six men and five women agreed with the prosecution case that Greene carried out a sustained attack on the retired grandmother and that his claim of self-defence ‘did not hold any water’. The State had told the jury that Greene’s December interview was not reliable and not something the jury could safely act upon. They argued that he had changed his account as he was ‘jealous’ and believed there was ‘a growing relationship’ between Louise O’Connor and her former partner Keith Johnston.
The trial also heard evidence that Johnston’s mobile phone ‘tallied’ with CCTV footage and had pinged off a mast near his house in Tallaght on the night of June 9, when Greene alleged the dismemberment took place.
The jury were also told that Augustine ‘Gus’ O’Connor was originally part of the trial but that he had pleaded guilty to reporting his wife as a missing person to gardai at Rathfarnham Garda Station on June 1, 2017, knowing she was already dead.
The jury heard that Mr O’Connor (75) of Mill Close, Glasheen, Stamullen, Co Meath had originally been charged with impeding the apprehension or prosecution of an offender in October 2018.
A charge of refurbishing the bathroom in order to conceal evidence of the murder against Keith Johnston was withdrawn from the jury by direction of the trial judge Mr Justice Paul McDermott.