Defendant cross-examines witness after axing legal team
A MOTHER was crossexamined yesterday by the man accused of murdering her son at the Central Criminal Court, where she told him she believed another man was involved in the killing.
However, Angela Finnegan, mother of murdered Philip Finnegan, also agreed with prosecution counsel Brendan Grehan SC that the person she referred to was in Portlaoise Prison at the time her son went missing.
The accused, Stephen Penrose, has dismissed his legal team and is representing himself in his murder trial.
Buried
Opening the trial, Mr
Grehan had said that
24- year- old Finnegan’s decapitated body was found buried in a shallow grave in a Kildare woods.
The lawyer also told the jury in his opening a ddress attempts had been made to cut up and burn the body of Mr Finnegan, who had been missing f or almost a month and who had met a “g ruesome death”.
The barrister said the jury would hear evidence that a bloodied glove was found in the woods which was a DNA match to Mr Penrose. Mr Penrose ( 38), of Newtown Cou r t ,
Malahide Road, Coolock, Dublin 17, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Finnegan (24) at Rahin Woods, near Edenderry, Co Kildare on August 10, 2016.
Giving evidence today, Mrs Finnegan told Mr Grehan that she lived at Mary Aikenhead House, on James’s Street in Dublin 8 and was the mother of six children. Philip was her second eldest child and he was the father of three very young children, she said.
She agreed that Philip had “certain problems over the years” and had made friends with Mr Penrose in August 2016.
Mrs Finnegan said she had met Mr Penrose briefly when he had previously called to her flat.
In cross- examination, Mr Penrose apologised t o Mrs Finnegan for having to question her.
But he put it to her that she had told gardai in her statement about a “slagging match” between a named man and her son.
Mrs Finnegan told Mr Penrose she remembered that.
Mr Penrose then read a portion of Mrs Finnegan’s statement to her, which she had given to gardai:
“[A named man] is a relation of someone in Portlaoise Prison who threatened him.
“A few months later Philip got a call from this person in Portlaoise Prison. I was standing beside Philip when he got the call.
“The man just said to Philip that he was going to take him off the map and have his head blown off.” Following this, he asked Mrs Finnegan if she now believed that [the named man’s] cousin in Portlaoise Prison was involved in any way in the murder of Philip.
“Yes I do,” she replied.
Allegation
Mr Penrose told the judge that the “case is made up totally of this allegation”. In re- examination, Mr Grehan asked Mrs Finnegan if the person she referred to in Portlaoise Prison had been in the prison during the time that her son disappeared.
“Yes, he was in Portlaoise Prison during the time Philip went missing,” she replied.
The witness said she would have been in regular phone contact with her son Philip and he was “in good form” when she last saw him at around 10.15am on August 10.
Philip told her that morning he was going out to meet Mr Penrose.
When asked by Mr Grehan what was the last thing Philip had said to her, Mrs Finnegan replied: “I’ll see you later, ma.”