I’m a victim in this, says murder accused Brady
Accused of the shooting of Adrian Donohoe, Aaron Brady blamed gardai and the media, reports Robin Schiller
AVICTIM of the media and the gardai is how murder accused Aaron Brady described himself from the witness box in Court 19 of the Criminal Courts of Justice last week.
Over five days, the 29-yearold repeatedly denied any involvement in the fatal shooting of Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe and robbery at Lordship credit union on January 25, 2013.
Lies were told, he admitted, in the aftermath of the killing as he accounted for his movements to gardai the following day and again 10 days later when giving a voluntary statement to detectives.
He initially claimed he arrived in the yard at 155 Concession Road, south Armagh, at 8pm that night but failed to start a forklift and left 15 minutes later to go to a friend’s house. He now says this was not correct and that he was at the yard for around 90 minutes half-loading a trailer of laundered diesel cubes.
The “untruths” he told gardai in the days after the murder were simply to hide the fact he was involved in illegal diesel laundering activity, he said. “Not for one second did I think gardai would be serious about me being involved in the murder of Adrian Donohoe,” Aaron Brady told the jury about his interactions with them in early 2013.
Brady, who denies capital murder, told his defence counsel Michael O’Higgins SC that he was in a “state of depression” after articles started appearing in newspapers linking him to the fatal shooting.
Aaron Brady recalled one night out in Dublin when his mother rang him, “roaring crying” that his pixelated image was on the front of a Sunday newspaper and said that the media attention caused a fallout within the local community. He said this caused him to travel to the US in April 2013.
Last Tuesday morning, prosecution counsel Brendan Grehan SC began his examination of the accused, putting to him: “You’re the victim in all of this, is that right?”
Brady said he would suggest he is; that the gardai had ganged up on him and that he had been the victim of the media.
In a later exchange, Brendan Grehan put it to Brady that, not only was he an admitted liar, but a compulsive liar who lied about big things and small things. This was denied by the accused. Counsel took Aaron Brady through the week leading up to the robbery and murder at Lordship credit union.
He denied testing garda response times five nights earlier and also said that, while he could not remember where he was three nights before the murder, he was certain he did not take part in the theft of a car in Clogherhead that was later used in the crime.
Recalling the day of the robbery, he said he spent the afternoon with Suspect A and Suspect B, two men the prosecution say were also involved but cannot be named for legal reasons. They went to buy food in a service station in Monaghan at lunchtime and Suspect A’s car was later seen passing by Lordship credit union at 1.47pm, at which time Aaron Brady said it was likely he was in the car.
It is the prosecution’s case that this was a drive-by, in advance of the events going to happen later that night, by three of the people involved Aaron Brady, Suspect A and Suspect B.
Brady said that, if he was there, he is “absolutely certain it was not a drive-by” or a scoping exercise.
Later that night, between 8.30pm and 10.30pm, phones linked to all three men were inactive while the device of a fourth suspect in the case was also not in use at that time. The murder of Adrian Donohoe happened at 9.25pm.
Aaron Brady gave evidence that he could not control what the other suspects did with their phones and said he was not in their company. He was, he said, at the yard on his own, moving laundered diesel cubes.
Last Thursday CCTV footage of the moment the robbery took place was played in court, with Brady asked if he would agree it was a “very slick” raid carried out
in under a minute. He said he wouldn’t agree but did say that from looking at the footage, it happened very fast. He could not say if four men seen jumping over the credit union wall and running towards the vehicles in the car park moved like young men.
An enhanced audio recording, taken from the dashcam of credit union worker Pat Bellew’s car, was also played to the court.
A man can be heard shouting: “Give me the f **king bag, give me the f **king money.”
The accused said he could not say if the man’s voice was a border or local accent as he could not make it out.
Phone records show that Aaron Brady and Suspect B spoke twice a short time after their phones became active again that night. The calls lasted around one minute each, but the accused could
not recall what they spoke about. Last Friday, Brendan Grehan SC said he was moving across the Atlantic to the evidence given via-video link by two witnesses living in the US who said they heard the accused admit to shooting a guard in Ireland.
Molly Staunton testified that Brady was intoxicated and ranting when he confessed to shooting a cop while they were in the New York apartment he shared with Staunton’s then-boyfriend in the summer of 2016.
Brady accepted that she was a truthful witness doing her best and agreed with aspects of her account, but said she was mistaken about him saying he had shot a cop and denied making any admissions. He also said the word ‘cop’ was not in his vocabulary and that he would use either ‘guard’ or ‘police’.
“The fact is I didn’t shoot Adrian Donohoe, I didn’t shoot anybody,” he said.
He told the jury he recalled the incident in the New York apartment, saying he was angry because two gardai had called to a house in Kerry where the parents of his wife Danielle Healy lived, and “blackened” him. Counsel also asked Brady if he told Molly Staunton he was “the most feared man in Ireland”.
Brady laughed when this was put to him, saying: “I definitely didn’t say that, that’s ridiculous.” He described Molly Staunton as a “nice girl” but that she was “mistaken on a lot of things”.
Separately Daniel Cahill, a Dublin man living in New York, gave evidence that on three occasions he heard Aaron Brady making admissions.
Brady accepted he was involved in a fight at the Bronx bar where Cahill worked but denied saying he threatened to shoot the man who assaulted him, and that he had shot a member of An Garda Siochana in Ireland.
He has also accused Daniel Cahill and three other men of breaking into his apartment on March 17, 2015, and assaulting him before threatening to cut off his toes. The allegation was vehemently denied by Cahill. This dispute, the court heard, was allegedly over a threesome involving the accused, his friend, and the girlfriend of an associate of Cahill. Aaron Brady said this never happened.
He repeatedly denied the conversations with Cahill ever took place and described him as “a liar” and a “psychopath”.
Counsel put it that a psychopath is someone with “no morality, no empathy, that blames others, manipulates others and lies to get out of any situation, playing the victim” and suggested Brady “look closer to home” at the description. The accused said this was not the case for him.
The trial continues.
‘The fact is I didn’t shoot anybody’