Wife killer Lillis got huge cash windfall after inheriting house
INFAMOUS wife-killer Eamonn Lillis was a very wealthy man after inheriting property owned by Celine Cawley, whom he beat to death with a brick in 2008.
A court found Lillis was still entitled to 50 per cent share of the Howth home that he had co-owned with his victim after she had died.
The 1965 Succession Act bars anyone from benefiting from killing their spouse – but the law wasn’t completely clear in the case of joint tenancy of a family home.
Their daughter Georgia fought the killer in the courts to gain control of her mother’s estate, but judges ruled that, despite being responsible for her death, Lillis was entitled to his halfinterests in any joint assets.
The home was sold for €850,000 in 2012, with Lillis also benefiting to the tune of hundreds of thousands of euro after claiming his share of Celine’s successful company Toytown Productions and her pension.
Celine and her killer also owned a luxury €800,000 villa in Biarritz, France with the contract signed when the home was purchased stating that, after the death of one of them, ownership would wholly transfer to the other. Georgia again took her estranged father to court. This time French judges ruled that Georgia, rather than Lillis, should own the property.