AN OCCASIONALLY tearful Eamonn Lillis, who is accused of murdering his wife, Celine Cawley, at their home in Howth, Co Dublin, said yesterday he had no reason to believe she had been seriously injured after a violent row between them.
The 52-year-old TV advertising director took the stand at the Central Criminal Court as the defence opened its case on the ninth day of the trial. Dressed in his usual charcoal grey suit, black tie and off-white shirt, he was asked to slow down and speak up on several occasions.
He claimed that while his wife lay on the patio with her head “cut and bleeding”, she was conscious and he had suggested they tell their 16-year-old daughter there had been a burglar.
Ms Cawley had then sat up, said “yeah yeah” and waved her hand at him. When he asked her if she was okay, she said “F off and leave me alone – go away, go away . . . ”
At that stage, he said, he felt they needed some time apart and left her to go inside to wash and change his blood-soaked clothes and set up a robbery scene. When he looked out to the patio about 10 to 12 minutes later, he saw her lying on the ground.
His voice briefly thickened with emotion as he told counsel that he went out to her, knelt down beside her and called her name.
He had lied in his call to the ambulance service about a burglar, “because that’s what I told Celine we were going to say . . . I did check her pulse and carried out CPR”, he said, brushing away a tear.
“I wasn’t sure how seriously injured she was. I didn’t want people to know we had a fight . . .”
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