Two Traveller families broke off all contact with each other when a young woman from one family refused to marry a young man from the other family, a widow has told the trial of six men accused of murdering her husband at a funeral in Kerry.
Siobhán Dooley said there was no falling out between her late husband, Tom (43) and his cousin and brother-in-law, Tom Dooley (43) but they simply stopped communicating when their daughter refused to marry his cousin Tom’s son, Thomas Jnr (21).
“We never had a falling out – the trouble only started when [one of my daughters] refused to marry Tom Dooley’s son, Thomas (of the Dooleys of Carrigrohane Road in Cork) – we were not speaking, we never fell out, we just never spoke, there were no words, it was a clean break.”
The revelation that contacts ceased between the two families in 2019 came as Ms Dooley was questioned by defence counsel Brendan Grehan SC on the third day of the trial of six men accused of the murder of Tom Dooley at Rath Cemetery, Tralee, Co Kerry on October 5th 2022.
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The six accused are Patrick Dooley (36) of Arbutus Grove, Killarney, Daniel Dooley (42) of An Carraigin, Connolly Park, Tralee, Thomas Dooley Snr (43), Thomas Dooley Jnr (21) and Michael Dooley (29) of Carrigrohane Road, Cork and a teenager who can’t be named for legal reasons.
Opening the prosecution case earlier, Dean Kelly SC had explained that the deceased and the accused, who all deny the charge of murder, were members of an extended Traveller family and one of the accused, Patrick Dooley was the brother of the man that he is accused of murdering.
Three of his fellow accused, Thomas Dooley Snr, Daniel Dooley and Michael Dooley from the Carrigrohane Road in Cork, are brothers to each other and they were all cousins of the deceased while Thomas Dooley Snr was also a brother-in-law of the deceased.
Thomas Dooley Jnr, the only one of the accused to face a charge of causing serious harm to the deceased’s widow, Siobhán Dooley (née McDonagh), is a son of fellow accused Thomas Dooley Snr and also related to the deceased, Mr Kelly told the jury of 13 men and two women.
Today in cross-examination, Mr Grehan SC put it to Ms Dooley that his client Patrick Dooley had gone to help his brother when he saw him being attacked by some of the Cork Dooleys and he had no weapon and was wounded trying to protect his brother rather than attacking him.
“That is a lie. He is lying,” said Ms Dooley, adding that she clearly saw Patrick, whom she knew well, as he was her husband’s brother, attacking her husband along with his co-accused Tom Dooley (Thomas Snr) and others after they knocked him to the ground in Rath Cemetery.
“Patrick had a weapon in his hand, it could have been a knife, it could have been a sword, I can’t be sure – it was a bladed weapon,” said Ms Dooley as she revealed she had tried to blank out the detail what had happened when “they were murdering my husband in front of my eyes”.
When Mr Grehan put it to Ms Dooley that she had either remembered events incorrectly or was deliberately telling untruths about Patrick’s involvement, she replied forcefully that she was sure in her recollection, and she saw Patrick “laughing as he was cutting my husband”.
Ms Dooley, when asked by counsel for Tom Dooley (Thomas Snr), Tom Creed SC how big were the weapons she said his client was carrying, replied that she wasn’t trying to be “sarcastic or smart” but she didn’t measure the two weapons Tom Dooley used to attack her husband.
When Mr Creed put it to Ms Dooley that the pathologist said her husband had been stabbed four times, she said she didn’t know how many times he was wounded. “Tom (Thomas Snr) struck him in the legs and the blood just shooted [sic] up into the air – it was like a spray button.”
She said that she was knocked to the ground after she tried to put herself between her husband and Tom Dooley and, as she lay on the ground, she saw Tom Dooley and Patrick Dooley hitting her husband in the legs with weapons and cutting him. The case continues.
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