Closing in on Rachel's killer

Speculation about the arrest and release of a suspect this week threatened to turn the Rachel O'Reilly murder case into a media…

Speculation about the arrest and release of a suspect this week threatened to turn the Rachel O'Reilly murder case into a media circus. But by sticking to the evidence, gardaí hope to find the killer, reports Conor Lally

It was just after 10.30 p.m. on Wednesday night when the chief suspect in the Rachel O'Reilly murder case emerged from Drogheda Garda Station after 12 hours of questioning. Two men had come to collect him. All three walked out the front door of the station, making their way through the waiting media scrum to their car.

TV cameras were thrust in their faces and flashes lit up the night air as photographers scrambled to capture images. Journalists shouted questions, hoping for a comment, any comment. Everybody was under immense pressure to satisfy the insatiable appetite, of the public and media organisations, for any fresh snippets of information on the case.

Journalists working on the story of the murder of Rachel O'Reilly, a 30-year-old mother of two, have been fielding as many calls from family and friends looking for updates as they have from their news desks. Some newspapers sent round-the-clock teams of photographers to the suspect's house before his arrest and to Garda stations where they believed he might be questioned. When the suspect was arrested at his north Co Dublin house at 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday, the photographers were waiting.

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The word in media circles is that one tabloid's circulation increased by around 30,000 every day it put a picture of the dead woman on its front page. Unsurprisingly, Rachel O'Reilly's image has graced that particular front page many times since her murder.

Later that day, when news broke that the suspect was being held at Drogheda, members of the public began to assemble outside the Garda station. By 10.30 p.m., when the suspect's 12-hour period of detention expired, around 60 onlookers had gathered. Some had waited in the cold for four hours. Others, bizarrely, had brought their young children along.

When the suspect emerged with his companions the trio made their way to their car, parked nearby. With everybody looking on, the car wouldn't start for a few seconds. One woman began laughing hysterically and then shouted repeatedly into the vehicle: "Who did it, who did it?"

The events had become a circus.

This was an important week for gardaí investigating the murder. Senior officers who spoke to The Irish Times after the release of the chief suspect and two other people - a 36-year-old woman and a 44-year-old man, whom gardaí believe are withholding information - remained positive. Much had been gained by questioning the three people, they said, and information had been gathered which would help the case. The investigation would go on for as long as it took and, officers stressed, gardaí would get a result.

SOME 35 DETECTIVES from the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation and local gardaí in the Fingal area have been working on the investigation for nearly seven weeks since Rachel O'Reilly's murder at her home in Baldarragh, near Naul village in Co Dublin, on the morning of October 4th. They have repeatedly interviewed the suspect and the two other people arrested this week. They have informally spoken to numerous people known to the three. They have also spoken to Rachel O'Reilly's family.

Gardaí have searched north Co Dublin and routes into the city for CCTV images which might put the suspect's car near the murder scene when he claims he was elsewhere. The murder scene was searched by forensic experts for a week.

Information gathered during this exercise was put to the suspect on Wednesday. The other two arrested people were questioned at length during their 36 hours in detention. Clearly, gardaí did not find out enough to convince the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) they should charge the suspect. However, gardaí remain convinced they will get more evidence.

The weeks since the murder have been characterised by some speculative, even wild, reporting in some of the media. The public has had difficulty knowing which information they should believe and which they should discount.

The truth of the murder, as gardaí see it, is as follows.

Rachel O'Reilly dropped her two children, aged two and four, to crèche and school on Monday, October 4th. She returned home and was killed at the house at around 9.30 a.m. The alarm was raised when she failed to turn up at the crèche to collect her youngest child later in the morning.

Gardaí believe the killer planned the murder well in advance. It was not a snap decision. He operated alone and killed Rachel O'Reilly by hitting her over the head a number of times with a blunt instrument. He then cleaned blood away with towels now missing from the house, possibly using the towels to dry himself when he showered after the murder.

He disposed of these, along with the murder weapon, long before Rachel O'Reilly's mother, Rose Callely, found her daughter's battered body in the bedroom of the Baldarragh house.

THE 36-YEAR-OLD WOMAN arrested in south Dublin on Tuesday and questioned for 36 hours at Drogheda Garda Station is believed to have enjoyed a close relationship with the chief suspect. However, despite media reports to the contrary this week, she has not provided an alibi for him. Rather, gardaí wanted to question her about her relationship with the man and about any contact she had with him on the day of the murder.

The 44-year-old man arrested in Ballyfermot on Tuesday morning and questioned for 36 hours at Balbriggan Garda Station is a former member of the Defence Forces and a colleague of the accused. He has supplied the suspect with an alibi and has not changed his story since first being spoken to by detectives.

Gardaí have one vital piece of evidence which they believe would convince a jury to convict the suspect. It cannot be disclosed here. However, information of this kind has been successfully used to secure prosecutions in the past. Gardaí believe it places the suspect very close to the O'Reilly family home at around the time of the murder on that Monday morning.

The information is circumstantial, but is strong nonetheless, and it contradicts the suspect's alibi that he was working on the north side of Dublin's inner city at the time of the murder.

"We just need one or two more bits before we would charge him, and we are working on that," according to one informed source. "But there is no question of taking men off the investigation. We are confident that we will get a conviction. Progress is being made, even if it is slow."

Some of the CCTV footage gardaí have gathered may well prove vital. They believe some of the images show the suspect in a car in north Co Dublin at the time of the murder, which would cast doubt on his alibi.

These images are being enhanced and officers hope they will be of sufficient quality to prove conclusive. If so, when added to the other piece of information which puts the suspect near the scene of the crime, gardaí are confident the DPP will give them the go-ahead to proceed with a murder charge.