The day before Elaine O'Hara disappeared, Graham Dwyer allegedly sent her a text saying he would give her "a knife in the guts" and she would be "bound and gagged and tied to a tree deep in the forest", a jury at the Central Criminal Court has heard.
“I have a spot picked out,” he allegedly said in a text.
Mr Dwyer (42), an architect, Kerrymount Close, Foxrock, is charged with murdering childcare worker Ms O’Hara (36) on August 22nd, 2012. He has pleaded not guilty.
Ms O’Hara’s remains were found in forestry on Killakee Mountain, Rathfarnham, on September 13th, 2013.
Seán Guerin SC, prosecuting, took crime and policing analyst Sarah Skedd through text messages between two mobile phones, known as the master and slave phones, recovered from the Vartry reservoir in Roundwood, Co Wicklow.
Ms Skedd said that although there was evidence of texting between the two phones from November 30th, 2011, when they were first bought, only texts from August 14th, 2012, could be recovered and not all were available.
Among the first of these is one from Ms O’Hara, who used the slave phone while she was still in hospital at St Edmundsbury’s psychiatric unit in Lucan.
She tells “sir” she is going to knock off the phone to charge it as she does not want the nurse to see the texts.
On August 15th, they arrange via text to meet at her apartment.
Mr Guerin reminded the jury they had seen CCTV footage showing Mr Dwyer at the apartment block on that date.
On August 16th, Ms O’Hara texts about volunteering at the Tall Ships on August 23rd. “I’m sorry, sir, are you mad?” she asks.
He responds: “If anything happens to you, who knows about me?” and then “If I bump into your neighbour, say I’m your brother David.” He also discusses murder and she asks him to stop.
“Every time I think about it I want to heave,” she says.
“It is what I like so get into it,” he says.
She asks: “Sir, are you going to stab me?” He responds that he is going to make her bleed. She asks if that will be it then, “no more punishment?”
“It depends how much blood I get out of you,” he says.
He remarks that he might kill her.
‘Morning slave...’
On August 20th, two days before Ms O’Hara disappeared, Mr Dwyer allegedly sends her the message “Morning slave, looking forward to seeing you Wednesday”.
She responds that she is not going to be stabbed. He offers her choices including “fake stabbing and choking, whipping and bleeding, chained overnight in forest or choked unconscious”.
“If you don’t pick one, it’s all four,” he says. She says she will take stabbing then and indoors.
“I’m afraid if outdoors you might kill me,” she says. He says he will not kill her.
On August 21st, the day before Ms O’Hara disappeared, Mr Dwyer allegedly told her she had to be punished “for trying to kill yourself without me . . .” and went on to say he was going to get blood on his knife.
“It’s up to me and you have a big punishment coming up, knife in the guts,” he says.
The master says she will be “bound and gagged and tied to a tree deep in the forest . . . I have a spot picked out.”
Ms O’Hara says he will have to drag her out of her apartment. He responds saying she will do what she is told and that he wants outdoor play.
“I found a really, really remote place no one will find us,” he says. She asks if she has to be naked and he says she does.
“I don’t want blood all over your clothes,” he says.
She says she is frightened.
“Trust me, it will be exciting,” he says.
At 5pm on August 21st, the master says: “I’m heading out to the spot now to double check.”
Mr Guerin said the master phone used a mobile phone mast cell site at Fitzwilliam, near where Mr Dwyer worked, to send that text.
On August 22nd, Ms O’Hara sent a message saying she was scared.
“Did you know, sir? I’m scared of you, you have this hold over me,” she says.
He says: “Tonight’s punishment will be like me pretending to do someone for real.”
Told to take painkillers
In further texts, he gives Ms O’Hara instructions, including that she is to have a bath, shave, wear no underwear and loose clothing and footwear for mud. He also tells her to take painkillers.
“I want you to park at Shanganagh Cemetery at 5.30pm. Leave iPhone at home, just bring slave phone and keys,” he says.
“Empty yourself and be nothing . . . your job is to be a slave.”
Ms O’Hara asks if she can bring socks and an inhaler and wonders when she will be back. She also says she hasn’t had any dinner.
“You should be back in the car at eight,” the master says. “More painful getting stabbed on an empty stomach, suit yourself.”
At 5.22pm, Ms O’Hara texts she has arrived and the master instructs her to take only her keys and her slave phone and make her way to the park next door and text when she is in the middle of it.
He then instructs her to cross the railway bridge into the next path near the cliffs.
At one point, Ms O’Hara texts that she is lost and is given more instructions. The last text is sent from the master at 6pm: “Go down to shore and wait”.
Mr Guerin asked Ms Skedd if there was any further contact between those two phones after that. “No, that was it,” Ms Skedd responded.
The trial continues.
