The body of a mother of three was found with multiple stab wounds in a badly burned bedroom in her home, a murder trial in Cork has heard.
Darren Murphy (41) of Dan Desmond Villas, Passage West, Co Cork is on trial charged with the murder of his girlfriend Olivia Dunlea. When he was arraigned on Thursday at a Central Criminal Court hearing in Cork he pleaded “not guilty to murder, guilty to manslaughter.” His manslaughter plea was not accepted by the DPP.
Tom Creed, SC for the prosecution, said the issue in the case was whether Mr Murphy intended to kill or cause serious harm to Miss Dunlea.
Mr Creed said that Darren Murphy told gardaí that he “snapped”, stabbed Olivia Dunlea in the neck, lit a quilt in her home before setting a fire in the middle of the kitchen table of her property.
Ms Dunlea was discovered lying face down on her bed having incurred six stab wounds prior to the blaze. She was identified from her dental records.
Det Garda James O’Sullivan, who conducted a technical examination of the scene, said that when he entered the house he noted the remains of a small fire on the kitchen table.
A red-handled knife was recovered from the property in addition to a phone and a phone cover which were retrieved from a toilet bowl. He said the woman’s remains were found in a bedroom.
The court heard that the family pets also died in the blaze. Lockers on either side of Ms Dunlea’s bed were burned and the ceiling had collapsed. The ceiling joints in her bedroom were charred and the en suite was badly burned.
The court was told that Mr Murphy reacted so strongly to the break-up of an earlier relationship that he slashed his wrists and required admission to a psychiatric unit.
In cross examining a neighbour of Murphy’s, defence counsel, Tim O’Leary, said when his client had a broken engagement he took it “very badly”.
Murphy’s neighbour Shirley Farrell, who described him as a “gentle giant,” said that she was aware of how badly his broken engagement had impacted on him.
Miss Farrell said she knew the late Olivia Dunlea. It was her belief that Ms Dunlea didn’t want a relationship where it meant that she was “not to have contact with her family and her friends.” She said Miss Dunlea was “her own person”.
“Darren would be 100 per cent in to a relationship all the time, him and Olivia. She [Olivia] wanted the girls [friends], she wanted her kids [as well as a relationship].”
The court heard that the post mortem indicated Ms Dunlea sustained six stab wounds. Two of the wounds were behind her right ear and four to the front of her neck. One of the wounds caused bleeding in her brain. Mr Creed said that Prof Cassidy was of the view that Miss Dunlea was alive when the fire started. However, she was in all likelihood incapacitated by her injuries.
Neighbours had raised the alarm when they spotted the fire in the early hours of the morning. Mr Murphy arrived at the scene and was seen crying and trying to enter the property. He was stopped by members of the fire brigade.
Witnesses also said that he tried to ring the phone number of the late Olivia Dunlea from outside her burning house.
The pair had earlier been socialising with friends in the nearby Rochestown Inn. A taxi driver had noted that Olivia was in good form on the way back but Darren Murphy was “frosty” and he sensed there was tension in the air.