EVIDENCE IN the case of Eamonn Lillis, the 52-year-old television advertising director accused of murdering his wife, Celine Cawley, at their home in Howth on December 15th, 2008, concluded yesterday. It was the 10th day of the trial and Mr Lillis was the only witness for the defence.
While Mr Lillis initially blamed an intruder for the three head injuries which contributed to her death, he admitted on the first day of evidence that there was no intruder and claimed that he and his wife had only agreed to say that because they wanted to protect their teenaged daughter from the truth about their row. He also claimed that he left Ms Cawley alone on the patio for up to 12 minutes because she had shouted at him to go away and he had not noticed the extent of her bleeding.
Under cross-examination yesterday, Mr Lillis denied he felt trapped in his marriage. “Were you feeling trapped on December 15th because of the lies or because of a new opportunity in life with Ms Treacy?” asked Mary Ellen Ring SC, for the prosecution, in a reference to Jean Treacy, the massage therapist with whom he had been having an affair at the time.
“It was never a possibility that anything would happen,” he said.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Yes,” he replied.
Quoting from the postmortem report, Ms Ring noted that one of the injuries at the back of Ms Cawley’s head was “full thickness to the bone”, and questioned his statement that he had not noticed all of the blood until later. “That’s right, because most of the time her back was to the ground,” he replied. “She was facing me.”
Ms Ring also put to him a detailed description of each of the 18 marks to his wife’s face and lips and asked him to explain them. He said some of them might have occurred when he raised her arm while she was holding the brick, causing it to graze her chin.
He said others might have happened when she was biting his finger as they lay on the ground. He said she was twisting her head from side to side and he was pushing her head back to try to release her grip.
“I’m not sure how that happened,” he said several times about the remaining injuries.
“I put it to you,” said Ms Ring, “that the three injuries on Celine Cawley’s head were occasioned by use of a brick held by you and that you lied to the firemen, ambulance personnel, gardaí, your family including your daughter, and your friends, and you continued to lie and concealed the reason for the lie, and you hid your clothes,” she continued, “all because you had taken up a brick and hit her not once, not twice, but three times, causing three lacerations, two to the back of the head and consistent with a brick and not a window edge. And that these caused the death of Celine Cawley while you were trying to cover up your actions upstairs.”
“That’s not true,” replied Mr Lillis.
Closing speeches are expected today from Brendan Grehan, counsel for Mr Lillis, and Ms Ring. Mr Justice Barry White will then charge the jury of six women and six men.
