A 21-year-old Co Cork man admitted to gardaí in a statement that he killed his former girlfriend, Sheola Keaney, whose body was found in Cobh last summer.
The jury heard the accused told gardaí that he caught her around the neck just hours after they had sex at his home.
On the opening day of the man's trial for the young woman's murder, prosecution counsel, Patrick McCarthy SC, said the jury would hear evidence of various statements made by Thomas Kennedy of Russell Heights, Cobh, to gardaí investigating the murder of the 19-year-old woman.
Mr Kennedy pleaded not guilty to the charge of murdering Ms Keaney in Cobh between July 14th and July 16th when he was arraigned yesterday in front of a jury of seven men and five women at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork.
Outlining the State's case, Mr McCarthy said that Ms Keaney had been going out with Mr Kennedy for 18 months before they split up last May. There was no major issue in the split and they continued to meet each other while socialising in Cobh.
Ms Keaney was socialising with friends in the early hours of July 14th last and met Mr Kennedy. She was left in the company of Mr Kennedy by one of her friends, Mr McCarthy said.
Ms Keaney's friend was unable to contact her the next morning and when she failed to show up for work and failed to return home that night, July 14th, her mother contacted the gardaí, who launched a missing person's investigation, Mr McCarthy said.
Some items of clothing belonging to Ms Keaney were found by civilians searching with gardaí near a laneway at Newtown in Cobh on the evening of July 16th, and at about 8pm, her body was found by gardaí a short distance away. The area was cordoned off and the jury would hear evidence that Ms Keaney's body, clothed only in her underwear, was found wrapped in two refuse sacks and hidden beneath some iron bars and hedge cuttings in bushes at the side of the laneway, he said.
A post-mortem examination was carried out by Assistant State Pathologist, Dr Margaret Bolster, which found that Ms Keaney had died from asphyxia through manual strangulation in association with mechanical asphyxia caused by pressure being put on her chest.
The jury would also hear evidence that Mr Kennedy told gardaí in his first statement to them that Ms Keaney had come to his family home with him but had slept in his sister's bedroom and left alone at 10am the next morning and that was the last time he saw her.
However, the jury would hear that Mr Kennedy later changed his statement when arrested and gave a second version of events, in which he said that Ms Keaney and himself had sex at his home that morning and, after breakfast, they left and went for a walk along a lane at Newtown.
Mr McCarthy said the jury would hear that Mr Kennedy told gardaí that he approached Ms Keaney from behind and put his left arm around her and then pulled his left arm tight around her neck with his right arm, letting go only when they both fell to the ground.
The case continues.
