A DERRY man has admitted killing the mother of his unborn child but has pleaded not guilty to murdering her in the city almost four years ago.
Stephen Cahoon (29), Harvey Street, Derry, went on trial at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin yesterday charged with murdering Jean Teresa Quigley (30) on July 26th, 2008. The mother of four was found dead in her home in Cornshell Fields the following day. She had been strangled.
Paul Burns SC, defending, told the jury on the opening day of the trial yesterday that Cahoon “admits he killed Jean Quigley”.
Patrick Marrinan SC, prosecuting, had just opened the trial to the seven women and five men, telling them that motive or the lack thereof was not important.
Mr Marrinan said that Ms Quigley had four children and had separated from her partner by the time she met Cahoon around St Patrick’s Day 2008.
They quickly formed what their friends described as an extremely loving and tactile relationship, he said. “There were expressions of interest in having children, and Jean Quigley was pregnant when she was killed, carrying the accused man’s child,” he said.
However, he said the relationship deteriorated in early July of that year and they split up about the 12th.
Mr Marrinan said it was his case that Ms Quigley met Cahoon in a pub three nights before she died in an effort to remain friends. However, there was an argument and he arrived to her house shortly after she got home that night. He refused to leave a number of times and she asked her babysitter to stay until he finally left.
The jury heard that on July 25th, Ms Quigley’s four children were staying with her former partner. A taxi driver who brought her home at about 10pm was the last person to see her alive other than her killer.
Mr Marrinan said she was in contact with her sister by text message shortly after 11pm and this was the last contact anybody else had with her before she was killed.
Shortly before 2am, Cahoon ordered a taxi from his flat to Cornshell Fields and was dropped off 100 yards from Ms Quigley’s house, Mr Marrinan said. A neighbour heard the sound of a woman wailing and a man’s voice in the background at about 1am or 3am, he continued.
At 6.30am, Cahoon ordered a taxi from a nearby road under a fake name and got out of the cab 50 yards from his own home.
Apart from a neighbour seeing him that afternoon, he then “vanished off the face of the earth”.
Ms Quigley’s family members became concerned when they could not contact her and her mother used spare keys to get into her home. She found her daughter, “naked and partially covered in a duvet, lying on her bed, bruised and with blood coming from her mouth”.
Mr Marrinan added: “Very quickly Stephen Cahoon became a suspect and police searched his home.” There they found a T-shirt stained with Ms Quigley’s blood.
The trial, before Mr Justice Barry White, is expected to last three weeks.