The mother of a 22-year-old Cork woman, allegedly raped and murdered by a local man, has told the Central Criminal Court that she began to get worried after the family dogs her daughter had been walking arrived home without her.
Mrs Rose Kiely was giving evidence in the trial of a 22-year-old man, who denies the murder but admits the manslaughter of Rachel Kiely, who was found strangled on waste ground on October 26th, 2000, at the regional park in Ballincollig.
He also denies raping Ms Kiely on the same occasion.
Mrs Kiely told Patrick J. McCarthy SC, prosecuting, that her daughter used to walk the family's two dogs in the nearby regional park on most days. On the evening of her death, she said, she watched her daughter leave through a gap in the fence into the park with one of the dogs.
Her husband had been due back around 5pm and she was getting the evening meal ready. She asked her daughter to stop and have dinner, but she said she would have it when she got back.
At about 5:40 that evening the dogs scratched on the front door. "Normally she would bring them in the back way. Rachel wasn't there and I began to get worried," Mrs Kiely said.
She wanted to go out and look for her daughter but waited until her husband got back from work before going to the park with her youngest daughter, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth said she had heard a scream or a cry. She suggested it might have come from the playing field, but her daughter said it sounded low to the ground, which made her (witness) think this was unusual.
Later, she said, it was beginning to get dark so she decided to go back.
She was going back the way she had come when she met the accused. "I said 'hi' and then he said 'hi'," she told Mr McCarthy.
When she returned home her husband suggested they call gardaí. A group of people also began searching for her daughter, and she bought "four or five or six torches" from a local shop.
She said Rachel had had a boyfriend who was part of a group of people from the Jehovah's Witness community, but added that she had never seen her in the company of the accused.
Asked by Brendan Grehan SC, defending, whether she had given evidence to gardaí about her daughter, Elizabeth, saying she had heard a scream, Mrs Kiely replied: "I did. That was in my statement. I'm sure it was."
However, when Mr Grehan put it to her that in the statement Elizabeth had given to gardaí she did not mention this matter, Mrs Kiely replied: "We were in such a state of shock that night we just put it out of our minds."
She admitted it was a week or a fortnight later that her daughter had claimed the scream was Rachel's. "That's why I stood and called Rachel's name," she said.
Opening the case before the jury, Mr McCarthy told them that despite the accused man's change of plea to guilty to manslaughter, he would still be calling on the same evidence as if he had pleaded not guilty.
He said both Ms Kiely and the accused lived very close to the regional park and would have known each other, to see at least. The accused, along with a large number of other people, had filled out a Garda questionnaire about his movements that night and had told a number of lies, he said.
He said the jury would also hear forensic evidence which unambiguously linked the accused to the deceased.
The trial continues today before Mr Justice Barry White.