CONVICTED MURDERER and rapist Gerard Barry tried to strangle his now estranged partner in her bed – two months before he murdered Swiss student Manuela Riedo – after climbing in through an upstairs window of the woman’s house in a violent and drunken state looking for money.
Barry (28), St James’s Crescent, Mervue, Galway, vehemently denied assaulting the 26-year-old woman and their two-year-old son at the woman’s home on August 3rd, 2007, when he appeared before Galway District Court yesterday.
He also denied contravening a protection order by putting the woman in fear at her mother’s home at 2.30am on August 16th, 2007.
Barry, who is serving three life sentences for the double rape of a French student in Galway in the early hours of August 16th, 2007, and for the murder of Ms Riedo on October 8th, 2007, said evidence given by his former partner to the court that he tried to strangle her and threaten to kill her was “total nonsense”.
The woman, who may not be named to protect the identity of the couple’s now five-year-old son, told Judge Mary Fahy she was asleep in bed at about 5am when Barry climbed on to the front door canopy and got in through her bedroom window upstairs. He jumped on top of her in the bed and started strangling her with both hands.
“He had his hands around my neck trying to choke me while I was lying on the bed. He was really violent,” the woman said.
The noise, she said, woke her then two-year-old son and she held him in her arms and tried to escape.
Barry pushed her so hard her head hit off their son’s head, she said.
Barry kept pushing her and the child back into the bedroom but she managed to escape, run downstairs and open the front door screaming.
Barry then left the house but not before waving his fist in her face while threatening to kill her and their young son.
She said Barry had been demanding money from her when he first came into the bedroom. He told her gardaí had taken his car and he wanted money to get the car back.
“My main concern was to get my son to safety before he [Barry] did anything else,” the woman added.
Barry, who appeared in court flanked by five prison officers and gardaí, said her evidence was “total nonsense”. He said he had come in late from a party and his partner was mad because she had not been invited. He claimed she always rang the Garda to get back at him because she was never invited anywhere.
“I didn’t assault her. It didn’t happen.
“We had a verbal row over her not giving me my dole money. I was living there at the time but she had taken the key off me. She was going mad when I came in late from a house party.
“Who are the whores you were with?” he said she asked.
“She started screaming and pulling her hair out and I left. I never went up to the bedroom. She opened the front door to me and I never left the hallway,” he said.
Barry pleaded guilty to assaulting two gardaí as they were trying to arrest another man in Eyre Square on March 31st, 2007.
Judge Fahy said Barry was serving life sentences for the most serious crimes that can ever be committed – murder and rape – and that there could be no mitigation for the contested assault charges before her court.
The judge observed that when Barry was brought before a special court sitting in August 2007 for the assault on the woman and the child, the woman had told a visiting judge who was presiding over the court holiday period then that she was not afraid of Barry and as a result of that Barry had been granted bail.
Judge Fahy indicated she wanted to impose the maximum 24- month sentence which the District Court could impose and that she wanted to make the sentences consecutive to the three life sentences Barry was already serving.
“If I can make them consecutive I will and if I can’t it will be because I’m precluded from doing so,” she said.
Judge Fahy sentenced Barry to six months for the assault on the woman and imposed a consecutive six months for the assault on his son.
Two consecutive five-month sentences were imposed for the assaults on both gardaí. A consecutive two-month sentence was also imposed for resisting arrest. A concurrent two-month sentence was imposed for breaching the protection order.
The judge then invited submissions from the Director of Public Prosecutions to be made to the court on April 21st to determine whether she could make her sentences consecutive to the life sentences.
The judge noted that under Irish law, a life sentence was indeterminate and she wanted to know if she could make her sentences consecutive.
“I think the judge in the Central Criminal Court made a recommendation at the time of sentencing that this man was not to be released,” Judge Fahy added.
“I think in his judgment and summing up he said this man was a serious risk to women and people in the future because the crimes involved young women.”