A young woman told a murder trial yesterday how her boyfriend rang her and said that he and others only went to the house of the murder victim for money and that they never meant to kill him.
Laura Heaphy told the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork that her former boyfriend, Frank Cunningham (20), rang her and asked her to go a hotel following the murder of 28-year-old father of one Patrick Walsh at his home in Cork.
"I asked him why he wanted me to go, what was wrong. He told me about Patrick Walsh, that him [ and two other fellows went to the house for money, that they killed him but they didn't mean to," said Ms Heaphy.
Mr Cunningham, from Bride Valley View, Fairhill, has denied both murdering and robbing Patrick Walsh at his home at Fair Hill Drive, Cork, between 9.30pm on May 26th and 5am on May 27th, 2004.
Opening the case yesterday for the prosecution, Denis Vaughan Buckley SC told the jury he would submit that the motive for the murder of Mr Walsh was robbery.
Ms Heaphy said Mr Cunningham told her "they" had stabbed Mr Walsh and that he (Mr Cunningham) had got €350 in the house.
When cross-examined by Ciaran O'Loughlin SC, she said Mr Cunningham said he had stabbed him once and others had also stabbed him.
Mr Walsh's brother, Thomas, told the court his brother slept in a downstairs bedroom and usually kept his door locked.
He was woken around 5am on the morning of the murder by his mother, who asked him to check on his brother.
He knocked on his brother's bedroom door, but got no answer, so he went outside and climbed through a window into the bedroom where he found his brother lying on his bed covered in blood.
Mr Vaughan Buckley had earlier told the jury that gardaí were called and Mr Walsh was pronounced dead by a local doctor at the scene at 6.10am.
A postmortem examination revealed that he had suffered 13 stab wounds including a defensive wound to his hand.
The trial - which continues today before Mr Justice Paul Carney and is expected to last for two weeks at the newly refurbished Cork Courthouse in Washington Street - is the first murder trial to be held in the city since the foundation of the State.
Yesterday Mr Justice Carney thanked the 250 people summoned for jury service for their attendance and pointed out that it was a historic occasion.
It is part of a policy of holding important trials, where possible, in regions for the convenience of gardaí, witnesses and relatives and to reduce delays due to backlogs at the Four Courts in Dublin.
The arrival of the Central Criminal Court in Cork was welcomed by father of the Cork Bar Donal McCarthy and president of the Southern Law Association Jerome O'Sullivan.
