The sister of a woman who was killed in Clare by a man she was having an affair with has described the way her life was taken as “cold and callous”.
Helen Geoghegan was speaking at the sentence hearing of 45-year-old Colm Deely of School Road in Ballyvaughan, who admitted killing Deirdre McCarthy in 2013.
At the time of her death, Deirdre McCarthy was working and living in a B&B in Ballyvaughan.
She went to a local pub on the evening of March 27th 2011 where Colm Deely, a man she’d known her whole life, was also socialising.
The jury at his trial in 2013 heard they were having an affair and he claimed she was blackmailing him and threatening to tell his wife and children.
He told Gardaí they were in bed together back at the B&B later that night and he put his hands around her neck because she was laughing at him.
Her body washed up on Fanore beach four days later.
Deely was convicted of murder and jailed for life, but that conviction was overturned because of an issue with the evidence of the former Assistant State Pathologist Dr. Khalid Jaber who no longer works in Ireland.
A retrial was ordered but the prosecution later accepted his plea to the lesser charge of manslaughter.
At his sentence hearing today, Helen Geoghegan said it was hard to understand what happened to her sister that night and how frightened she must have been as she was beaten and strangled to death.
Deely will be sentenced next week.
