Just one text and call stopped a brutal killer from escaping justice
Before the verdict . . . Rose Callaly with her son Declan and his wife Denise, her daughter Ann, husband Jim and sons Anthony and Paul arriving at the court last Saturday.
ALL eyes focused on murderer Joe O'Reilly as he arrived at the Four Courts each morning, for all the world conducting himself as though he were a solicitor heading in to work.
Instinctively, people moved out of his path when they saw him coming - a brute of a man with an expression of blankness on his heavy-jawed face he rarely seemed to shed, the determined figure of his indefatigable mother and younger brother Derek trailing in his wake.
The level of public interest in this trial meant many believed it would prove difficult to select a jury for the trial and on the first day, a female member of the newly selected panel had to be dismissed after an onlooker in the court had come forward to explain how the woman had said: "He's guilty anyway."
It was the start of an emotional rollercoaster of a trial. O'Reilly cut a businesslike figure in Courtroom Two, bringing his 'hot-shot' advertising executive persona to bear, seeming heavily involved in his own defence as he took notes.
It was that same level of detached ruthlessness that led O'Reilly to take a sauna and have a jacuzzi in the gym on the morning he murdered his wife because he "knew it was going to be a long day".
A shudder ran up the spines of onlookers when they heard these words taken in a garda statement read out during the early days of the murder trial, pointing as they did to a coldly calculated level of premeditation.
But that was nothing compared to the cloak of suffocating rage that descended on the court when the venomous emails between O'Reilly and his sister, Ann, were read out.
It was, perhaps, Rachel O'Reilly's personality in life that has led to such an all-absorbed level of public interest in the way she met her brutal death.
This 30-year-old mother of two - described as being "the polar opposite of Joe" - was warm, bubbly, accomplished, having represented Ireland in shot-putting, and she was highly popular. By contrast, they said, Joe was dour, cold and dismissive of his wife's achievements.
As we watched the Callaly family take their customary seats in the courtroom each morning, we could see where Rachel had slotted in at the heart of them all. Openly affectionate, the family sat closely, linking arms during the most difficult parts.
Some distance behind the Callalys sat Rachel's birth mother Teresa Lowe - the woman who at the age of 17 had given birth to her daughter and lost her when she gave her up for adoption. Just a few years ago, Rachel had traced her and had developed a good relationship with her and her half-brother, Thomas. It was doubly tragic that having lost and found Rachel a first them, they had lost her again.
As State Pathologist Marie Cassidy gave a detailed medical explanation of the extent of the head injuries inflicted on the mother of two, even O'Reilly himself looked sickened at the description of what he had done.
Probably the hardest thing to hear was the possibility that Rachel could have lain unconscious for "a few hours" prior to death and her sister Ann Callaly seemed to double over in pain as she heard this terrible news.
As each day brought forth further damning evidence against Joe O'Reilly, the angelic chimes of a church bell at noon seemed a portent, a sign justice was inescapable.
His affair with Nikki Pelley, revelations during legal argument of another affair with golfer Barbara Hackett and his admittance to friends that his marriage was in trouble, that he was thinking of moving out of the family home to an apartment in Balbriggan.
As a raft of technological information planted O'Reilly firmly near his home in the Naul, the outcome seemed certain, and Joe seemed to know that the game was up.
At the time of the murder, O'Reilly seemed to have known something about the possibility of a mobile phone being used to trace him - in an email to a friend he was to meet for lunch that day he had advised him not to try and call him as he would be "out and about in areas of poor coverage".
But O'Reilly's luck was out. That friend was not in work that day and sent text message to his phone instead, cancelling their lunchdate. Derek Quearney helped to convict Joe O'Reilly in the end, with a call to his mobile phone left unanswered.
Only for this text and call picked up by the Murphy's Quarry mast just down the road from the O'Reilly residence, Joe O'Reilly would have almost certainly have escaped justice for so brutally snuffing out Rachel's life.
- Nicola Anderson
