The jury heard a story of a murky gangland double-cross in which Eoin O’Connor (32) was lured to his death while under intense pressure to collect a €70,000 drug debt
The jury heard a story of a murky gangland double-cross in which Eoin O’Connor (32) was lured to his death while under intense pressure to collect a €70,000 drug debt.
His friend Anthony Keegan (33) who had travelled from Dublin with him also died, shot behind the ear and in the neck.
Keegan wasn’t the target, but he was murdered anyway.
Lawrence (45), a tattoo artist from Dublin, denied the murder charges which had been based on testimony of a drug-fuelled confession she made on the evening after the men disappeared on 22 April.
Ruth Lawrence
The men’s bodies were found on Inchicup Island, Lough Sheelin a month later, on 26 May, close to where Lawrence lived at Patrick’s Cottage.
She was extradited in 2023 to Ireland from South Africa where she had fled with her then boyfriend Neville van der Westhuizen after the killings in April 2014.
The Irish authorities also sought to have him sent back to Ireland, but he is currently serving a 15-year sentence over the murder of a teenager in Durban.
It is clear the murders were not part of a gangland war between the upper echelons of organised crime over their lucrative trade.
Eoin O’Connor drove to his death using his mother’s borrowed 10-year-old Ford Focus while Neville had to scramble for cash to pay for ferry tickets even cadging €50 from his father as he fled the jurisdiction three days later.
The two key witnesses in the trial were small-time drug dealer and chronic alcoholic Jason Symes and his daughter Stacey.
Based on their testimony the State argued Ruth had shot O’Connor who was then finished off by Neville after a struggle.
The Symes at the time had been selling cannabis they got from Neville and Eoin O’Connor.
The jury had been told that a plot had been hatched with a man known as Mr CD in which drugs would be stolen from a house in which O’Connor kept his stash.
The jury heard it was Mr CD who introduced Neville and Eoin O’Connor to each other.
This burglary is likely to have happened on Good Friday 18 April when the Symes met Ruth and Neville in Dublin and were left waiting for hours in a city-centre Burger King after lending them Stacey’s Nissan Micra.
The following Easter Monday, Eoin O’Connor appeared at the Symes’ house in Ballyjamesduff looking for Neville and money from Jason.
The next day he went back to Cavan – reluctantly, according to his partner Karen Roche on the day they were celebrating one of his daughters’ birthdays.
With him on the journey was Anthony Keegan and the phone data records showed their progress from Dublin to Ballyjamesduff.
Members of O’Connor’s family knew where he was going and why and were in regular contact with him during the evening.
They were immediately concerned for his safety when they lost contact with him after 8.30pm on 22 April.
They were right to be concerned.
Almost a month later on 26 May the men’s remains were found badly decomposed on Inchicup Island, Lough Sheelin, covered in branches, wrapped in plastic, coal bags and a sleeping bag.
While Neville and Ruth may have had plans to find a more permanent way to dispose of the bodies, they left Ireland fearing the people looking for them and answers to what happened to the Dublin men they had been due to meet.
Anthony Keegan, Ruth Lawrence and Eoin O’Connor
News in 90 Seconds – Wednesday, November 12
They also had to contend with the gardaí who were investigating the disappearances and interviewed both Neville and Jason.
Phones were also taken from Ruth and Stacey by gardaí as they waited for the men at a fast-food restaurant in Navan.
The jury heard how there was an element of menace and intimidation from among those involved in the search for information on the men’s fate.
The Symes’ testimony was corroborated, the prosecution argued, by the phone records and some of the more ‘granular’ details that emerged from the investigation.
Ruth Lawrence’s defence was that she had not been in Dublin on the Good Friday and that she did not shoot anybody.
The Symes were not trustworthy that they had down-played their criminality, played the system by availing of the Witness Security Programme and had tried to play the jury, it was heard.
