A murder accused told gardai he “took the rap” for killing and dismembering his partner’s mother but felt he was being set up, a court heard yesterday.
Kieran Greene, 34, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Patricia O’Connor at her home in Mountainview Park, Rathfarnham, South Dublin, on May 29, 2017.
The Central Criminal Court jury was listening to a Garda interview conducted with the dad-of-two on December 9, 2017.
Greene said while the mother of his partner Louise O’Connor attacked him with a hurley, her husband Gus hit her twice with a crowbar and told him: “I’m defending you so you can take the rap for this.”
The accused claimed Louise told him “to get rid” of her mother’s body and had cleaned the bathroom floor where the attack took place.
Greene said Louise’s ex-partner Keith Johnston “made a plan” and cut up Mrs O’Connor’s body parts beside a shallow grave in Wexford before directing him up the Wicklow mountains.
Evidence has been given that the body was dismembered into 15 separate parts that were found at nine different locations over 30km in the Dublin and Wicklow mountains in June 2017.
Greene said he was persuaded “into taking the blame for all this”.
He added: “We all agreed I’d take the blame; why I don’t know.
“I feel I shouldn’t be taking the blame. I feel I was set up because my missus and Keith are going back out [with each other].”
Louise O’Connor, 41, her daughter Stephanie O’Connor, 22, and Johnston, 43, are charged with impeding the apprehension or prosecution of Greene.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Paul McDermott and a jury of six men and six women.
