The wife of convicted killer Dave Mahon says she hopes the public gives him ‘a chance’ when he’s released from prison next week.
In her only interview, Audrey Mahon exclusively spoke to our sister title The Irish Star about her husband’s impending release from Wheatfield Prison and revealed:
- How the first things they want to do together is to have a drink and go to Lidl
- She doesn’t care what people think about her standing by Dave, in spite of him killing her son Dean in 2013, and insists “he’s a good man”
- She still firmly believes Dave’s claims that Dean ran into the knife he had taken off him, and claims her son had pulled a blade on him before
- She has no time for “keyboard warriors” thinking she or her husband had anything to do with her daughter Amy’s disappearance
- And she fears she and Dave have changed over the past five years of his imprisonment but they are going to "give it a go."
We met Audrey, 53, at her home in Carrick On Shannon, Leitrim, where she has recently renovated the house for Dave’s release next Thursday.
Audrey says she’s fitted new furniture and cleaned up the house for Dave’s long-awaited arrival, and she says she’s excited to see him finally come home.
“I’ve got new wardrobes, mirrors, chest of drawers, tumble dryer.
“It just did me the way it was before because it was just me. But now I feel like I actually have a purpose, to actually do something.
“It’s nice to be able to show him what’s going to be our home now,” she said.
Audrey says she is conscious that some of the public won't accept her killer husband, who stabbed her son Dean to death in his Dublin apartment, following a row in May 2013.
But she says Dave has done his time, and now she hopes to be able to live a new life with him by her side.
“I am asking people to give us a chance. He done his time and I’ve done time as well. We’ve both done our time and we both just want to live hopefully, peacefully, the rest of our lives together,” she said.
“People expect that I should have turned my back on him, even though I know what a good man he is.
“I’m going to give it a go. I mean I’m not psychic. I don’t know what way it’s going to turn out.
“At the end of the day, I have nothing to lose. I’ve lost everything. So why not give it a go. We do love each other and we’ve always stood by each other,” she said.
Dave and Dean were in a verbal argument when Mahon claimed his stepson produced a knife - which he managed to get off him.
He then told gardai that Dean ran into that knife - and he fled down the stairs - and he didn’t realise his stepson had subsequently collapsed outside and died, because he left the apartment himself through a different entrance.
And speaking to us this week, Audrey says she fully accepts her husband’s story still - and she claimed her son had his problems.
“I never speak bad about my son but nobody knows what my son was like and what we were going through.
“It wasn’t his fault, and he didn’t deserve what happened to him. But if it had of turned out the other way around, if Dave hadn’t of taken the knife off him and Dean had used the knife on Dave, what would people think then?” she said.
Audrey says she was initially incredibly angry at Dave - but over time his explanations to her made sense, in spite of her unimaginable grief over Dean’s loss.
“Because the way he described it, I know Dave is a lot of things, but he’s not a liar.
“The way he described it, it happened before where Dean had a knife and tried. He had a gun.
“I mean this was stuff that was going on for years. So like I could just see it happening like that,” she said.
“And I can see Dean being so hot headed, running at the knife, which is what happened, even though people describe it like he was stabbed a million times.
“It was once on the knife and he jumped back. Not one drop of blood anywhere in the apartment.
“There was no blood. And he ran down the stairs and went out the front. And Dave went out the side door. So he didn’t even know.”
Audrey says she finds it difficult to this day to say she forgives Dave for that crime, for which he has now served five years of a manslaughter sentence.
“It’s difficult to say forgive. I won’t forget.
“I do forgive because, when he found out what he’d done, he didn’t even know. It was the next morning in his Dad’s.
“As soon as he knew what he’d did, he went straight into the police station and turned himself in,” she said.
“There was anger, there was a separation. It took me a while. But don’t forget he’s been the one person as well that has dealt with Amy going missing like me.
“There’s no other person, except me and him that are like that. And plus he’s the person that dealt with my son,” she added.
Describing Dave’s release next week as “surreal”, Audrey admitted that it won’t all be rosy on day one - as the pair haven’t lived together for over five years.
“It’s surreal. I can’t believe I’ve been living over five years on my own. I’ve never lived on my own since the day I was born.
“It was really hard to deal with, especially being in a different county.
“It’s going to be a good change. I mean we’re together 20 years now. This is the longest we’ve ever been apart.
“I don’t know what it’s going to be like. I know neither of us will sleep the night before.
“But I am looking forward to it. I’m excited, worried.
“It’ll be an adjustment for the two of us. He’ll have his own ways now after five years. Everybody changes over time.
“He doesn't sound like he’s changed.
“It’s like just picking up where you left off.”
Audrey also says Dave hasn’t had an easy time in prison, as he had to battle with cancer, and with the ordeal of sharing a cell at the beginning of his sentence.
“While he was in prison he had his third hip operation and he went through cancer, and he went through chemo, and that’s going to change a person no matter where you are.
“But he's worked on the grounds for the last four years. He’s always out doing work. He’s done every course you can think of.
“He recently finished his open university course. He’s just waiting on a certificate.
“He’s going to continue that when he gets out,” she said.
And Audrey says she isn't worried about how the locals might perceive Dave being back in the neighbourhood.
“They knew him as the man, not as this person in the paper.
“Neither of us are worried about that. They don’t like him? So what,” she said.
“We’re not here on this Earth to entertain people. We’re just here on this Earth to live our own lives as we can, as peacefully as we can hopefully.”
Asked about some of the top things they hope to do first when Dave gets out, Audrey says she hopes to enjoy a drink with him for the first time in eight years.
“When Dave went away I wasn’t drinking. So we haven’t actually had a drink together in over eight years.
“It’ll be the first time we ever have a drink. I want it to be like on a Tuesday when we want to go for a meal or something. Not wait for a payday or for the weekend,” she said.
But she says walking the dogs and going to the supermarket are among the things her husband wants to do the most upon his release.
“Number one would be walking the dogs together. We always used to walk the dogs together down by the Shannon.
“And I know it sounds stupid the one thing he wants to do is go food shopping. He wants to go to Lidl. He hasn't been in a supermarket.
“But yeah that’s what he wants to do. He wants to do normal stuff.”
Audrey’s daughter Amy went missing from the Mijas Costa area of Spain, where she was living with her and Dave, on New Year’s Day 2008.
To this day no trace of Amy, 15, has ever been found - and over the years social media trolls and others have tried to suggest that Dave Mahon - and even perhaps her own mother had something to do with it.
Audrey is all too aware of these accusations and admits that while they upset her in the beginning, she no longer pays attention to them.
“The only time anything like that has happened [people accusing her or Dave of being involved] is these people who like to hide behind their computers.
“That’s the only time that’s happened. Anybody that’s said it, I haven't recognised their names. So they don’t know me, they don’t know Dave, they don’t know my kids.
“They are reading their bits and pieces and making up their own thing.
“In the beginning I did read comments and I stopped doing that. I may as well have been flaying myself with a whip.
“I was just hurting me,” she said.
But she says both she and Dave remain determined to try and find Amy - and she hopes they can eventually get to Spain to do so.
“That’s what I want. Especially because it’s her 30th birthday in February.
“But I don’t know if we’re going or when. Right now it’s just to get him out the door, down to here and into the house.
“But I want answers. I want her. And then I want justice. That’ll be my next cause. Right now I want to find her,” she said.
Speaking more about her fears that both of them have changed over the past five years, Audrey says they are just going to take it a day at a time.
“I love him. We’ll see how things go. Like I said I’ve changed and he’s changed in the last five years.
“We’re not going to be sitting on the couch with popcorn and watching DVDs,” she said.
