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Chapter 1: What happened during the emergency call on December 15, 2008?
It is the morning of the 15th of December 2008 and Kevin Moran of Tarras Street Fire Station is on duty as a controller. The emergency phone line rings at 4 minutes past 10. It's a 999 call. As Kevin answers, he hears a man. He is struggling to breathe, almost gasping for air. When he speaks, his voice is high-pitched. The man sounds hysterical. My wife has been attacked, the caller says.
Kevin asks the man for his address and tells him to calm down. He tells him to breathe. The man manages to say two words of his address. Rowan Hill. Kevin asks what has happened. The man tells him someone has attacked his wife at their home, Rowan Hill, on the Hill of Hoth. Kevin asks if the woman is conscious. The man on the phone thinks his wife is still breathing.
Kevin pushes for a certain answer. Is she conscious? The man asks how can he tell. Kevin tells him to check the woman's breathing. Kevin asks the man to confirm his wife was attacked. Yes, the man says. Kevin tells the man to stay on the line and asks if he is able to perform CPR. The man said he isn't. He has never done it. Kevin tells the man he can talk him through it.
He hears more heavy breathing. He hears dogs barking in the background. The man tells him he's been attacked too. His head and face are injured. Kevin tells a colleague to call the Gardaí as he talks the man through the CPR, step by step. Pinch the nose, blow one breath, then a second. Place the palm of your hand on her breastbone. Push down two inches, firmly, and do it again, and again.
Kevin tells the man he is doing really, really well. He tells them there is a fire engine and an ambulance on the way. Help is coming. I'm not getting anything, the man repeats. His wife is unresponsive. Kevin hears the man panic.
Thank you.
When someone is murdered in Ireland, the Gardaí call in a team of forensic scenes of crime examiners from the Technical Bureau. For 25 years, I was a part of that team. My name is John Sweetman. I was there to help read the silent and often hidden clues at a crime scene. I saw what killers tried to hide. Fingerprints unknowingly left behind. Murder weapons hidden in plain sight.
Handwriting that betrayed a lie. Every detail told the real story. And now, I'll tell you those stories. In this podcast from Go Loud, I take you inside some of Ireland's most haunting crimes. This is Lines of Inquiry, a Go Loud original podcast that looks beyond the headlines, following the evidence step by step and uncovering the stories behind the investigations.
In this episode, Céline Cawley, Vale of the Seat, a death in a rich suburb of Dublin and an investigation hampered by lies, misleading information and a hidden love affair. At ten past ten on the morning of the 15th of December 2008, a Garda car pulled up to the entrance of Roan Hill, a detached home on the secluded and winding Windgate Road on the Hoth Peninsula in Dublin.
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Chapter 2: How did Gardaí gather evidence in Celine Cawley's case?
The assailant had fled. But Eamon had details that might help Gardaí trace Selene's attacker. He said the man was wearing a ski mask, a professionally made one, not a homemade balaclava. The man wore gloves too. Eamon thought they might be nylon. He was wearing jeans and about the same height as Eamon, 5 foot 11 inches tall. The attacker was a strong and wiry man, Eamon said.
He estimated he was aged somewhere between twenty and thirty, and he speculated that the attacker had run down the garden to the back and scaled the six-foot fence there to make his escape. Eamon and Selene had had the fence installed after their home had been burgled. Eamon wondered if maybe this was the same man. Eamon said he felt numb when he saw his wife lying on the patio.
She wasn't moving. He called 999. Selene had exhaled when he performed CPR on her. At noon that same day, the family's doctor called Eamon to deliver the news that Selene was dead. Eamon was prescribed Valium and sleeping tablets to help him cope.
He needed to be with his daughter. But they couldn't go home. Not yet. Rowan Hill was a crime scene. Eamon wrote in a formal statement that afternoon, Selene is a fighter, a tough nut. She would have confronted someone. She wasn't a wallflower, he wrote.
In the meantime, Gardie searched for CCTV footage to see if the assailant showed up across the day's footage from around the local area. As they viewed footage taken from the Summit shop, they saw Eamon. He was buying his newspaper at 8.35 that morning, just as he had told Gardie. The footage was clear and Eamon was easily identifiable. And then the watching Gardie noticed something else.
Damon had handed in his clothes at Holt Garda station that morning. The clothes he had told them he was wearing when he found Celine. The clothes he was wearing when Gardee arrived. A grey hoodie and green combat trousers. But there in the CCTV footage he was wearing something different. Dark jeans and a black jumper.
Gardaí searched for a reason behind it all, for some idea of why someone, whoever it was, would invade a quiet home in a quiet area at that time of the morning and attack a woman.
A burglar may be one explanation, but there could be others they were yet to uncover.
As part of that, they looked into Celine's life to see if they could identify if anyone might have held a grudge against her. She was a successful businesswoman with a nice family and a lovely home. They took forensic tests of the red-stained brick and scraped under her nails for DNA evidence that might reveal the killer's identity.
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Chapter 3: What were the key details of Eamon Lillis's initial statements?
And the clothes matched those Eamon was seen wearing in the CCTV footage from the morning of the killing.
And Gardie had found the weapon, a brick wrapped in a tea towel.
With all of that physical evidence, now paired with this new knowledge of a secret affair, Gardie decided it was time to bring Eamon into the station again. But this time he would enter as a murder suspect. Eamon was still asleep at the home of Celine's brother Chris on Friday the 20th of December 2008 when Gardie came for him. At five to seven, Gardie told Eamon he was being arrested.
They told him he needed to get dressed and they would drive him to Clontarf Garda station. On the way, Eamon was asked for the name of his solicitor. He didn't have one. He had never needed one. Someone had once recommended someone and their name was stored in his phone. Garda called out names in his phone book until they hit on the solicitor. He met Eamon at the station.
Before any questioning began, Eamon was asked to provide samples for DNA testing again. Gardie took his fingerprints and Eamon was informed that they knew about inconsistencies in his story.
When Detective Sergeant Fenula Olihan and Detective Sergeant Enda Mulryan started the interview just before 11 o'clock that morning, Eamon was not the affable, helpful interviewee Sergeant Mulryan had spoken to earlier in the week. Eamon was heeding the advice of his solicitor.
In Abigail Riley's book, Death on the Hill, The Killing of Selene Cauley, she reports how Eamon told the Gardaí, My solicitor told me to say nothing, so I am not going to answer any questions. When he was told about the CCTV footage and asked about his clothing, he replied, no comment. He had no comment to make about the bloodstained clothing or why he had changed his clothes that morning.
He stuck to a story that he had been walking the dogs and came home to find an intruder. The interview continued throughout the day and into the early hours of the 21st of December when the topic turned to his marriage. Was your wife a dominant person, slightly on the bullying side? Agarda asked. No, Eamon answered. Was your wife paid more than you in the business? asked Agarda.
No comment, Eamon replied. Eamon was asked if he was Selene's lapdog. He was on €100,000 a year, while she was on €500,000. His affair with Jean Tracy was brought into the line of questioning then, before one Garda called Eamon out on the supposed burglary. The Garda suggested that it had all been made up. He pointed out that when a burglar is disturbed, they run, they don't hang around.
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