User:rorynoonanDate:18/05/2013Time:08:35:03Edition:18/05/2013Satsatecho180513Page:1Color:
EE - V1
SATURDAY, MAY 18, 2013
EDITION NO. 34,915
Serving Cork for 120 years
Judge orders Cork woman’s release Au revoir Ronan!
OFF TO PARIS: An emotional Munster and Ireland rugby star, Ronan O’Gara with his son Rua, after his last game for Munster. Ronan has announced his retirement and is joining Racing Metro in Paris as their half-back coach. See back page. WEATHER TONIGHT
L: 6°C Cloudy with rain tapering off Winds: NW at 6-12 mph
18.05.13 Recommended retail price €1.50
A CORK woman who spent two-and-half-years in custody in connection with a charge of concealment of a body in a murder case has been released from jail.
Gillian Purcell was detained by police in the UK in November 2011 and detained in custody there until her return to this country last October when she was taken to Limerick prison. But yesterday the High Court ruled that the accused, formerly of Hollyville, Hollyhill in the city and with an address at Anderson’s Quay, Cork should be released from jail. Her legal team had argued that the charge of concealment was unfair, breached fair procedures and was oppressive because the prosecution was relying on the same evidence used against her when was jointly charged with the murder of a Fermoy man at Verdon Place, Wellington road in 2008. The judge in the murder trail ruled that the evidence in the case against her did not come anywhere near the level required to be put to a jury. He directed the jury to find the then 33-year-old not guilty.
Her co-accused John Walsh, formerly of Ballinlough in the city and at the time of the trial living at Cork Street, Mitchelstown was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in jail. His trial was told that the body of the victim, John McManus was kept in the boot of a car parked in a residential part of the Turner’s Cross area of Cork city for four days before being driven to a field in Kerry, There were two Court hearings relating to Ms Purcell this week. In the first the president of the Court Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns ruled that a charge of impeding the trial of her co-accused should not go ahead. Yesterday Mr Justice Paul McDermott ordered her release from Limerick jail. Some months after the murder trial, Ms Purcell left Ireland. She was extradited from Britain after the DPP decided to bring the charge of concealment against her. Ms Purcell’s lawyers brought a High Court challenge seeking an order restraining the DPP from prosecuting her on the concealment charge. They argued that the charge ● Continued on page four.
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