My Daughter Married a Murderer

Trina Rea tells the story of a gruesome murder in Balbriggan.

At the age of 26, Mary Gough was planning a fairytale wedding to Colin Whelan, the man she had been in love with for seven years. Mary’s mother, Marie Gough, loved Colin like a son, and was happy to help her only daughter. She diligently made the wedding cake. Her only regret was that Mary’s dad was not alive to see the happy union on that fine September day in 2000. Colin was busy planning too. Like Mary, he was concerned with every detail of his big day. But his big day was not his wedding. It was Wednesday the 29th of February, 2001: the day he would murder his new bride.

Mary’s arrival into the world was in sharp contrast with how she left it. As Marie recalls: “She was my first and only daughter and I had lost a baby before her. I remember I was overdue on that cold winter’s day when I felt things just weren’t right. I said to my husband Jimmy that maybe I should go to the hospital to make sure everything was okay. He wanted me to wait until the match on the television was over… but I got around him and he drove me to the hospital, unaware that the birth was near. He had only arrived back home when he was greeted with the news that Mary had been born by emergency Caesarean section. I was lucky that I had got to the hospital on time because otherwise it could have been a different story. Back then, Caesarean sections weren’t as common as today. I remember there was a particular nurse in the hospital who would stop each time she passed Mary’s cot. She would look at Mary and say, ‘Now that’s one lucky little girl.’”

Mary grew up in the peaceful village of Stamullen, on the north Dublin-Meath border; a rural place where neighbours looked out for one another and everyone knew everyone else in the community. Marie’s home, where Mary grew up, is full of love and care. The freshly painted bungalow is neatly kept; the tea pot rests on the stove, covered by a warmer in the immaculate but homely kitchen; a well-used easy chair stands at the side of the cooker; the kettle is on the boil and the dog is barking outside the back door. It’s easy to imagine the family squeezed in around the small kitchen table. Marie’s manner is gentle, kind and open, but at the same time her voice is strong and certain. Her face is unlined and shows little evidence of the terrible anguish she has been through, though her eyes are distant, searching, constantly moving. She grips a folded, tear-stained tissue.

As a child, Mary loved the carefree ways of country life. Growing up with five brothers meant she was inevitably a bit of a tomboy and felt she could do anything as well as the boys. She had a sense of daring adventure which is often more common in little boys. Her mother laughs as she thinks back:

“When Mary was about three years old she got into an old buggy and pushed herself down a big hill. When it came to a halt she rolled out head over heels. She was fearless and utterly in love with life. By the time she made her Holy Communion she was totally independent. She knew her own mind. I remember once she said: ‘Mammy, do you see these hands?’ She held out her hands before me as if I hadn’t seen them before. ‘Now’, she added, ‘these hands are the same as the boys’ hands, aren’t they?’ I agreed they were. ‘If that is the case they can do the exact same work, and that includes washing up!’”

After she left school, Mary went to work in the Huntsman, the local pub. It was there, in 1993, that she met her future husband, Colin Whelan. Colin didn’t usually socialise locally, but he had broken his leg at a concert in Slane. Marie knew his family. They lived just a short distance away in Gormanstown. When Mary arrived home at Christmas she announced that she and Colin were going steady. “She was as happy as she had ever been,” recalls Marie.

“The first time I met Colin was over that Christmas period. He called to the house on St Stephen’s Day. He struck me as a gentleman. He was well mannered and there wasn’t anything not to like about him. He treated Mary well and continued to do so until…” Marie’s voice trails off, unable to finish the sentence. That day they went to Funderland, where Colin won her a selection of soft toys. Mary loved them and arranged them around her bedroom.

During the next two years Colin was a regular visitor to Marie’s home. He would call into Mary’s on his way home after work. He loved designer suits. Mary’s brothers called him the ‘McKenna Man’ after a local store that specialises in tailored suits. He seemed dedicated to his job in IT but didn’t seem to have any friends, or rather never mentioned work friends. He was a bit of a loner. Nonetheless, he soon became like a brother to Marie’s sons.

For the next two years, things went well with Mary and Colin’s relationship. They seemed happy and suited to each other. “But then something happened, the full facts of which I do not know,” recalls Marie. “All I know for sure is what Mary told me. She said that they arrived home to Colin’s parents’ house after a night out. They were sitting down at the kitchen table having a cup of tea and biscuits when Colin turned to Mary and suddenly said, ‘It’s over.’ There had been no argument so Mary couldn’t understand where this was coming from. Then he repeated, ‘We’re finished.’ Mary was devastated.”

Mary didn’t see Colin for the next six months. Marie is unsure if Colin saw other women during this period but she knows that Mary certainly didn’t see anyone else. Colin seemed to be the only man for her. After a time, Marie noticed Colin driving up and down past the house. He never stopped but Marie felt he was hoping that he might bump into Mary. One night he was at a party Mary was attending. They got chatting and before the night was out they were back together. “I think it was from this point that he started planning Mary’s murder,” says Marie.

Once Mary and Colin rekindled their relationship, things began to get serious. In that year, 1997, they moved into a house on Clonard Street in Balbriggan, a few miles away from Mary’s family home. Colin’s grandfather had owned the house and Colin purchased it after his death. Mary and Colin went abroad on holidays every year and it was while they were abroad that Colin produced an engagement ring.

“Mary phoned me to announce the news,” says Marie. “She was elated, crying down the phone, she was crying with happiness. She couldn’t believe she was really going to get married. I decided to have a surprise engagement party to welcome them home. Myself and Colin’s family arranged it. We decorated the house. They opened the front door and we switched on the light and cheered and celebrated their engagement. Someone asked had they set a date. Colin interjected quickly to say that it wouldn’t be until 2000, two years’ time. My son’s now-wife passed a comment to me, ‘That wouldn’t have been Mary’s doing.’ She was right. Mary would have got married there and then if she could have. It was a great night. We were like one big happy family.”

After the engagement, Mary and Colin set about doing up the house Colin had bought. They built an extension at the back, which was practically the size of a new house. Marie was a regular visitor, helping in any way she could: hanging curtains, cleaning up after the builders and so on. While the house was being renovated, the couple lived with Colin’s parents. Mary went back to college to do a secretarial course. She’d had enough of bar work and wanted to better herself. She got a secretarial job quickly and when the company moved she decided to look elsewhere for work and settled on Wade Solicitors in Swords. She loved working there and was well liked among her colleagues. Mary and Colin’s wedding date was set for September 9th 2000. Mary asked her childhood friend Sinéad Byrne to be her bridesmaid. The two girls were inseparable from the age of five, when they met on their first day of school. Sinéad had been reluctant to even venture beyond the school gates of St Patrick’s in Stamullen that day, but five-year-old Mary doubled back and took Sinéad’s hand. The two girls were soulmates from that day onwards and Sinéad stood proudly by Mary’s side on the day of her wedding.

After the wedding ceremony, Marie noticed that her daughter was missing from the crowd. She found her inside the church, crying. “She was inconsolable,” recalls Marie. Her friend Ashling, who works in a beauty salon was there too, trying to repair Mary’s make-up. Soon everyone knew that Mary was upset. She couldn’t say what was wrong but her mother presumed it was because she was missing her father who had died when Mary was 16.

“Colin didn’t come into the church to comfort her. He was outside the whole time. He didn’t seem to care; he didn’t even check to see if she was okay. I thought it strange even then. Now, thinking back, I wonder was she crying about her Dad or was she was crying about something else? Had it something to do with Colin? The one thing I know for sure is that she had no idea about what he was planning. She was like me in that way. She wouldn’t tolerate any man who would hit or bully her. Her own father was a kind and gentle man and she expected the same from Colin. At that stage Colin seemed to be that gentleman. There was nothing sinister about him,” says Marie.

Colin’s father’s wedding speech bordered on uncomfortable ground for Colin, as Marie recalls: “Andy, Colin’s father, said that when his youngest son was a child he refused to play outside with other children. He spent his time upstairs working on his own… Colin interrupted his father’s speech and made him sit down. Colin was very embarrassed. It was as if his father had hit a raw nerve.”

Perhaps, as a child, Colin established a conviction that it was him against the world and it didn’t matter who he had to hurt along the way. People excused his oddness, putting it down to a tragedy that had afflicted the Whelan family when Colin was just a boy. Colin’s brother Andrew committed suicide when he was 19 years old. He drank Romoxone, a weed killer. “Andrew was a lovely chap. Colin never spoke about his death,” says Marie. Marie remembers how, after her daughter and Colin got married, things changed. “I was never allowed stay over at their house. Colin would always insist on driving me home. One day Mary came to my house with her wedding album and told me to keep it. She didn’t want it. Now of course hindsight is a wonderful thing and it was funny that she didn’t want to keep her own wedding album, that she wanted to forget about the day. I wish I’d asked her why she didn’t want to keep it.”

“By Christmas 2001 I noticed that Mary wasn’t herself. She was somewhat withdrawn but when I asked her about it she just put it down to tiredness. I think she copped that something was wrong before she died. She never said but I could tell she was miles away in thought.”

There were other reasons why the new bride might have begun to suspect Colin. An insurance policy which had been taken out in May 2000, prior to their marriage, had been increased so that on the death of either spouse the other would receive IR£400,000 (€508,000) but only if the death occurred within 10 years. Strangely, the policy did not include a provision for critical illness, a clause that would have been standard for a young couple. After Mary’s death, the policy was assessed by an independent financial analyst, who said it was “inappropriate and highly questionable.”

Just three months after his marriage in December 2000, Colin began an online relationship with a Welsh woman, Helen Sheppard. He was spending increasing amounts of time bombarding the fundraising manager, who worked for a national charity, with emails and long phone calls. He instructed Helen to call him by his internet name ‘Celtic Tackle.’ He even superimposed his head on the body of a male model and emailed it to her, trying to win her favour. He planned to meet up with her on March 2nd, the day after he killed Mary.

Helen, a single mother of two, was wooed by Colin, who pretended to show empathy with the loss of her mother to cancer. He claimed that he too had suffered a loss: his fiancée had died of cancer. He also claimed that he had collected IR£500,000 in insurance after her death. In his fantasy Internet persona, he wasn’t a common computer analyst, rather a high-flying businessman.

Frighteningly – though Helen didn’t know at the time – Colin gave clues of his horrendous plan to kill Mary. He wrote that he was thinking of getting rid of a gym he owned. However, his plan to terminate his contract of ownership with the ‘gym’ may really have been his plan to terminate his wife. During one exchange he wrote: “It’s been getting a bit too much lately. It’s nearly time to renew the insurance so I have to make up my mind fairly quickly. I’ll be sorry and glad to see it go, if you know what I mean. I need a bit of free time.”

When police visited Helen’s home in Wales, they found a picture of Colin stuck to her refrigerator door. She was unaware of his plan to kill his wife.

If Mary had looked at the history of searches on his computer, it would have shown lists of ways to murder someone. These searches began within month of the insurance policy being taken out.

On the day before Mary died, a snowfall covered Stamullen and surrounding areas. Mary cancelled an arrangement which was planned for the following day with her best friend Sinéad. She felt it was unsafe to travel because of the snow. Sinéad, who was now engaged to be married, was anxious to see her friend because she wanted to show her some material she’d picked for her bridesmaid’s dress. But Mary had become increasingly difficult to stay in touch with. She wouldn’t return calls and there was often no answer when Sinéad and her future husband called to her door. When Mary phoned Sinéad on her mobile that morning, Sinéad was driving and she pulled into the side of the road to talk to her friend. That was the last time they spoke.

Sinéad wasn’t the first friend from whom Mary had distanced herself since she got married. Another friend of Mary’s had known a secret about Colin, a secret from his past, which he was determined Mary would never find out about. The friend in question knew that in 1991 Colin had viciously beaten up his then girlfriend, kneeing her in the stomach and causing her to lose the baby she was carrying for him. Previously, he had tried to run her over in his car and he had force-fed her aspirin and vodka so that she would abort the baby. The girl was young at the time, Colin was her first real boyfriend and she had not reported the incident to the Gardai. Mary’s friend wanted to share this secret but at the same time she didn’t want to take away from Mary’s happiness. Finally, Colin confided a ‘secret’ of his own to Mary. He said that Mary’s friend was ‘mad after him,’ that she had made passes at him, so it would, presumably, be best if she wasn’t around him in future. Mary believed her husband’s lies. She was naturally shocked and one can only suppose that she wouldn’t have trusted this friend again even if the latter had told her the truth about Colin. The friendship ended.

When the phone rings in the middle of the night it is rarely good news. “At 1.30 a.m. on March 1st,” recalls Marie, “I awoke to hear the phone ringing but by the time I got to it, it had stopped. I was just pulling the covers back to return to bed when the phone rang again. This time I reached it before it went off. My son Peter was on the other end of the line. ‘I’m here in Beaumont Hospital,’ he said. ‘Mary has been in an accident. She has fallen down the stairs. You’d better come up here and bring the lads with you.’ My sons were living with me at that time and when Peter told me to bring them with me I knew Mary was in a bad way. I thought that maybe she was in a coma but I didn’t want to question Peter on the phone because I could tell he was very upset. The boys heard the commotion and awoke. They drove in one car and my daughter-in-law Liz came to drive me, though we all arrived at the hospital together. We headed towards A&E.”

“There were a lot of people around, waiting to be treated, I presume. I walked down a long corridor. I remember there was a man standing inside the first set of doors. At the time I didn’t know he was Superintendent Tom Gallagher, the man who would investigate my daughter’s murder. He looked at me and I thought he might be waiting for me but he just nodded his head and didn’t stop me as I went by. After I passed him I thought to myself, ‘That man has sorrow on his face.’”

“As I walked on I saw the local fireman. He nodded to me as well but didn’t smile or say a word. Then I turned around the corner of the corridor and I saw my son Peter, and Colin Whelan’s family. There was a little room off that corridor. I could see Colin was inside this room. I walked in but he didn’t get up. His sisters were there with him. They were all crying but still no one said a word to me. I walked up to Colin. He was sitting down hunched over his hands holding a hankie. I asked, ‘How’s Mary?’ He snapped, cold as could be, ‘She’s dead.’ What a way to answer me. His tone and attitude was such that I didn’t ask anything else. I thought it strange that this newly married man of five months was so composed. I have seen men whose wives have died and you’d have to pick them up off the floor with grief. Not Colin. I walked away from him and a nurse approached me and said she wanted me to come down and see Mary. Liz, my daughter-in-law, came with me. I was in such shock it’s hard to remember details. We walked in through closed doors to a room where each bed was curtained off. Mary was lying behind one of the curtains. A crisp white sheet was pulled up to her chin. There was another nurse there and she was very kind to me. I stared at the sheet. She pulled it down to Mary’s waist.”

“I looked at Mary’s hands and noticed how thin her fingers had become. I noted that she wasn’t wearing her wedding or engagement ring. It emerged later that her wedding band was found on the ambulance floor and her engagement ring was found on the landing of her home.”

“I asked the nurse, ‘Did she suffer?’”

For the first time Marie breaks down as she remembers the details of that night. After a few seconds she composes herself and continues.

“The nurse said, ‘No, she would have just gone asleep.’ Then I saw a mark on Mary’s neck and I thought that must have been the fatal injury, which broke her neck when she fell down the stairs. She had a cat called Muffin and I was sure that her cat accidentally tripped her because he was always at her feet following her around. She was wearing her pyjamas. They were made of fleece material, which was typical of what she would wear even though she had other beautiful nightwear. As I sat there looking at her, something caught my eye: the right-hand sleeve of her pyjamas was torn at the seam. I thought to myself, if she fell down the stairs how could the right-hand sleeve be torn, because the banister is on the left and that’s the only thing that could snag the sleeve? The only way she could have torn the right-hand sleeve would be if she fell up the stairs, which wasn’t likely. But I put this out of my mind and continued to look at her face, which was unmarked. After some time the kind nurse brought me back to the small waiting room. There was a priest there who sat with me. I thought it strange that he never went to sit with Colin, though oddly this young priest kept looking over at Colin. He stared him in the eyes. I noticed that. Then Colin was called out by the Gardai. They had called him out several times but on this occasion they took his car and house keys and told him he couldn’t return to either. Someone told me this was normal procedure,” says Marie, breathing out a deep sigh. “When I got up to go home the nurse who had been particularly nice to me walked me to the door of Beaumont Hospital. It was around six in the morning. She told me to look after my family, and myself.” Marie didn’t know then that this nurse, Sr Catherine Galvin, had already played a major part in bringing her daughter’s murderer to justice.

Colin had chosen not to go in the ambulance with his wife and instead travelled in his own car behind the ambulance. When Colin arrived at the hospital, Sr Catherine Galvin was there to meet him. As the doctors were seeing to Mary, she set about looking after Colin. It was then that she noticed a couple of his shirt buttons were undone. Then something else caught her attention. She could see marks on his chest that looked like fresh wounds. She raised her suspicions and brought those remarks to the attention of the Gardai. Supt Gallagher said this information was absolutely vital, because most people wouldn’t have noticed it.

Colin agreed to be examined. When he was questioned about the scratch marks he claimed Mary made them when she threw out her hands while gasping for air at the foot of the stairs. When Dr Junada conducted his examination of Colin he noted further scratch marks on his shoulders and ribcage. These marks would later indicate that his wife fought ferociously for her life. The doctors who had been standing by for Mary’s arrival were struck by the fact that her body was particularly cold to touch and this brought into question the timeframe that Colin had given to the ambulance crew.

However, at this stage no one concerned Marie with such details. On the way home from the hospital, Marie called in to see Colin’s parents in Gormanstown. She knew they would be genuinely concerned. As Marie pulled up to the house, Colin’s father Andy was at the door to meet her. He had tears in his eyes. Marie was welcomed into the sitting room. She chatted and drank tea with Colin’s family. They discussed the tragedy and comforted each other. Then Colin arrived home with his sister and brother-in-law.

Marie puts her hand up to her flushed face; what she is about to say next still shocks her.

“Colin walked into the sitting room. He was so shocked to see me there. He gave me a terrible look, letting me know that he didn’t want me there. He didn’t stay in the room. He left immediately and went into another room, the kitchen I think. So we got up and left. I didn’t want to stay where I wasn’t welcome. Back at my house people kept calling to offer me their kindness and support. That evening Colin arrived up at my house. He walked into my kitchen, which was filled with people. I was sitting on the easy chair beside the cooker. He came over to me and threw his arms around me. But it wasn’t a real hug. Even then I realised that he was just doing it for show. The hug was cold, stiff and uncomfortable. I don’t know what, if anything, he said to me but he left immediately afterwards.”

“I also had a visit from two detectives. They were trying to prepare me as gently as they could for what they were going to tell me the following day. The superintendent paced up and down the room. He was agitated, as if he had something on his mind. He kept asking me questions like: ‘Did Mary and Colin have many fights?’ ‘Did they get on well?’ ‘Did he ever hit her?’ I couldn’t believe his questions but I answered them as best I could. The next day, which was Friday, passed in much the same fashion: people called and offered me their sympathy and support. My son and his wife had to go and identify Mary’s body but they hid this from me. They didn’t want to cause me any further strain. That same day the two detectives called once again to my house. This time they asked me if they could come in and asked if I wouldn’t mind sitting down, because they had some sad news for me. ‘Mary was murdered,’ they said. They said they were sure because Dr Marie Cassidy, the State Pathologist, had completed her autopsy. The results were conclusive. I was shocked.”

The detectives were only out the door when there was another knock. This time it was from Colin’s father Andy and his brother Martin. Andy was indignant. He said, ‘What is all this about murder? Colin wouldn’t touch a hair on Mary’s head.’ He was in a terrible state, crying and everything. Martin was upset too. I stood at the door of the sitting room. Andy was standing at the window and Martin was just in front of me. I listened to them and then I looked straight into their eyes and said, ‘Mary can’t ever be hurt again. I’ll never be as hurt again. But your nightmare is only beginning.’ That’s what I said to them. They didn’t say anything. I’m sure poor Martin always remembers what I said. He’s married with three lovely daughters of his own. But Andy just wouldn’t believe that Colin could have done anything wrong. The Gardai were wrong, everyone was wrong, in Andy’s mind. At this stage, I knew the truth was that Colin had killed Mary.

There was no doubt about it because the autopsy proved it to be so.” “Then I called a family meeting with my boys and our extended family. I wanted them to hear the truth about Mary’s death from me, not through hearsay. At the time my 80-year-old father was living with me. He had the flu. He wasn’t in great form so I hid my announcement from him. I didn’t want to upset him any further. The next day, my cousin Elizabeth came to take my father to her house. He needed to get away from everything. By Monday night, six days after Mary’s death, he said to my cousin, ‘What’s wrong? Why haven’t they buried Mary?’ before adding, ‘There is something funny going on in Balbriggan.’”

Mary’s funeral finally went ahead on Thursday, March 8th 2001. More than a week after she died, she was buried with her Dad, Jimmy. Colin and his family were at the funeral, in the same church where, just five months previously, Colin had promised to love and protect Mary.

“He didn’t come near me or try to carry the coffin,” says Mary. “It was just as well, because if he did I wouldn’t have been able to hold back my lads. By now the rumours had circulated around the village. People knew he was the main suspect, yet some people still sympathised with him. When Colin walked up the aisle to receive Holy Communion a huge gasp went around the church. When they were about to put the lid on the coffin, he walked over to it, bent down and gave Mary a quick kiss on the forehead. Then he stood back, composed, emotionless. “All the men were clenching their fists. My brother-in-law Raphael had to go outside where he vomited, such was his upset and grief. I will always remember what he said to me, ‘Marie, there was no one there to help her,’ and he was right,” says Marie regretfully.

At the funeral, Marie thought she noticed people were talking about her behind her back. She felt them looking at her and then looking away. After the funeral, family and friends went for some food and Marie noticed that her cousin Elizabeth was missing from the funeral party. She inquired as to her whereabouts. Finally Liz, Marie’s daughter-in-law, broke the news that the family had been discussing and hiding from her. She told Marie that she would have to leave to go straight to the hospital. Her father had taken a turn. Marie arrived at the hospital to find her father was dead.

“I think when Mary died my father gave up. He was very close to her and they’d have the craic together. Her death was too much for him. He just wasn’t able for it. He was buried the Sunday after Mary. He had stayed strong through so many deaths: his wife (my mother) died when she was 24, six weeks after giving birth to my brother; she never came home from the hospital. I was one and a half-years-old at the time and my father’s parents had to raise me. My father lived with us too, but he never remarried. Then, his two brothers died of TB and he had a partner in later years who died of cancer. When my husband died later on he took it very badly because they were very close.”

Six weeks after Mary’s death, her husband, Colin Whelan, was charged with her murder. It still mystifies Marie how he got out on bail:

“I don’t know why they let him out when they had so much evidence against him. He or his family paid a bail of about €13,000. He had to sign on every Tuesday and Thursday in the barracks and he had to live with his parents in Gormanstown. He rented out the house in which himself and Mary had lived. We saw him regularly when he was out on bail. Sometimes we would find ourselves driving behind him in the car on the way into town or we would physically pass him on the road. Nothing would be said.”

Nine days after Mary’s funeral, Marie planned to go to the annual blessings of the graves. Each year the community came to the graveyard where they prayed for deceased relations. Marie knew there was a chance that Colin would be there because his granny and grandfather were buried in that same graveyard. Marie warned her sons not to go near Colin and if he said or did anything they were to turn their backs because if they got into a fight they would be arrested and held in prison and that would be no help to Marie. She needed them by her side. The boys respected their mother’s wishes and held firm when they saw Colin approaching their mother as she stood in the graveyard saying her prayers.

“He walked up to me and grabbed my hand; he didn’t say anything and I didn’t say anything but I almost broke his fingers I squeezed them so hard – as hard as I could! I never moved an inch because if I did, the boys would have been on him. So I just stood there, waiting until it was over because you couldn’t have any type of disagreement or words in the graveyard of all places. At the time, I thought it was so very cheeky of him to come over to me but now that I know the full facts, I simply can’t believe it. He held my hand, knowing in his heart and soul that that same hand had killed my daughter. At this time I knew he had murdered her. I didn’t know the full extent of what had happened. I presumed it was a spur of the moment mistake, that he had lashed out in an argument and accidentally killed her.” “Colin came to Mary’s ‘month’s mind’ and a year later to her anniversary mass. His sisters went to the priest outside the chapel and complained because I had ‘Mary Gough’ prayed for instead of ‘Mary Whelan.’ She was ‘Mary Gough’ as far as I was concerned and there was no way the lads (her brothers) would let her be called ‘Mary Whelan.’”

When the Gardaí questioned Colin, the first thing he said was ‘I love my wife. I even brought her a present on the day before she died.’ The latter was true. On the day before Mary’s death, Colin went to Brown Thomas, where he bought Mary a gift; he used his credit card to pay for it so there would be a concrete receipt of the date and time and he made sure he was seen on the CCTV cameras. The couple had, that previous September, received an ornamental boot as a wedding present. What he purchased was the matching boot for the mantlepiece. After he bought the gift, he went back to work in the nearby Irish Permanent on St Stephen’s Green. He wasn’t an employee of theirs but supplied services to them through his own company. When he returned to his workplace, he searched the internet for ways to murder his wife. In all, he conducted at least 22 Internet searches for ways to kill her.

Colin’s first search began in July 2000 – two months before his wedding. He consulted an online dictionary to check the spelling of a word that was giving him a bit of trouble. ‘Asphyxiation.’ It is a word that few of us will ever utter, let alone write. He entered two versions of the word into the search engine before he was satisfied he had it correct. This was the first step in a series of actions that would result in the death of an intelligent, bright and bubbly young woman and lead to the ruination and devastation of several families, most pointedly the Goughs. In the end it would take away every shred of dignity and freedom Colin Whelan had ever enjoyed.

Once Colin was over the stumbling block of this difficult word there was no stopping him. His searches continued up until the day before Mary’s murder. On this day, February 28th 2001, Colin studied sites on ‘loss of consciousness’ and ‘sudden loss of consciousness.’ There was ‘asphyxiation’ and ‘how to asphyxiate’; by the new year he was concentrating his searches on words like ‘choking,’ ‘smothering’ and ‘blocking the air supply.’ While Colin was meant to be working for Irish Permanent, he was instead spending more and more time on detailed internet searches. On February 20th, he did several searches including ‘lack of oxygen to the brain’ and ‘how long does it take to die from asphyxiation?’ Two days later he followed up his searches with the phrase ‘death by strangulation.’

Colin also downloaded the transcript of a hideous case of murder by strangulation in North Carolina. The case involved Henry Louis Wallace, a young cocaine addict who murdered nine women in the space of two years. Wallace succeeded in covering up some of his murders and Colin wanted to learn his techniques so that he could make his wife’s murder look like an accident. Wallace used towels to strangle his victims, as towels ensured there were no marks left on the victim’s necks, and then he used bed covers to preserve his victims’ bodies. Wallace’s first victim was of particular interest to Colin and he employed some of the mechanisms of this murder. The transcript from this murder explains how Wallace broke into his victim’s home and lay hidden in the bathroom until she arrived home, after which he murdered her.

‘I kept hold of her until she passed out. And at that time I moved her to her bedroom… while still applying the chokehold. She began to fight [so] I used a curling iron that was near her bed and I placed the cord around her neck.’

After the murder, Wallace took the bed sheets she was lying on and folded them around her – just as Colin did with the duvet – in a bid to keep her body warm so that the doctors and detectives would have difficulty in identifying the time of death from her body temperature. When ambulance drivers arrived at Colin and Mary’s home, they found a towel near Mary’s body, which lay wrapped in a bloodstained duvet at the bottom of the stairs.

Wallace is currently on death row in North Carolina. He was given nine death sentences in January 1997, one for each victim. Colin arrived home from work on the night before the murder at his usual time. One can only imagine that Mary was thrilled with her unexpected gift. The following evening, February 29th, Mary and Colin made a trip to Drogheda to buy a homeopathic detox drink. They were both anxious to lose weight and decided to see the homeopath together. They returned home and some time later that night Mary was murdered.

When Gardai first questioned Colin about what had happened to Mary, he claimed that she may have snagged the sleeve of her pyjamas on the banister and fallen down the stairs. The truth, however, was much more sinister: Colin had strangled Mary with the cord from her dressing gown in their bedroom. It is unclear how long she was dead before Colin phoned the police; he certainly made sure enough time had elapsed so that his wife couldn’t be resuscitated.

After he murdered Mary it is thought that Colin dragged her body down the stairs backwards, and left her in the hallway; another theory is that he threw her dead body down the stairs to make it look like she had fallen. When, by 12.16 a.m., he thought he had done a good enough clean up, he put the rest of his premeditated plan into action. He phoned 999 to report an accident, claiming his wife had fallen down the stairs and been badly injured. However, he overlooked traces of blood upstairs, which had come from Mary’s bleeding nose as she took her last breaths of air. When Gardai questioned Colin about the fact that his wife was wrapped in a duvet, he claimed that the 999 operator gave him the instruction to wrap his wife to keep her warm. A transcript of the conversation reveals no such instruction. The operator did, however, give instructions on how to resuscitate his wife, which Colin pretended to execute. State Pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy was called to do a postmortem on Mary’s body. She said her death had not been caused by a fall down the stairs. If she had died under those circumstances, Dr Cassidy would have expected to find certain injuries such as bleeding inside the head, broken ribs and punctured lungs. ‘She was strangled and I knew that straight away,’ said Dr Cassidy. Whelan attempted to use his computer expertise to wipe away any trace of his searches on the Internet but Gardai computer analysts seized his work computer and managed to retrieve the information from a central server at his workplace where all the data had been stored. His home computer revealed less information because there was no central server to back up the deleted information.

The trial was finally set for October 2003, two years after the murder. Colin attended the anniversary mass in March of that year and then he disappeared the week after. He chose a good week to disappear because the airports and ports were extra busy with people coming and going from Ireland – it was Cheltenham week.

Colin’s car was found near Howth Head and inside were his clothes, his chain, ring and a suicide note to his family. Someone had noticed that the car had been sitting there all day, from morning till night. His family thought he had killed himself and there was a big search of the waters. “I knew there was no way he’d kill himself,” says Marie. “As big and strong as he looked, he was not the type of person who would kill himself. He wasn’t one to cause himself pain.”

“His family continued to search for Colin but no body was ever found. Then some people around Gormanstown stopped talking to me. They blamed me for his ‘death’ as if I [metaphorically] pushed him over the edge. I remember I was at the funeral of a local person and there were people on either side of me and someone I knew quite well went down the line of people that were on my left and talked to each one, but when she got to me she skipped me, not saying a word, and then continued to talk to each person on my right.”

Colin’s family continued to maintain his innocence; because they believed he had drowned, they spent all their time searching for him. Then a tourist spotted him in Majorca. But by the time the police got to the bar where Colin had been seen he had moved on to work somewhere else and they were unable to trace him. Finally another tourist, saw his picture in the paper when she returned home from holidays in Spain and recognised it to be Colin. He had served her in Karma cocktail bar in Puerto Portals, a posh sailing resort, where he worked under the identity of Cian Sweeney.

Colin was arrested on July 12th 2004. He was taken to Madrid. He denied his identity and produced a passport, which ‘proved’ his name wasn’t Colin Whelan. The passport was real. Colin had applied for it through the post under the name of a neighbour in Gormanstown. His neighbour didn’t know his identity had been stolen until he read about it in the newspapers. The man in question had never been outside Ireland so had never applied for a passport of his own.

Detective Sergeant Pat Marry from Balbriggan Station went to Spain to bring Colin back to Ireland. Colin wasn’t an angry detainee but a complete gentleman. Mary speculates that on some level Colin must have wanted to be caught because Spain; Majorca, in particular, attracts thousands of Irish tourists every year. It was inevitable that someone would recognise him. The bar staff with whom he worked said that he lived every day as if it was his last. He allegedly snorted cocaine and frequented upmarket lap dancing clubs.

Marie heard the news that Colin had been found the same way she heard he’d gone missing, through the newspapers. “A newspaper journalist phoned and said, ‘Mrs Gough, do you know Colin Whelan has been found?’ I didn’t say anything. I just burst out crying and put the phone down.”

“When he was found, we learned that he was leading a ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ type life. He just switched off one life and slotted into another. He had a new English girlfriend, who I suppose had a lucky escape in the end.”

When Colin Whelan arrived back in Ireland on July 23rd 2004, he requested that the trial date be changed. He wanted a time lapse so potential jurors would forget that he had absconded. He requested a date of November 2005. The judge offered an immediate trial, which wasn’t accepted, and finally April was agreed, because the judge felt the Gough family had already been waiting long enough for the trial to begin. Colin still protested his innocence and his family still stood by him, strongly maintaining his innocence.

Marie had so many questions she wanted answered. She wasn’t looking forward to the court date but she was looking forward to getting the truth.

“I sat in court with my family around me. Colin sat to the left-hand side of me. I couldn’t see him without leaning forward. He sat the whole time handcuffed with his head down; he was motionless and showed no emotion. The judge asked him if he pleaded guilty or not guilty. We had all presumed he was going to plead ‘not guilty’ because he had always claimed his innocence. He replied, ‘Guilty.’ Suddenly the whole court was in a flutter. There was a huge sense of shock because I don’t think even his own barrister knew he was going to plead guilty.

Certainly his family didn’t know. The judge said he would pass sentence the following day. The next day we heard in a statement read by a Garda that Colin’s murder plan had been premeditated, that he had been working on it for months. I had to hear the details of the murder for the first time in a full courtroom. Then we got a chance to say a few words about Mary and how our lives have changed without her.” In a very warm and crowded Central Criminal Court, Marie’s eldest sons, twins Gerard and David, read their victim impact statements. Gerard went first:

“Mary was the heart of our family, especially since our father died in 1989. She lifted our spirits at that time. She was very good to our mother and was the sister that my mother never had; they confided in each other. And for my mother, this is a double loss. She has lost her sister and daughter. Mary’s birthday was at Christmas and she really loved Christmas. It was a great family celebration when she brought everyone together. Since her death, I can’t stand Christmas. She was the life and spirit of Christmas and now it means nothing to me. It’s just a reminder of our family’s loss and we’ll never get over it. The family have been living a life sentence since her murder, one they will always have to live with. We won’t get off for good behaviour.

David Gough next took the stand. He addressed Colin Whelan directly some 15 feet away. Colin did not lift his head or look at him.

“You, Colin Whelan, strangled Mary and for that we’ll never, ever, ever forgive you. You caused devastation to our family when you brutally strangled Mary and you took a piece of us too. Then you fled the country, which shows you for the coward you are. You tried to rob us of justice. You thought you were above the law but you are not. Justice has finally been done here today. Mary’s only crime was loving you too much. No time in prison will ever be enough. The one thing you can’t take away is our wonderful cherished memories of Mary and the wonderful part she played in our lives. May she now rest in peace.”

Colin’s solicitor read an apology on Colin’s behalf but Colin Whelan himself did not speak nor did he show any physical signs of regret in court. He remained emotionless. Marie felt the apology was just a show, so that it will be on the record for the parole book. She said he could have asked to see her either before or after the trial and apologised properly. She doesn’t expect he will ever write her a letter to explain things. Colin Whelan received the mandatory life sentence of 15 years. He won’t receive any money from the €508,000 insurance policy and he has also lost ownership of the €350,000 house he owned with Mary in Balbriggan. Marie doesn’t care about the money. She thinks money was at the source of all this pain – and is at the source of so many people’s pain. However, she does feel that the sentence doesn’t reflect the crime; Colin Whelan will be up for parole in a mere eight years. Trial Judge Paul Carney, one of Ireland’s most experienced judges, described the murder of Mary as ‘the most calculating and callous killing that I have ever encountered.’

“I don’t hate or hold bitterness towards him,” says Marie Gough. “I don’t carry that burden, thank God. I have known people who went to their graves hating but I’m not going to be one of them. Hate is a terrible thing. If you let it into your life, it will rip your family apart and finally it will turn on you and destroy you. It’s so important not to even entertain hate.”

“Do I forgive him? I’m not sure. What does ‘forgive’ really mean? I have no feelings for him. He is nothing to me. All I know for sure is he doesn’t bother me. I won’t let him.”

“I have never taken a sleeping tablet or anything during this whole ordeal. I feel the best treatment is my family and if I were on medication they would be worrying about me unnecessarily. Four of them have their own families now so they have enough to worry about.”

“It’s important for people who are going through a trauma to make sure they get to the bottom of the truth. The truth shouldn’t frighten you, no matter how bad it appears to be. Once you know it you can deal with it and finally move on.”

“When you are as long in the world as I am, you realise a lot of things. Years ago family scandals were commonly covered up. These denials or maskings of the truth still causes heartache on families. I have seen so many unfortunate families carry secrets and it rips them apart. I don’t know why, but since Mary died I have heard more confessions than the priest. People have told me their most intimate and sad secrets. Only the other day, I had a woman in talking to me about how she had to give up two little children at birth. She would do anything to see them. She wishes they would try to contact her.

That is a heavy secret that she has been carrying. We should learn from the past and not hide things. The truth, no matter how bad, can be dealt with and from it we can heal. The best advice I can give is to live for the living, not the dead. Remember everyone is hurting but they have different ways of dealing with it. I find it good to focus on my family. I have five sons and they keep me going.”

Just as Marie says this, the phone rings. It’s Gerard her son on the other end of the line. She assures him there are no emergencies and gives a little chuckle as she puts down the phone.

“Yes, the lads take good care of me. And their wives are wonderful too. I have to say I’m lucky to have grandchildren. My five-and-half-year-old grandson brings me back to reality. He shows me what is really important in life and he’s a straight talker and tells me how things really are! I also focus on staying healthy. I see so many people dying of cancer that I have to feel lucky to be in good health and do everything I can to remain strong both physically and mentally. I have to feel lucky to be alive and enjoy this life that has been given to me.”

“I think it’s also important to have time to myself. In the evenings, I like to take the dog up the road for a walk and I have a good cry then. I think about Mary and what I’m missing out on. Sometimes I think of Colin’s family. God love them. They are decent people and don’t deserve any of the blame. Mary wouldn’t have wanted it. I’m glad they took time to write and call and apologise. Mary was their sister-in-law and I believe they were all fond of her. The only one I haven’t received a call or apology from is Andy, Colin’s father. I think it’s very difficult for him to believe what his son did.”

Marie does have one great fear: that Colin might come back and live in the area once he is released. She said some people still sympathise with him. “A few people have said to me, ‘Ah sure he’s doing his time, the poor fellow.’ So, I ask them, ‘Do you have a daughter?’ They say, ‘Yes.’ Then I ask, ‘Is she dead?’ Then, they don’t say any more.”

Now brighter days beckon. The phone rings again. Sinéad, Mary’s childhood friend, is on the other end of the line. She has recently had a baby and Marie says she’ll call down to see her and the baby tonight. She’s going into town first, to buy the baby a little outfit.

“The triumph of life goes on,” says Marie Gough.

Published in the March 2007 edition of The Dubliner magazine