The jury in the Patricia O’Connor murder trial has heard her husband admitted reporting her as a missing person when he already knew she was dead.
Kieran Green is accused of killing the 61-year-old grandmother in the bathroom of the home they shared at Mountainview Park, Rathfarnham in May 2017.
The 34-year-old has denied the murder.
He handed himself into gardaí in June 2017, and told them he killed his partner’s mother Patricia O’Connor after she attacked him with a hurley.
He told them he then dumped her body in a shallow grave in Wexford, but later dug her up and scattered her remains across the Wicklow and Dublin mountains.
He insisted he acted alone at all times.
However, the jury heard previously that he changed his story six months later, and told gardaí it was Patricia’s husband Gus who killed her, and that he took the blame because Gus told him he killed her in his defence.
Gus had been arrested on suspicion of being involved in her murder in September 2017, but was released without charge.
Today, the jurors heard that he had been part of this trial, but that he pleaded guilty some weeks ago to an offence of reporting his wife missing at a time when he knew she was already dead.
By doing so, Mr Greene’s defence barrister Conor Devally said, he impeded the apprehension or prosecution of an alleged offender.
Reporting by Frank Greaney
