The witness said that she and her father were asked to help move the bodies of the two men
Stacey Symes also told the trial yesterday that the accused woman said Anthony Keegan, who the jury heard suffered two gunshots to the head and neck – had died for Mr O’Connor “because they were friends”.
The witness said that she and her father were asked to help move the bodies of the two men.
Ms Lawrence (45), who is originally from Clontarf in Dublin but with an address at Patricks Cottage, Ross, Mountnugent in Co Meath has pleaded not guilty to murdering Anthony Keegan (33) and Eoin O’Connor (32) at an unknown location within the State on a date between April 22, 2014 and May 26, 2014, both dates inclusive.
Stacey Symes (32) today told Mr Michael O’Higgins SC, prosecuting, that she grew up with her father – Jason or ‘Jay’ Symes – in Ballyjamesduff in Co Cavan.
Asked how she came into contact with Ms Lawrence and her South African boyfriend Neville van der Westhuizen, Ms Symes said her father bought a car from Neville prior to 2014. She said her father then rang Neville and both he and Ruth came to their house.
Ms Symes said the accused had told her when they first met that she [Ruth] was a tattoo artist and they had spoken about tattoos.
The witness said she got the feeling that Ruth was the more dominant person in her relationship with Neville.
The witness agreed there were subsequent meetings with the couple as she and her father sold drugs at the time. “We would take two ounces of weed or cannabis a week and sell them,” she continued. She said buyers would sometimes come to their house and they would sell a gram of cannabis for €25.
Asked if her car played a role in the selling of drugs, the witness said she would use her green Nissan Micra if she was “picking up whatever” in Dublin for Neville.
Referring to a meeting in a Dublin pub, Ms Symes said she had heard a person identified in court only as Mr CD, the accused, Neville and her father discussing robbing “Eoin’s” drugs. “He had a house with drugs in it and they wanted us to steal them….it was something to do with Eoin having done something…retribution,” she said. She said Mr CD had suggested that the drugs would be stolen.
Ms Symes recalled a trip to Dublin before Easter in 2014 when Neville picked up a gun off an individual. She said a man who she hadn’t met before came to the car and handed Neville a bag. She said Neville was sitting beside her in the car and had the gun on his lap but she didn’t see it properly. “I heard a clicking noise and he said this is loaded,” she continued.
She said she had dropped Neville back to Patrick’s Cottage, where he took the gun apart and cleaned it.
Ms Symes said she had met Eoin O’Connor three or four times. She said he had called to their house one time and was “dropping weed or cigarettes”.
Asked about going to Dublin on April 18 2014 and about “an event and Eoin O’Connor’s drugs”, the witness said Ruth and Neville had put a couple of bags in the back of her car before transferring them to their van. When they all returned to Patrick’s Cottage, Ms Symes said she saw what she thought was a brick of ‘white cocaine’ in the bags.
The witness said Eoin had “turned up” at their house a few days later on April 21 looking for Neville and Ruth. She said her father rang Neville but Neville was “stonewalling, trying to tell him not to let Eoin know where he was”. She described Eoin as “lovely, just a nice guy”.
Recalling April 22, Ms Symes said she and her father went to Patrick’s Cottage as he was worried and wanted to make sure everything was OK. “We thought these people were our friends so we wanted to check”.
When she walked in the door Ms Symes said she saw a foreign man who was “hyper and like he was on speed”. She said the “foreign fella freaked out”, grabbed a machete and “started flying around the house with it”.
She described Ruth and Neville as “quite hypey themselves”. She said her brother had rung her father, saying there were men at his house looking for Eoin O’Connor.
Asked by the prosecutor whether there was any conversation after the phone call about where Eoin was, Ms Symes said “Eoin was dead”. “They were really hypey, Ruth was trying to talk to me and Neville was trying to talk to dad”.
“I remember Ruth saying she had shot Eoin but it went wrong; that he had twisted or something”.
The witness said the gardai rang and they wanted to see her father. “Nev said for me and dad to go to the police station and they would sort out the foreign fella. My da was instructed by Neville to say certain things”.
When the witness and her father came out of Cavan Garda Station that night, she said Ruth and Neville were there. The four of them went back to Patrick’s Cottage.
Ruth Lawrence
News in 90 Seconds, Wednesday, October 22
Asked whether there was any other discussion about Eoin O’Connor, Ms Symes replied: “They said they put him under a tree”.
“Ruth kept pointing behind me…they said there was a ledge and they had to swim…she said they had to put them on top of each other and under a tree…..When the boys were found, they were found on an island”.
Asked again what she could remember hearing about the shooting, Ms Symes said “just that Ruth shot him, he twisted, it went wrong and Neville took over”.
The witness said both men were shot dead and Ruth had said “he died for him….because they were friends”.
She said Ruth had shown her “a little black” gun in her bedroom and how to load the bullets.
Asked if there was any discussion about the bodies when they got back from Cavan Garda Station, Ms Symes said Ruth and Neville had asked them to help them move the bodies from under “this tree”.
She said the bodies were to be moved by boat. “Ruth wanted her and me on the boat, so if someone saw it it looked like two girls on a boat”.
Ms Symes recalled her father saying he couldn’t go near the bodies because he would get sick. “He wouldn’t be able to do something like that. I shook my head”.
Ms Symes said later, when her father and Neville went to the garda station she and Ruth had gone to ‘Supermac’s’, gardai came to the fast food outlet when they were waiting there. She said Ruth had disposed of “some coke and a SIM card” in case the gardai brought them to the station.
The witness said she, her father, Neville and the accused later drove to an abandoned house in Ashbourne. She said the four of them boarded a ferry sailing from Co Wexford at 8.45pm that evening.
Ms Symes said a man had come to the ferry terminal with money for Neville. Ruth, she said, had thrown black latex gloves and a SIM card “out the window”. She said they stayed with “someone belonging to Neville” in London for a few days.
Asked whether there were any discussions about what had happened in London, Ms Symes said “it was weird, they started sheltering away there”. “They started having conversations behind closed doors; it changed. They were selling the BMW and going to South Africa”.
The witness said she and her father got dropped off at a homeless shelter, where they stayed for up to six weeks.
Ms Symes said she felt like she was “made” to go to London. “Everyone who should have been after Ruth and Neville I was told was after me and my family”.
“Ruth was saying Anthony Keegan was willing to die for ‘him’ – being Eoin O’Connor, when did that conversation take place?” asked Mr O’Higgins. The witness said it happened in the car.
The trial continues tomorrow before Mr Justice Tony Hunt and a jury of four men and eight women, when the defence will cross-examine Ms Symes.
In his opening address, Mr O’Higgins told the jury that the State would argue that Ms Lawrence shot drug dealer Mr O’Connor and worked “as a unit” with her boyfriend to kill him and Mr Keegan, with their bodies later found “bound in rope, tape and covered in tarpaulin” on Inchicup Island on Lough Sheelin.