A Family Trial - The Murder of Maire Rankin

This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

On Christmas Day 2008,

81-year-old grandmother Maire Rankin was beaten to death in her home.

She had head injuries. She had broken ribs.

Her lung was punctured.

She had bruising all over her body.

And... she had been sexually assaulted.

She had been stripped naked and sexually assaulted.

45-year-old pharmacist Karen Walsh was charged with her murder.

I said to myself, "Sweet divine, was I the last person in there?"

Maire's family have followed every step of a protracted legal process.

We all vowed that there needed to be some member of the family there

for every time there was any mention of Mummy in court.

The person accused of the murder walks in and sits amongst you.

And she came out and she put her face that close to mine.

This is the inside story of the Rankin family,

as they battle their way through the legal system.

Mummy was an ordinary little old lady, who was quite remarkable as our mother.

And quite unremarkable in a lot of other ways.

And... it's to say she existed.

# Happy birthday to you

# Happy birthday to you

# Happy birthday dear Maire

# Happy birthday to you. #

I just want to thank everybody for coming. It's lovely to see you all.

To celebrate my birthday and indeed my life.

"Today dear Lord, I am 80."

"And there's much I haven't done."

"I hope, dear Lord, you let me live until I am 81."

"But if I haven't finished all I want to do,

"would you let me stay a while until I am 82?"

But Maire didn't get to stay until she was 82.

18 months after this video was filmed, she was dead.

In Newry, Maire and her sisters, Annie and Claire,

were the three Corrs,

inseparable all their lives.

I want to just acknowledge Claire, Annie and Arthur,

without whom I would not be able to live, quite honestly.

They're such support, such kindness.

And they have been with me since Gerry died.

They're just marvellous. Thank you again.

Maire was the eldest. I was next.

Annie was the youngest. Just the three of us.

I was the birthday present for her fourth birthday.

Mummy left Maire's fourth birthday party to go, and I was born the following day.

Her day is the day after mine.

I felt this is why we were so close.

-Were you born in the hospital?

-Yes. We'll not go into that!

Maire and Gerry Rankin moved to the Dublin Road in Newry 40 years ago.

They had eight children, from Diarmuid, the youngest, to Emily, the oldest.

By the time this birthday portrait was taken, Gerry was gone

and Maire was at the heart of the family.

To her 11 grandchildren, she was the perfect granny.

And the two youngest boys were particular favourites.

There was always time to play.

Around the time Maire celebrated her 80th birthday,

a couple from Dublin bought the house next door.

They only stayed occasionally. She'd met them three or four times.

The first night Karen Walsh ever went into her, Maire rang me and said,

"Annie, my next-door neighbour came in with a bottle of whiskey.

"And she wanted me to have a drink, and I told her I didn't drink."

She said, "She had a couple of wee miniatures with her,

"and she said, 'Do you mind if I have one?'"

And she said, "I explained I didn't drink."

But she said, "She was awfully nosy. She wanted to know all about the neighbours."

And she says, "I just wasn't keen on her."

Maire would not have had experience of drink.

I would say whenever she came into her on a Saturday evening, she had drink on her.

Any time that she came in.

She would have been drinking in Dublin before they came down here that evening.

I would leave Maire down home on a Saturday evening.

And she would go up, she said,

She said, "Oh, their car's there." And she would say to me,

when I would go to open the door,

"Don't put on the light. I don't want her to know that I'm here."

That she not know I'm at home.

Her new neighbours had a little boy of their own.

She bought a little selection box for the couple next door,

because they had a little boy who was two at the time.

I remember saying to her, "Mummy, why did you buy a present?

"You hardly know the people next door."

She said, "But they might come over Christmas

"and I wouldn't have a child in the terrace come to this house

"over Christmas and not have a present for them."

That was just her nature.

She would have gone to either Brenda's or Mairead's for Christmas.

She hadn't been well for a few weeks before Christmas,

and she hadn't been sleeping too well.

Maire had asthma, which had been made worse because of a chest infection.

I rang her at least four times on Christmas Eve saying,

"Please Mummy, come and stay here." You know?

She says, "No, I'm coughing at night. I'll get one more night in my own bed."

She was adamant that she was staying in Newry.

Mummy had never ever been on her own on Christmas Eve.

And that's the irony. She shouldn't have been on her own. She shouldn't have been there.

I went out to midnight mass.

I came in and they were getting the kettle on, the whole family inside.

And I rang and says, "Well Maire, how are you?" She hadn't been well.

She says, "Ah, I'm not so bad, but I am not going to bed. I'm going to stay on the recliner."

"It's easier for me to get in and out of bed."

And I said, "Look Maire, I have the house full."

She says, "Away you go."

I said "No, I'll talk to you in the morning."

On Christmas Eve, she had several phone calls from her children.

In the last, at 10:40, she said she was packed

and ready to go to Brenda's for Christmas the next day.

She was saying to Aine, "I can't wait. I can't wait to see the children tomorrow", and all the rest.

Just in great form, bubbling.

She said, "I am going upstairs now to watch midnight mass."

She took her stairlift upstairs, got ready for bed,

and settled down in front of the TV.

At some point, close to midnight, the doorbell rang.

Maire buzzed down to let her neighbour, Karen Walsh, in.

It was late, but she had that present for her son.

I suppose it was half eight or nine when we got up.

Annie had phoned.

She said to me... That was after 10, was it?

No, I rang before that. I rang and said, "She must be in the shower."

I rang back. There was still no answer.

I said, "God bless us, I wonder if she is sleeping"...

That's another funny thing - "Is she sleeping on her good ear?"

Whatever possessed me, I said, "I'm going down to see..."

I said, "Why... Do you think there's anything wrong?"

And I went in.

Opened the door and into the hallway.

Next thing I shouted, "Maire? Maire?"

Went into the bedroom.

And the place was...

I said, "This is like a battlefield."

This to myself. I looked over across and I...

I went over a bit then and looked up.

Holy God.

-There I saw poor Maire lying out.

-She was laid out.

I said, "Maire?" Thinking she'd collapsed.

And she was lying out.

I went over and I knelt down beside her, slapped her face.

-"Hello, ambulance service."

-"Ambulance service to 39 Dublin Road, Newry, please. Hurry."

"I think she might be dead. She's unconscious."

-"Who is it?"

-"My mother."

"OK. The ambulance is being organised as I'm speaking to you. Are you with her now?"

"I'm going upstairs. My uncle has just arrived as well."

-"Are you going to where your mother is?"

-"Yes, I haven't seen her yet."

-"My uncle found her."

-"Right. How old is your mother?"

"Oh my God, everything's lying everywhere!"

Uncle Arthur was here, he knelt down beside her, he was hugging her, whatever.

I didn't even touch her. I just threw the keys on the bed, and then knelt down there.

Then I kept saying afterwards, "Why didn't I even touch her?"

But Brenda, you did the right thing. You said the prayer with her.

I know. Afterwards, Uncle Arthur was saying,

"Flip me, at least you said a prayer for your mother."

I said, "Yes, she'll be thrilled with me for doing that."

I says, "But I didn't touch her, you hugged her." Even though I knew she was dead.

Then I was sort of thinking, how long was she dead? Was she cold?

-"Take a deep breath for me."

-"OK."

-"That's it."

"Calm down a minute, OK?

-You're going to have to try to be strong for your uncle. OK?"

-"OK."

"Can you tell me why you think she has passed away?"

-"Is she cold and stiff?"

-"She's cold, she's black and blue!"

-"Send the police, please!"

-"The police are being organised."

"OK."

"I'm sending someone to assist you."

-"Is there anything else I can do for you?"

-"I want to ring my brother."

"We'll be with you as soon as we can, all right?"

When Brenda phoned me that morning, all she said was,

um... I think she said, "Mummy's gone."

Or, "It's Mummy." Or something like that.

And she was obviously crying.

Um... And I just shouted down the phone, "I'm leaving. I'll be there in a minute."

I was escorted very nicely, but I was taken by the shoulder,

and guided down the stairs.

At that stage I could see Diarmuid running up the steps.

He was saying, "You've got to let me in, it's my mother." I just shouted to him,

"Diarmuid, somebody has killed her." He screamed, "The bastards!"

At the top of his voice, "The bastards! The bastards!"

But when he screamed, it was haunting, absolutely haunting.

Everybody heard. There were neighbours from three or four doors down

who came onto the front steps. They hadn't seen the police at this stage.

But they heard a commotion, heard noise.

But the next-door neighbours weren't among them.

Karen Walsh, a pharmacist from Galway,

and her husband, Richard Durkin, a tax consultant,

spent so little time in the Newry house, the sisters had never met them.

I presumed there was no-one in that house because nobody came out.

Every other neighbour came out to the front.

If you look over there...

-Yeah.

-Look how close...

-It's only the sense you get how close their bedroom window is.

-Yeah.

It is a stone's throw.

And you know something, Brenda? When you said Diarmuid screamed...

The whole terrace heard him. The neighbours from up and down came out.

They were they were right... They couldn't have not heard Diarmuid

if whoever is down there, heard him,

because the bedroom,

their sitting room and their bedroom window,

are almost touchable from here.

They couldn't have not heard Diarmuid.

She had head injuries, broken ribs. Her lung was punctured.

She had bruising all over her body. Her face was bruised

and there was a mark, a circular mark, an indentation on her chin.

Looking at her hands, her nails were very badly bruised.

And I remember thinking, no. That's not right.

She had been sexually assaulted. She had been stripped naked and sexually assaulted.

Moira had died from what the pathologist would call

a multiplicity of forceful blows to the head, a sustained and frenzied beating.

The crucifix from her bedroom wall lay beside her on the floor,

her body covered with the throw from her bed.

For all her life, the crucifix had hung above her bed.

For Maire, it was a symbol of her faith.

In her killer's hands, it was a weapon,

pushed so hard into her face, the crown of thorns left their mark.

Well, I think what happened was

Mummy was sitting on that chair watching the television

-and, if she came in the door here, and Mummy challenged her...

-Yeah.

..if Mummy saw that she had a bottle of vodka and was drunk,

so there was obviously some sort of disagreement or argument.

I think that the attack happened here,

because there was a huge clump of hair just about there on the ground.

My eyes were drawn to a huge clump of snow-white hair

on the green carpet and I was... absolutely horrified, because, to me,

that just screamed of a very violent death.

Her hair was pulled so violently, it ripped her scalp from her skull.

A layer of blood a centimetre thick congealed underneath her skin.

Her head and face were purple with bruising.

She'd 15 broken ribs and marks on her arms.

She was just laid out at the bottom of the bed on her back

with a dressing down rolled up under her neck.

I saw her feet sticking out and then, when the...

the bedspread was over, but it was over just about there,

and I could see her shoulders that she'd no nightie on. That alarmed me.

They took my mother's body out of the house

and that was an awful experience.

I think that's probably, um,

one of the very lasting images that I will have of the whole thing.

Um, it was still, er... Forensics still had a lot of work to do,

so they wouldn't allow a coffin into the house, um...

And they took her out in a body bag.

They opened the coffin in the middle of the Dublin Road

-and they put her in the coffin.

-VOICE BREAKS

HE SIGHS

And that was just terrible.

..to, er, who could help us.

This is the next door neighbour, Karen Walsh,

36 hours after she murdered Maire.

At this stage, she's a witness, not a suspect.

I think there's basically, right, OK, she was not well that night, OK,

and, um, she shouldn't have been on her own in the house.

In Karen Walsh's version of events, she is a good neighbour

calling with a present late on Christmas Eve

and finding Maire struggling to breathe.

She was very, very wheezy, OK, exceptionally wheezy, OK?

Um, like, when I went in initially, right, OK,

she was catching her breath, OK, and had to keep on like slowing down, she was talking to me, OK?

But then, we talked so long, that she had to get up to go over to the nebuliser, OK, to get, um,

to get the Salbutamol from there, right, OK? Um...

She admits to lying on Maire's bed

-and drinking vodka from the bottle.

-I regret that I didn't...

She was too polite, she said, to go and look for a glass.

When you heard what had happened...

She claimed she went to look for Maire's inhaler.

When she couldn't find it, she had a mince pie and left.

Er, I don't know, I think...

I just, I regret I didn't stay with her or did anything.

The police officer asks how she felt when she heard what had happened to Maire.

Absolute crap, cos I thought to myself, "Sweet divine! Was I the last person in there?"

But the police suspected she did go to number 39 with a bottle of vodka,

but only so she could drink in peace after a row with her husband.

They believe that, when Maire asked her to leave,

she battered her in a drunken rage.

Karen Walsh told police she went home to bed,

still in her clothes and boots.

"I went solid asleep," she said.

She ends her interview by saying,

"It's not exactly the ideal Christmas."

Good evening.

A neighbour of an 81-year-old woman,

who was found dead in her Newry home on Christmas Day, has appeared in court charged with her murder.

Forensic officers were, this afternoon,

still searching the Newry home of Maire Rankin.

Today, Karen Walsh, who's 42, and lives next door,

at 37 Dublin Road, was in court charged with her murder.

For the next 18 months, Maire's home was a crime scene

and it would lie entombed,

frozen in time,

just as it was when her killer called.

When there is a murder, the victim's family

are drawn into a long, punishing process.

There were bail hearings, committal hearings,

36 hearings in all, before it got to trial.

Not one in our family had ever sat in a courtroom and I remember saying to one of the court officials,

"What happens when the judge comes in? Do you stand up?"

And she said, "Yes!"

I was going, "Well, we don't know, cos we've only seen it on telly."

The family also had to face the fact that Karen Walsh was freed on bail

and, for most of the time, lived in a flat in the middle of Belfast.

Once she got bail into Belfast,

I would never have gone down

into the city centre

in case I'd have met her.

In those early hearings, while on bail,

she sat alongside the family in the public gallery.

You go into the Magistrates' Court,

you go into the High Court, whatever,

and the person accused of the murder

walks in and sits amongst you.

Walks in and sits beside you.

No segregation, nothing like that. This person in our midst.

At one point, one of the barristers said,

"Do these people need to be in court?"

Us! We were the only people in the public gallery, a very small court,

and, "They're upsetting my client."

And we were sitting there,

hearing for the first time Mummy's injuries, and we were heartbroken!

It was...awful! VOICE BREAKS

Looking at Karen Walsh

and sort of half believing

that yeah, it's possible that that woman could've actually done this.

There was something in the look in her eyes.

Karen Walsh seized an opportunity within the system

to drag out the proceedings.

Four times a trial date was set and four times postponed,

because she kept sacking her lawyers.

Hi! Lovely to see you.

SHE LAUGHS

There's an alarm in this house...

Two years and nine months after their mother was killed,

the trial is on for the fifth time

and the family are getting ready to go to the Crown Court in Belfast.

-More bags!

-Look at you!

-I know.

-LAUGHTER

Four of them live in England and have all flown back.

Houses have been rented, lives put on hold.

-And seeing her is really going to put a strain on us.

-Grab her by the throat.

-No!

-I think we'll get very angry.

-We will.

-I could get angry!

-We can't be doing that!

-Grab her by the pony tail!

I know, I won't, I'm just saying that.

-Can I just ask a really, like a really serious question?

-Go on.

What do you think Karen Walsh'll wear tomorrow?

-She might surprise us and wear something different.

-She might.

-I don't think so.

-She'll wear the same coat?

-As part of the image.

-The cream coat and the blonde hair.

-That's the court uniform.

Yeah, we're a bit nervous and a bit anxious

and don't really know what to expect. But it's starting.

Day one started with the prosecution.

Police photographs were shown to the jury and witnesses.

Images of Maire show extensive bruising on her head

and the mark of the crown of thorns on her chin.

As the jury were looking through the photographs,

you could just see clearly

Mummy's bruised face

and, um, you know,

the bruises all the way down and ring on her chin, it was just horrific!

And I tried to look away, but when I looked back, it was still there

and it was imprinted on my mind and I couldn't think about anything else.

Barrister, Liam McCollum,

began by outlining the evidence against Karen Walsh.

There was no forced entry to number 39

and she was the last to visit her.

Her DNA was found on the crucifix and on Maire's body.

That was the crucifix that was used to beat Mummy on the face,

on the arms, on her head, so...

if Karen Walsh's DNA is on the crucifix, and Mummy's DNA,

that clearly connects the defendant to the murder weapon

and the murder weapon to the victim and I think it's a very...

It's like a Cluedo answer.

You have the murderer, you have the weapon,

you've the location, you've the victim.

And a crucial piece of evidence was that,

at 7:31 on Christmas morning, someone used Maire's home phone

to ring Karen Walsh's husband, Richard Durkin, seven times.

Four of the family have been called to give evidence.

At last, this is a chance for them to have their say.

Today was like putting down a marker and saying..."This is who we are,"

because up to now, everything has been about Karen Walsh.

The jury built up a picture of Mummy

and we began to talk about Mummy

and we began to get her back again and that was a wonderful feeling.

When I got up there, I thought, "No, I can do this,

I need to do this for Mummy, and I looked at the jury and the judge

and they smiled at you and you felt that you had their attention

and that it didn't matter what the... what the defence barrister said.

A few of our party had said to me when I'd given evidence,

they said, "Arthur, when you spoke about it,

"there were two of three people in the jury who broke down."

And they said they buried their head and they were quite upset, you know.

And I looked across at the jury and that settled me.

It's amazing, they are looking so intently at the witnesses,

they looked so focused, they looked as if they cared,

they wanted to hear what I had to say and it was...

It was very emotional. SHE CRIES

But it was...it was comforting too.

Because I wanted to be listened to,

I've waited too long to tell this story,

and I needed them to listen to me and I needed to convey what happened

and how awful it was, but I wanted to do it in a composed way.

-TV: 'Today the trial began...'

-You know, it could...

'..the killing of Maire Rankin and her family heard distressing evidence

'of how she may have in sexually assaulted after her death.'

-Emily, did you see that?

-Yeah, it was good reporting by the BBC.

-The photographs were nice.

-Yeah.

-The photographs were better of her.

-Yeah, they were. It was a range of photographs instead of that one.

-That's it.

It paints more of an automatic grandmother and ordinary mother.

For the first five days of the trial the prosecution barrister makes the case against Karen Walsh,

but the next few days will be more testing for the family.

It's the turn of the defence team to cast doubt and test the evidence.

It's frustrating and they're worried about how it's going.

You're just sitting there and you're just thinking, well,

"Is this all going to collapse? Is this all going to fall apart?"

You know, "Have they not got what they need?" And it just...

it didn't seem to be going right, did it?

They're angry about a lengthy discussion

over the box used by the forensic lab to store the crucifix.

The crucifix was fixed inside the box and they asked silly questions like,

"Why was the crucifix not in a bag?"

Well, it was obvious, even I know that,

if you have fingerprint evidence on an object

and you put it into a bag, that'll smudge it.

You know, it... It really seemed to be a bit of a hotchpotch yesterday.

Karen Walsh took to the witness stand. She denied the murder.

She also denied carrying out the sexual assault after the attack,

to make it look as though it had been done by a man.

That's been underplayed in the court, the sexual assault.

Imagine that women stripping her.

I find that harrowing, because, to me,

that was a final defilement of Mummy's body.

It's too dark to even understand,

and I don't want to be inside Karen Walsh's head

to understand what sort of person does that.

For the family, the worst day came

when Karen Walsh's defence team called two expert witnesses.

One of them, Dr Declan Gilsenan,

a retired state pathologist from the Republic,

carried out a second post-mortem on behalf of the defence.

He speculated that instead of being sexually assaulted,

Maire may have climbed on to the bed to get the crucifix off the wall,

fallen against the mirror and suffered a straddle injury.

"Are you serious?" the prosecution asked.

Around 30 times in her evidence,

Karen Walsh repeated, "I couldn't have been any nicer to the woman."

She was well-rehearsed, she decided what she wanted to say,

she was not deviating from that, and that is one devious woman.

I was appalled today. It physically made me sick at one point.

Even more galling for the family was when Karen Walsh tried to portray herself

as a friend concerned about Maire's daughter, who had cancer.

When she started to talk abut me personally, I got very upset.

And I just found that...

..upsetting.

I didn't like how she used the information about my illness

to make her look like she was a really close friend of Mummy's,

I find that very, very upsetting.

And that surprised me, I didn't expect all that to come out today.

It's not that I'm hiding it or don't want people to know,

it's just...I didn't expect it,

and when she came out with it in court today,

I just found it very, very upsetting.

The trial is coming to an end,

and the family are composing a victim impact statement.

I don't think we can put in all that emotional stuff.

This is their opportunity to tell the court how their lives

have been devastated by the murder.

The defence will be given a copy of it, that's an interesting one.

I have an issue with that,

I do not want Karen Walsh getting a copy of my victim impact statement.

-I don't care.

-I don't want it.

-I actually don't care.

-I do care.

He didn't say that, he said defence team.

But I want to know that she does not get to read

my victim impact statement.

..Newry pensioner who was murdered at Christmas three years ago

is expected to go out tomorrow to consider its verdict.

I think it has gone very well,

and it was such a relief to hear on the TV today...

"The Karen Walsh trial is ended."

Talk about a sense of relief.

For Karen Walsh, her days in court are coming to an end.

I have absolute faith in the jury

and in the common sense of 12 ordinary, decent people.

It took them less than two hours to reach a verdict.

When the jury came in, I could not look over at the jury.

I just focused on the back of her head, on her ponytail.

I'd spent two weeks looking at the ponytail.

I was shaking.

When they stood up

and they asked the foreman if they'd reached a verdict,

when he said,

"Guilty of murder,"

he said it with real authority,

and my heart nearly stopped

and I thought, "Is this real? Is this real?"

It was just such a powerful thing.

When the judge said, "Take her down,"

I just thought, "She's out of our lives now."

Karen Walsh was today convicted

of the brutal murder of Maire Rankin, our mother.

Mummy was a kind and caring person,

who spent her life helping people. She would never have hurt anybody.

She had a right to feel secure in her own home.

However she wants to protest her innocence beyond that,

she can do it. I don't want to listen.

I don't want to listen any more,

certainly not to Karen Walsh.

When Andrew was sobbing beside me as well, I was sobbing.

I was sobbing and Andrew was sobbing.

I think justice has been done.

And you can gauge that from the amount of time the jury was out,

one hour and 52 minutes.

So there's absolutely no doubt about it.

Any of the detectives I spoke to all along, they said,

"We had no doubt all along, we knew we'd get the verdict you wanted."

And we got it, thanks be to God.

For the past two days, I have actually begun

to think about Mummy again, I've tried to think about Mummy.

So I am sure that in time we'll be able to get Mummy

back into our lives.

It saves classes in the gym. It's just as good a workout.

I know Mummy would be saying, "Look, I'm safe. I'm safe.

"Stop panicking about me. It's over.

"It was awful, it was brutal, it was not the way I wanted to die,

"but it's over."

Our lives are changed for good.

Which they are. They're completely changed since Maire died.

It's not the same at all.

I want to get past this process and not think of the horror,

cos there comes a time when someone dies

that you go through a process

and then you start to think of the good things

and you sift out the bad things.

So I'd like to be in that position.

I'd like to be past it all.

She just sat and read her book

and was quite contented to sit on the beach

for hours while we played around, the children.

We need to move on from this and pick up our lives

and restore Mummy's memory to what Mummy actually, truly was.

Full of fun and very vibrant, very lively. Just a nice person.

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