‘All I want is accountability’

SEEKING JUSTICE  Michael Kelly is pictured outside the disused Westport Courthouse last week. Pic: Conor McKeown

Nóirín Kelly was murdered by her son in Islandeady in 2011. Here, her former partner, Michael Kelly, says her family still don’t have justice for her death

She lives
In the beat of the drum
In the energy of dance
She is still the sparkle
On glass
She will always be
‘You only had to meet her once’
A perfect legacy

The above lines are an extract from a poem called ‘Legacy’ written by local poet Mary Reilly in memory of Nóirín Kelly, who was killed by her son Celyn in her home in Islandeady in 2011.
Celyn Eadon was just 19 years old when he stabbed his mother in the early hours of March 9. In 2014 he was given a life sentence after he was convicted in the Central Criminal Court of her murder.
The trial heard horrific evidence of how the 46 year old died of multiple stab wounds. Celyn had tested positive for amphetamine, methamphetamine and marijuana in the hours after carrying out the attack.
“The sad part of such a horrific death is that all the people who knew her don’t get the chance to talk about all the good things about her because of the hurt that’s caused,” her former partner Michael Kelly told The Mayo News. “She was an amazing amazing person … she was a nurturer and she really cared about her family, her kids.”
Michael and Nóirín were in a relationship for ten years and only parted company a few weeks before her murder. At the inquest into Nóirín’s death two weeks ago, Michael addressed the Coroner at Castlebar Coroner’s Court. He described her death as a ‘miscarriage of justice’ due to events that had occurred shortly before she was killed.

Lost warrant
Celyn had been remanded in custody on February 2, 2011, after he failed to appear in court on January 19, 2011, where he was to face a number of summonses for road traffic charges.
On February 16, three weeks before Nóirín’s death, and while still in custody, Celyn appeared before Castlebar District Court, facing theft charges. On this date he was remanded in further custody – with two warrants to be served, one for the theft charges, the other to extend the remand that had been awarded for the previous road traffic offences.
Judge Mary Devins also ordered that he receive psychiatric evaluation while in custody, after Nóirín had told the court that her son was sick and needed help.
However, neither of the warrants were issued, and Celyn was never returned to custody. An official review of the incident, carried out after Nóirín’s murder, heard that Celyn walked free from the court that day.
At the inquest, Michael told the Coronor that he believes that if Celyn had been psychiatrically assessed, as he was supposed to have been, he would not have been able to kill his mother.
“I was thinking I had to make a statement here,” he said in relation to making his remarks at the inquest. “It was my only opportunity I had to say something no matter what it seems like to other people. All I want is accountability.
“I do think it was a miscarriage of justice if two remand warrants are getting lost. We are all human, we are going to keep on making mistakes, but at the expense of who? This case must have cost millions along with the amount of money spent on him [Celyn] in prison. If someone had just done the right thing at the right time, a life would have been saved.”

Emotional witness
Michael Kelly’s remarks were covered in the national media. Speaking on Joe Duffy’s Liveline on RTÉ Radio 1, he asked for people in a similar position to him to contact him to tell their story. He says he wants to highlight the problem of remand warrants with psychiatric evaluations getting lost to ensure that other people are not put at risk.
The matter was investigated by the Garda SíochΡna Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) who found a range of serious shortcomings in how the Garda, the Irish Prison Service and the Courts Service communicated. It also said that clear procedures governing custody and the remand of suspects needed to be agreed and formalised.
While the official investigation stated that Celyn walked free from the court, Michael is adamant that he spent up to seven days in custody before being released. He stated as much to the Gardaí before the trial date, reiterating Nóirín’s comments in court about her son being sick, and including details of how Celyn had been badly beaten up by two farmers when he was around 12 years old and the huge impact of the incident on his mental health.
Michael was a prosecution witness in the murder trial, and he had included these details in his statement to try and help the jury understand the mindset of a son who killed his mother. However, during the trial neither the prosecution or the defence raiesed the issue of what Nóirín said in court about her son.
“If you are on a jury and looking at horrific photos, you would like to know why would someone do this and what would lead them to this. You would like to have the facts. If one of the facts was what the mother said about her child’s health, the person who killed her, you’d think that would be relevant information if you were a jury member.
“I don’t know if it would have affected their judgement, but I thought I would never have forgiven myself if he got [convicted of] murder and I hadn’t tried to say it. I didn’t get asked. I was a prosecution witness. It was the defence who asked me about the beating.
“Nobody asked me what Nóirín said about Celyn being sick and needing help.”

‘Law not justice’
Michael said the family got no justice for Nóirín during the trial, and he is critical of how the trial went. He says he wonders how Nóirín’s words in court about her son’s health could not be pertinent.
“I can’t speak for all of the family, but there is a large number who would be unhappy with the fact that there has been no accountability, and they haven’t been given a satisfactory answer as to what happened the remand warrants. They have ‘justice’ on their buildings, but the word ‘law’ should be put up instead. It was law we got not justice.
“Why did they not think it was important to mention what his mother said about her child’s health? Because he never got his psychiatric evaluation! That is what I think it is all about. And that is why I say she should be alive today.”
Celyn is currently serving his sentence in Wheatfield Prison in Dublin, and Michael says he is ‘in a bad way’ and not getting the help he needs. In 2015, he got in trouble for throwing boiling water over a prison guard, and Michael says that when Celyn was subsequently assessed by doctors, they found irreversible brain damage caused by drug use in his youth.
Michael believes this shows that Nóirín’s claims that her son was sick and needed help were justified, and he maintains that if Celyn had been assessed at the time he would not have had the opportunity to attack his mother.
Michael believes Celyn’s drug and criminal problems started after the beating he got when he was young, and he says Celyn was never the same after it happened. Michael feels that State services should be available to help young people like Celyn deal with their problems when they first get in trouble with the Gardaí.
With the legal process and the inquest now completed, Michael accepts that as far as the State is concerned the matter is now over and that he looks like just another person ‘shooting from the hip’.
However, he says he does not regret what he said at the inquest or what he has said since, especially if it helps prevent similar mistakes in the future.
“I have shown that I have tried to get the victim’s last words [about her son’s mental health] out. It has been denied except for the other day [at the inquest], when the event is all over when nothing can be done legally. It [speaking out] was the right thing to have done.”
“If you brought me back eight years ago and asked me if I could imagine myself being in such a situation, I would say no. Most people would think it is miles away from them.”
His motivation is simple, he says. “I’d just hate anyone else to go through what we have gone through.”