Graham Dwyer described a plan – to a suicidal young woman from the US he met on the internet – to meet her and kill her, the Central Criminal Court has heard.
Darci Day told the court that Mr Dwyer looked at places in her home state of Maine to use as disposal sites. She said the plan was he would meet her somewhere and she would leave her car and get into his car with him and he would drive them to another location.
“There . . . he wanted to have sex and then cut my throat until I lost consciousness during intercourse,” she said.
Mr Dwyer (42), an architect from Kerrymount Close, Foxrock, is charged with murdering childcare worker Elaine O'Hara (36) on August 22nd, 2012. He has pleaded not guilty.
Ms O’Hara’s remains were found in forestry on Killakee Mountain, Rathfarnham, on September 13th, 2013.
Ms Day gave evidence to the court via live television link from Maine. She was accompanied by witness keeper Det Ryan Broderick.
The woman said she had difficulties in her childhood. Her parents divorced when she was young, her father had alcohol problems and a couple of different wives, and her mother had a boyfriend with “a lot of issues”.
She said she was sexually abused. Her grandmother, who she admired, died of bone cancer when she was about 12 and she struggled with depression.
“I felt like I was worthless to my family and didn’t want to live any more,” she said. She told the jury she struggled with suicide and self-harm and went online to talk to different people about fantasies.
She used the name Cassie and wrote about her fantasy of dying and about rape and murder. She met Mr Dwyer on a website in 2010 or 2011.
They talked a lot through Gmail and she “loaded a lot of stuff” on Mr Dwyer.
They sent each other videos involving throat-cutting and strangulation. There were also diagrams of “where all the arteries and stuff are, so you wouldn’t miss”, she said.
She knew Mr Dwyer was married and that he liked aircraft. Ms Day said they also sent text messages on a few occasions and Mr Dwyer talked about getting a separate, disposable phone for communication.
Ms Day also gave evidence of Mr Dwyer discussing Ms O’Hara. She said she knew he had an intimate relationship with her and that he told her she was similar to her and was suicidal.
Under cross-examination by Remy Farrell SC, Ms Day acknowledged that she had medical and psychological difficulties including “ADD, a learning disability and PTSD”, but said she was not taking medication.
She said her life had since changed “amazingly”. “I ended up giving my life to Christ,” she said.
She also said she gave gardaí written permission to search through her Gmail records.
Mr Farrell suggested there was a difference between what Ms Day had originally told Det Broderick, who was dealing with the case, and what she told the court.
He asked if Det Broderick had suggested she Google the case. She agreed. She also agreed the detective told her that Mr Dwyer had kept some Facebook material of hers and was going over it “again and again”.
Ms Day said Mr Dwyer was “very respectful” about leaving her alone and never tried to contact her. He also used his own name at all times and a gdwyer email address.
Asked if she sent Mr Dwyer a photo of herself to “Photoshop” to show stab wounds and cuts, Ms Day became highly distressed.
“I don’t want to answer this question, I don’t want to do this . . . it’s just criminal,” she said.
Mr Justice Tony Hunt said he would give her a few moments.
When questioning resumed, Ms Day agreed she had been tagged on Facebook with a video in which a woman was having sex with a corpse and had remarked it was “hard to look away from”.
The trial continues tomorrow.
