The media circus around Saturday morning's release of Eamonn Lillis echoed the coverage of his wife's killing and his subsequent trial.
The violent death of any woman in her home by the man closest to her garners significant media attention. But the fact Lillis and his deceased wife, Celine Cawley, ran a very successful TV production company, Toytown Films, and lived in a large home in the desirable middle class suburb of Howth in north Dublin ensured this case was one of the biggest of the last decade.
He had an extra marital affair and the woman he had that relationship with appeared as a witness during his trial. It also emerged Ms Cawley, killed in December 2008, had once appeared in a James Bond film. All of these facts combined with the fact Ms Cawley died from head injuries sustained in her own back garden, after she was hit with a brick, combined to make the three-week court case in 2010 the stuff of movie plots.
Lillis had no criminal record and tried to blame an innocent man for killing his wife, sticking to that story even when a set of his clothes, covered in his wife’s blood, was found stuffed into a suitcase in the attic of his home.
Incredibly, he suggested an intruder had killed his wife, only to offer up the theory that a second house-breaker had secreted the clothes in his attic. He only changed his story when the trial began two years later; the dramatic twist in the case ensuring the media’s and public’s gaze became more intense.
And for much of his five years in prison, the now 57-year-old Lillis has been involved in litigation with his daughter, Georgia, and Ms Cawley’s family over the estate the dead woman left behind.
Assets
However, they lost their High Court battle to prevent him getting his half of the assets.
In another action, he was awarded nothing from the sale of a holiday home in France.Those legal battles ensured his name stayed firmly lodged in the public domain and even prompted calls for new legislation to prevent those who kill their spouse from profiting in the aftermath of their crimes. The Law Reform Commission is examining the issue.
However, all of the cash he received following the sale of the assets arises from his share of the estate only. None of his deceased wife’s wealth has gone to him.
Waiting for him now is over €1 million in the bank to restart his life.
The money is made up of the proceeds from the sale of the substantial home where he killed his wife, the liquidation of the company they ran and Lillis’s pension lump sum from it, not to mention his share of an investment property and bonds he held with his wife.
With his debt to society paid, in the eyes of the law at any rate, Lillis is now a free man and has retreated abroad, at least until the media frenzy loses intensity. The coverage of every aspect of the case has been so relentless and his photograph appeared so many times in so many media outlets that living in Ireland would be at best very difficult.
But his conviction for manslaughter means he is at liberty around 15 years earlier than had he been convicted of the more serious crime of murder; the offence he went on trial for.
He has been given the chance to start over as a relatively young man, in full health, rather than being aged around 70 years by the time he tasted freedom again.
The jury in the trial agreed that he had killed his wife; which he admitted.
But it rejected the State’s contention he had taken her life deliberately, thus affording Lillis the chance to start over.
