A young Wicklow woman who was found stabbed to death in her Dublin flat two years ago phoned her family in distress hours before she was killed, a London jury was told yesterday.
Georgina Eager's body was found in the bedroom of her flat on St Peter's Road, Walkinstown, by gardaí and members of her family on May 22nd, 2003. She had been stabbed more than 20 times.
Her then employer, Christopher Newman (63), who ran an alternative therapies clinic in the house next door to where Ms Eager (28) lived, has pleaded not guilty to her murder. The two had developed a personal relationship, the court has been told, and Mr Newman had drawn up legal documents naming Ms Eager as the sole inheritor of the clinic and his other possessions.
Mr Newman, who was known in Dublin as Prof Saph Dean, is being tried at the Inner London Crown Court under UK legislation that allows a British national to be tried in Britain for a crime allegedly committed in another jurisdiction.
Ms Eager's parents, George and Sylvia, and her three younger sisters gave evidence yesterday in the trial, which is expected to last for up to five weeks.
Mrs Eager recalled that she told her daughter to "run" after she phoned the family home in a distressed state shortly after midnight on the night of May 21st-morning of May 22nd, 2003.
The court heard that the Eagers' phone rang at 12.05am but the caller hung up before it was answered. Georgina's sister, Catherine, dialled 1471 and traced the call to Walkinstown. Her mother then phoned Georgina back. "She was crying on the phone and said 'I want to come home'. She was crying so I told her to run. I thought she was being attacked," Mrs Eager told the court.
She had never heard Georgina cry, so she knew there was "something happening to her", she said.
The jury was told that Georgina's father, George, then called her on his mobile and arranged for her to come home in a taxi. He left money in a pair of trousers for her to pay the taxi on arrival.
Mrs Eager said Georgina subsequently phoned at 1.30am, however, in "completely different" humour. "She was very calm and said she was sorry for upsetting us . . . She said, 'I'm having a cup of coffee and I'll be home in a couple of hours'."
She asked Georgina what had been happening during the earlier call, and her daughter said neighbours had been having a drunken row. Asked by Judge Jonathan van der Werff if she had accepted this explanation, Ms Eager said she had done so at the time but had realised afterwards that it did not make sense.
Georgina was not the type of person to become distressed by neighbours having a row, she said.
Mr Newman's barrister, Andrew Smiler, put it to Mrs Eager that mobile phone records, including the locations at which calls were made and received, indicated that her daughter had in fact begun to drive home and was "nearly there" when she turned around and went back to Walkinstown. The fact that she had gone back indicated she was not "frightened", as Mrs Eager had suggested.
Mrs Eager said perhaps her daughter was not frightened at the time, but she had certainly been upset.
The jury had already been told that phone records indicated that Georgina took a number of calls from Mr Newman between 3.15am and 4am while driving towards the family home in Wicklow on May 22nd. She returned to Walkinstown where she was killed probably between 5am and 9.30am.
The prosecution contends that Mr Newman murdered her following an argument, then took €1,200 from bank accounts in Georgina's name and fled to London, where he was arrested on May 23rd.
Georgina was the eldest of the Eagers' four daughters. The second eldest, Brenda (28), cried in the witness box as she told the court that the two had been "best friends".
She said that prior to working for Mr Newman, Georgina had been a make-up artist at Brown Thomas on Grafton Street. Her sister was hired as a receptionist at Mr Newman's clinic but "basically did everything" from colonic irrigation to massage.