Joe O'Reilly, the man convicted of murdering his wife Rachel at their home in the Naul, Co Dublin, was yesterday taken by prison van from Mountjoy to the new Midlands Prison in Portlaoise, to begin his life sentence, writes Kathy Sheridan.
Though the judge had refused leave to appeal, defence lawyers still have a two-week period to lodge an appeal against this ruling to the Court of Criminal Appeal.
However, members of Rachel O'Reilly's family expressed a sense of closure and finality over the weekend after the dramatic scenes at the Central Criminal Court when the jury returned with a unanimous guilty verdict.
Their decision, which came just before 7pm on Saturday, was followed by some of the most emotionally-charged scenes witnessed in an Irish courtroom.
The verdict triggered an explosion of air-punching, whoops and cheers, alternating with helpless sobbing. Few of those present were unaffected.
Two senior gardaí, tears rolling down their cheeks, enveloped members of the Callaly family in a series of bear-hugs. Teresa Lowe, Rachel's birth mother, stood and shouted: "Justice! Justice!".
Yesterday afternoon Rachel O'Reilly's closest friends gathered in the rain at her grave in Balgriffin Cemetery in north Dublin to mark, as they always do, the "significant" days by her side.
As usual, they brought Rachel's favourite red wine, chocolate bars, crisps and cigarettes. The extra element this time was champagne.
"It's like you can breathe again," said Bronagh Rumgay, as Helen Reddy and Paula Carney poured a liberal helping of Sangria de Toro into the flower-bedecked clay.
Jackie Connor, Rachel's steadfast friend since they were 14, and later her bridesmaid and godmother to her eldest son, Luke, and later still the first person to pronounce her dead, sang along as Celine Keogh led a soft, wistful version of American Pie.
Martin and Cora Brown, from Lusk, came to leave a bouquet for Rachel, although they had never met: "It's a happy day. Justice was done", he said.
Reports of the verdict had spread to Menorca, where his sister Fiona was on holidays. "There were loads of Irish people waiting around for the news and when they shouted it over their balcony to the people below, there were huge cheers."
After the verdict on Saturday night O'Reilly's mother, Ann, who was revealed during the trial to have reported her daughter-in-law to the social services, and who accompanied her son to court every day, was with her younger son Derek and daughter Ann and Ann's boyfriend.
They stared impassively ahead as always, the only people in the mill of courtroom still sitting down. All four remained expressionless as Rachel's mother, Rose Callaly, took the stand to read her victim impact statement, her clear, strong tones punctuated by breathless sobbing somewhere in the court.
Thunderous applause greeted her as she stepped down, when she was wrapped in a tight hug by Det Sgt Patrick Marry.
Then the Callalys marched outside, hand in hand, as they had been all through the trial, to the main exit, raising their joined arms joyfully to a waiting, cheering throng of supporters and media.
In the court, as the room was cleared and prison officers surrounded Joe O'Reilly, each of his family, still dry-eyed, went down to give him a farewell hug.
He was then removed by a side entrance, emerging to a heckling, abusive crowd in the courtyard. "How could you kill the mother of your children?", yelled one before he was driven away in a prison van, temporarily impeded by an impromptu Garda press conference being held at the main exit.
Leaving the building, his mother, Ann, said : "I actually know he didn't do it".
Det Sgt Marry, a red-eyed, reluctant interviewee, said: "When you're at the coalface of a mother's pain for her daughter and they turn to An Garda Síochána, it's that you can provide a good service. We didn't leave anything to chance."