My daughter Rachel O’Reilly’s chilling final answerphone message helped me snare killer husband
THE gruesome murder of Irish mum-of-two Rachel O’Reilly shocked the nation to its core.
Police initially thought it was a burglary gone wrong when her battered body was discovered in the bedroom of her rural home, but mum Rose Callaly was convinced it wasn’t a stranger who attacked her daughter so violently.
She immediately suspected son-in-law Joe O’Reilly – and claims her daughter spoke to her from beyond the grave to confirm her darkest fears when she returned to the scene of the crime, just north of Dublin.
O’Reilly’s strange behaviour in the wake of the murder concerned Rose, but it was a message left on Rachel’s answerphone that she claims put him firmly in the frame.
Rose tells The Sun: “He kept asking us if we wanted to hear Rachel’s answering machine and he put it on and when it started to play, I think he was trying to make an alibi for himself and we were looking at each other.
“And I remember hearing Rachel’s voice. I’m not mad, it’s not as if I was hearing voices in my head, but I could hear her over and over again: ‘Maam, he done it.’ It’s extraordinary.”
The shocking tale of death and deception is being recounted in a Channel 5 documentary called The Lie: Murder in Suburbia, which airs tonight at 9pm, followed by a second episode at the same time tomorrow.
There were signs that the savage attack on the 30-year-old housewife in October 2004 happened following a break in, with drawers having been rifled through.
But detectives felt the viciousness of the attack pointed to a killer who was motivated by a violent hatred of Rachel.
The first sign something was amiss was when Rachel failed to pick up her four-year-old son from school.
O’Reilly left frantic messages on her answerphone saying he was worried about her and then asked Rose to go to his house near Naul in County Dublin to see if Rachel was in.
What she discovered in the bedroom will haunt her forever.
Rose, now 80, found her eldest daughter horrendously beaten and clearly dead.
She says: “There isn’t a time when you can forget. At the beginning I didn’t think I would live. I used to think if I closed my eyes I would never have to open them again.”
There isn’t a time when you can forget
Rose Callaly
O’Reilly arrived shortly afterwards and Rose was full of sympathy at first.
“My heart was broken for him. I expected him to get down on the ground and lift her up in his arms,” she recalls.
“But from the moment when he looked at her something was registering that there was something wrong. He said he tried to give her CPR, but he did not.”
Prime suspect
Retired detective inspector Pat Marry, who investigated the case, was also shocked by what he encountered.
He says: “This was savage. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Marry told O’Reilly not to speak to the media, but he started to give interviews where he was far more interested in presenting his theories about who could have done it, rather than displaying any signs of grief.
When the detective asked O’Reilly if he had been cheating on his wife he denied it.
But later it became clear he was in a sexual relationship with advertising executive Nikki Pelley, 42.
This all came as a shock to Rose, who had no inkling that the marriage was troubled.
She recalls: “Rachel never confided in us. She always loved him.
“He was a loner. He was very strange. I never thought, though, there was anything bad about him. I thought he was a very good husband and a very good father.”
But a week after Rachel was found dead, Rose was convinced he was her cold-blooded killer.
Bizarre behaviour
It was his odd performance in the house that did it.
Not only did Joe play back the voice recording, he also invited Rachel’s parents in to see the blood-stained walls, showing zero signs of emotion at the horrific scene.
She explains: “When I came out of the house that day I hadn’t a doubt in my mind that he had done it. It was bizarre, his carry on.”
Proving his guilt was not easy for the detectives, who shared Rose’s suspicions.
He had an alibi, with one of his colleagues at the firm where he worked who said he’d met O’Reilly in Dublin at the time of the crime.
But a combination of CCTV footage and mobile phone data showed that story was concocted.
Chilling note
Then there was a clue from Rachel’s grave, with the police digging up her resting place to retrieve a note O’Reilly had thrown onto the coffin just before it was covered with earth.
It read: “Rachel, forgive. Two words, one sentence, but I will say them forever.”
Then his lover Nikki confessed that O’Reilly had told her that he’d killed Rachel and emails were retrieved from his computer which revealed his hatred for his wife.
Even though the police didn’t have a murder weapon and the only forensic evidence was Rachel’s blood on her husband’s shoelaces, they felt there was enough evidence to go to trial.
In 2007 a jury found O’Reilly guilty of murder.
He is now serving a life sentence in Wheatfield Prison. He recently asked to be let out for three days to see his family over Christmas, but his request was denied.
Rose says: “I don’t want him to ever get out.
“It is 17 years Rachel is dead now. She didn’t have any choice. But he is living the life he chose.”
I don’t want him to ever get out… he is living the life he chose
Rose Callaly
The biggest tragedy, she believes, is the one suffered by her two grandsons, who are now 20 and 21.
She says: “It was the worst scenario for us that it was him. The children’s mother had died and it was their father who had murdered her.
“They are the real victims in this. It’s very hard on them.”
Further heartbreak was to come for Rose, when her other daughter Ann died from cancer aged 31 in 2010.
She says: “I felt nothing would hurt me again and then my other daughter died.”
Rose, who has still has three sons, Declan, 51, Paul, 49, Tony, 38, and her husband Jim, 81, remains grateful for the time she had with all her children.
She says: “If you handpicked children they’d have absolutely everything you’d want in a child.
“Rachel was a ray of sunshine. She was brilliant.”
The Lie: Murder in Suburbia airs tonight (December 15th) and concludes on December 16th at 9pm on Channel 5.
