THE JURORS IN the Graham Dwyer trial were, for the second day in a row, given a warning about the difficult nature of what they were about to hear.
Mr Justice Tony Hunt gave the warning about a document entitled, Jenny’s First Rape, found on a hard drive in the architect’s home.
The document about an attack on a young stranger in Newcastle was read out on the 32nd day of his murder trial at the Central Criminal Court.
Mr Dwyer (42) is charged with murdering Dubliner Elaine O’Hara at Killakee, Rathfarnham, Dublin on 22nd August 2012.
The Cork-born father of three of Kerrymount Close, Foxrock in Dublin has pleaded not guilty to murdering the 36-year-old childcare worker on that date.
Detective Garda Brid Wallace testified that she found a folder labelled with two initials on a hard drive seized from Mr Dwyer’s home. Only the first initial, J, was disclosed in court.
Inside the folder, she found a five-second video clip with rape in the title. The woman featured in the video could be heard crying.
Also in the folder was a document, saved as E.doc, created on 31 May 2005 under the company name A&D Wejchert Architects, the firm in which Mr Dwyer was a director. From the metadata of the three-page document, she could see the name, Graham Dwyer, under Author and Last Modified.
Seán Guerin SC, prosecuting, read out the document, which was written in the first person and also contained an image.
“It was my first time in Newcastle and the day was fine and dry,” it began. ”I had flown in to visit some of the local sites: the Angel of the North, that magnificent piece of engineering crossing the Tyne.
“But also to visit some of the more contemporary shopping centres and architectural developments to get any ideas I could for my development in Dublin,” it continued. “I also wanted to feed my lust.”
The writer then wrote about hoping to have sexual relations with ‘one of Newcastle’s finest’ before his flight home.
“Dressed respectably in my casual clothes, no-one would suspect what was on my mind: rape,” he wrote, before describing what items the subject had brought with him.
The document went on to describe how the writer chose a victim, and then how he threatened, raped and almost strangled her.
He said he could see the victim’s relief when it was over, but that this changed to terror again when he picked up his knife.
“As far as I was concerned, the fun was only beginning,” he wrote, concluding with the words: ‘The end?’
Photoshopped image
Detective Garda Wallace said that she found a document on the drive, which had been created in May 2005. It Was Just So Hot Walking along Grafton Street had the initials beginning with J under Author and Last Modified in the file’s metadata.
Beginning with the words: ‘Thinking of you whilst I wrote this’, it was an account of a woman walking around a park before being raped and having blood drawn from her throat.
D Gda Wallace also elaborated on an image from the hard drive that she had previously mentioned. It was found inside a folder, labelled DD, along with the document, Killing Darci, which the jury heard read out on Thursday.
She said it was an image of a blonde female, who appeared to be dead, with stab wounds and her intestines visible.
She said she was aware of Darci Day’s evidence earlier this week, in which the American said that she might have sent Mr Dwyer a photograph of herself to Photoshop.
D Gda Wallace confirmed that she had not known what Ms Day looked like before she had testified and had since looked at the image of the blonde female again.
She found that it had been Photoshopped, explaining that this involved adding or taking things away from an original photograph.
“The background image was of a female, who appeared to be Ms Day, laying on the ground with a black jacket opened,” she said, explaining that she was naked to the waistline and that her arms were either side of her head.
She said she believed that seven ‘layers’ had been superimposed onto the photograph, which was then shown on screens in court, layer by layer.
The first layer showed a neck slit with blood pouring from it, the second showed blood smudges around the neck. The third showed either blood drops or cuts to the body.
She said an image of an intestine was put on next with additional blood around it. The final layer ‘appears to be a brand mark’ on the right side of her chest.
The trial has heard that Ms O’Hara was last seen in Shanganagh, South Dublin on the evening of 22 August 2012, hours after she was discharged from a mental health hospital.
A cause of death could not be determined when her skeletal remains were discovered at Killakee on 13 September the following year.
It is the State’s case that Mr Dwyer stabbed her for his own sexual gratification.
The trial continues before the jury of five women and seven men.
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