How Amadea McDermott’s killer exercised fear and control – from beatings to secret phone tracker

But on July 20, 2017, paramedics arrived at her home to find her on her back, taking the small, short breaths that indicated she was about to die. There was a single wound to the right of her stomach, while a knife had been placed on a table nearby.

Her partner Martin Hayes, who had flagged down the ambulance dressed in his underwear, was in an agitated state. He had told a 112 phone operator that Amadea had threatened to take her own life and stabbed herself. This, state prosecutors told a Central Criminal Court jury, was “the seed” of an absolute lie that took six years to unravel. Instead, "on that evening, as the clock ticked towards her death, closer and closer to the point to which the injury was inflicted, you will see the banal, almost beautiful ordinariness of someone at home," senior counsel Sean Gillane had said of the evidence in the case. "She wasn't someone who wanted death, she feared death," he told the jury.

‘A car crash’

A week before Amadea McDermott died, she and her sister Euphrasia had booked an appointment to get a spray tan in a local salon ahead of a family christening.

As the mother-of-two undressed down to her underwear in the spray tent, beauty therapist Dawn Teelan got a shock. The bruising on Amadea's body was that bad she thought she had been in a car crash.

Ms Teelan told the Central Criminal Court that she would never comment on a client's body or appearance. But when she saw the amount of bruising all over Amadea's body, she explained she had said without thinking: "What happened to you?" The witness noted old yellowish bruises all over Amadea's chest and extensive fresh bruising on the upper and lower back. Amadea said her "little lad" had been jumping all over her but Ms Teelan couldn't accept that a four-year-old child could be the cause of such injuries.

When it was Euphrasia's turn to get a spray tan, Ms Teelan asked her whether Amadea was OK as she was worried about what she had just seen. Euphrasia rolled her eyes and told the beauty therapist "we are not quite sure what is going on". That same day, Amadea had arranged for her childhood friend Jane Deacon to apply her make-up for her niece's christening. Ms Deacon found Amadea a bit quiet at first and said she was not quite herself. When she went to do her make-up, she noticed Amadea had a black eye. Amadea told the make-up artist that she was in a "toxic relationship" with her partner Martin Hayes.

Ms Deacon said Amadea, who was upset and crying at the time, said she wished her partner would leave her but also went on to say that she loved him. The witness said she was shocked as she didn't know her friend was going through such an ordeal.

'Never'

When emergency services were dispatched to Amadea's apartment in Rathvale Drive in Coolock, an agitated Martin Hayes, wearing only a white vest and white Y-front underpants, flagged the ambulance down outside.

Hayes immediately told paramedics that he and his partner had been arguing and that she had threatened to self-harm by stabbing herself. Hayes had also called emergency services three times in the early hours of July 20. He had also called Amadea's sister, who was at home asleep in bed at the time.

When paramedic Keith Markey went inside he saw Amadea lying on her back on the floor in the doorframe between the living room and kitchen area. Compressions were performed on Amadea's chest when her pulse couldn't be found. The paramedics noted and dressed a stab wound to the abdomen, which had caused significant internal bleeding. Amadea's mother told the trial that she would not accept that Amadea had taken her own life. "I will not accept that, never," she said. Amadea’s sister Euphrasia was asked by the defence whether her sister had seemed depressed to her a week before her death, she said she was planning for the future so there was "no sign of anything like that".

Garda Jason Flynn brought Hayes into a bedroom in the apartment and asked him what had happened. Hayes said he and Amadea had drank vodka that night and taken around three grams of cocaine. He told officers that once the cocaine ran out Amadea became agitated and an argument ensued. Hayes said he went to a bedroom to remove himself from the argument.

Hayes told Gda Flynn that the couple had a tempestuous relationship, that it wasn't the first time they had a heated argument and said it wasn't unusual for this to happen. He said that Amadea had come into the bedroom with a knife and said she was going to kill herself. He said this was not the first time this had happened and he didn't believe she would carry it out.

Hayes told gardaí that he heard a rumbling sound a few minutes later and found his girlfriend in the living area with a puncture wound to the abdomen. Hayes rang 999 for an ambulance and was told by the operator to put pressure on the wound with a towel, which he did. Gda Flynn said Hayes was visibly intoxicated and still under the influence of the alcohol and drugs he had consumed earlier that night.

‘Smirking’

Eucharia McDermott heard her sister Euphrasia shout from downstairs “quick, quick, it's Amadea, she has gone into cardiac arrest” in the early hours of July 20.

Eucharia, who was still in her pyjamas, put on her runners and took off up the road to Amadea's apartment to get to her as quickly as she could. She hopped into Euphrasia's car along the way but jumped out of the moving vehicle as it pulled up at the apartment. Euphrasia had received a phone call from Hayes minutes earlier saying: "It's Amadea, you better come, it's a cardiac arrest". She then alerted her family members, including Eucharia. Hayes was sitting on a bed when Eucharia burst into the apartment shouting "where is she, where is she". The apartment was a mess with glass and clothes on the floor. She could see paramedics working on her younger sister Amadea in another room but wasn't allowed in. It was the worst day of her life, she had told the trial.

When she heard Amadea had suffered a stab wound to the abdomen, Eucharia told gardaí that domestic abuse had existed in her sister's relationship and alleged that Hayes had been physically abusive to Amadea in the past. Later, in Beaumont Hospital, Eucharia was told that Amadea had passed away. She told the jury that she felt like she couldn't breathe and had to get out of the resuscitation room. When she went outside Hayes was standing at the door and she told him: "You shouldn't be here." "He was smirking at me, he said 'Shut up, you thick’ and with that I punched him and he punched me directly back," Eucharia told the jury. When Euphrasia arrived at the hospital after her sister died, she said Hayes was laughing and smirking as if nothing was wrong. The next day Eucharia took three phones from her sister's apartment. She would hand them over to gardaí when they called on her over two years later in November, 2019. That same month, gardaí also received an email from Eucharia which included screenshots taken from Amadea's phone of text messages between her and Hayes.

Amadea told Hayes in one of those messages: "I'm sick of ur accusations and ur sick thoughts, I'm not getting abused by you every few days". [sic] She also told him in another message: "You can't admit you are not well and need help".

When Eucharia made a statement to gardaí, she agreed with Hayes’ defence counsel that her objective was to let them know that Amadea's relationship was "full of conflict". She said when alcohol was involved there would be "screaming matches" between the couple.

'You have lost me'

Detective Garda Niall Gibbs said Hayes was invited to Coolock Garda Station on July 21, 2017 to make a statement in relation to the "sudden passing" of his partner. In the statement, Hayes said he had worked as a gravedigger in Mount Jerome cemetery for the last six or seven years and that he was going out with Amadea for the previous ten years.

He said they met on the social networking platform Bebo and had two children together. He said they had sex on the morning of July 19 and had started drinking vodka that night whilst watching Love Island. He said "everything was grand" until the couple ran out of alcohol and the fighting started. He said they both took cocaine and did the 'usual stuff; she looking at my phone and me looking at hers'.

Hayes said he had told Amadea that night he was leaving her. He said she slapped him in the face and he slapped her back. He said Amadea grabbed a knife from the kitchen and he said "I don't give a f*** anymore, I'm going" before he went to bed.

He said Amadea had stood at the bedroom door with the knife so he grabbed a machete. Hayes said he told Amadea: "I couldn't give a f*** what you do, you have lost me".

He said Amadea told him that he was going to lose the best thing in his life and went back into the sitting room. Hayes said that after a few minutes he saw a leg sticking out from the sitting room door and blood on the floor. He rang 112 and spoke to the paramedics before Amadea was brought to hospital.

'Tell me everything'

Hayes, however, was to tell a key witness a very different account of the night Amadea died, one that did not emerge until this year, just five months before his trial.

Niamh Higgins told the jury that she started a relationship with Hayes in September 2018. They had been out together on Christmas Eve when the defendant consumed cocaine and alcohol. Hayes became agitated and emotional that night when Ms Higgins was wrapping Christmas presents for her daughter, as he couldn't wrap presents for his own children.

During the evening Hayes asked Ms Higgins whether she knew what had happened on the night that his previous partner Amadea had died. Ms Higgins replied: "No I don't, tell me everything".

Ms Higgins said Hayes said that he had gone through a mobile phone and found "flirty messages" between Amadea and a relative. She said Hayes was "pretty sure something was going on". The witness said Hayes told her he had confronted Amadea on the night she died and that she had got a knife "to defend or protect herself".

Hayes said there was a big argument between him and Amadea and that he had chased her around the kitchen to get her phone from her. "He said she had a knife in her hand and he put his arms around her ......and held the knife in her hands and put the knife in her stomach," Ms Higgins told the jury. Ms Higgins said her relationship with Hayes ended that night.

Under cross-examination, Ms Higgins told defence counsel Ronan Munro SC that Hayes had stood behind Amadea and "helped her put the knife through her stomach, he put his hands on her hands to help ram it through her stomach".

The trial heard that Ms Higgins made two statements to gardaí – one in November 2020 and a more recent one last May. The statement from 2020 did not contain "the confession to murder", which Ms Higgins said she had withheld out of fear.

Mr Munro told the witness that "help" was a strange word to use. Ms Higgins said Amadea had the knife to protect herself and it was "with the help of his hands". "He said he stood behind her and put his hands on her hands and the knife went into her stomach," she explained.

Asked by counsel if she wanted to "take back" the word "help", Ms Higgins replied "but she had a knife". Counsel told the witness that she was "making it up as she went along". "I'm here as a witness and a victim of this man. I'm here to tell my story of what I was told," she replied.

Mr Munro suggested to the witness that she was trying to construct a narrative that did not happen. Ms Higgins denied this. She said the accused had become emotional that night and she had consoled him. "He wasn't upset for that long as he was very abusive that night," she added.

The witness agreed that when she heard about Hayes possibly getting bail on May 18 this year, she had made her second statement to gardaí. Mr Munro suggested that this might possibly have had the effect of "blocking his bail", as she had made a statement that Hayes had "confessed to murder". "I've held this in for a long time," Ms Higgins had replied. On the stand, Hayes denied that he had confessed to Ms Higgins about stabbing Amadea, telling the court that the witness was lying and that she hated him. "Amadea's name did not come out of my mouth on Christmas Eve, why would someone stay in a relationship with someone after they confess to murder?" he said.

‘Incestuous’

Social worker Ciara Lumsden said she had met with Hayes in Coolock on August 25, 2017. Ms Lumsden said Hayes alleged that he had found evidence on a phone's WhatsApp messenger that Amadea was having an incestuous relationship with a relative. Hayes told Ms Lumsden that the couple began to argue that night and he had walked away. The social worker said Hayes told her that Amadea was on the floor with a puncture wound when he went back into the room and he called the ambulance.

Hayes advised the social worker that they had a conflictual relationship and that on occasion Amadea would become violent and would hit him. Hayes said he would hit her back and that it would become particularly violent when they consumed alcohol.

The jury also heard that Hayes admitted placing tracking software in the form of a hidden app on Amadea's phone which was able to access her contacts, callers, messages and social media. Detective Sergeant Anthony Maloney said the user of Amadea's phone would not have known of the app's presence as it was specifically designed to remain hidden.

‘Self-inflicted injury’

Retired State pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy found that the injury to Amadea could be consistent with self-harm. In her evidence to the jury, she also said that there were fresh injuries to Amadea's head and face, which she described as blunt force traumas.

Dr Cassidy said that a knife, which was retrieved from a table in the living area of the apartment, could have been the weapon that inflicted the fatal injury. There was a DNA match between Amadea and a small amount of blood on the knife.

Crucially, however, the jury heard that no DNA from Hayes had been found on the knife suspected of inflicting the fatal wound. The trial heard that the garda case began as a sudden death investigation, which is referred to colloquially as a suspicious death, and remained categorised as such until the end of 2018. The McDermott family were later to bring certain matters to garda attention and the case was upgraded to a homicide investigation. Hayes was arrested on suspicion of murder on October 8, 2020 and released the next day from that detention. He was again arrested on April 4, last year before being finally charged with the murder of Amadea.

'The UN peacekeeper’

Just over two weeks into his trial, Martin Hayes took the stand in his own defence. The jury had already been told that Hayes had no convictions for violent offending and had never been imprisoned for his priors, which were mostly road traffic offences dating from 2008.

"She was a brilliant mother and would do everything for her kids," Hayes had begun in describing Amadea. The accused added: "Looking back it was a toxic relationship, when drink and drugs were involved that's when it started to go sour".

He said the pair drank vodka together in their house a few times a week and if they were drinking "there would be drugs as well". He said they took cocaine and the "odd bit of cannabis". When it was put to him by his counsel that "toxic" was a "kind of buzz word", Hayes responded: "I didn't trust her and she didn't trust me".

Asked by Mr Munro why that was, the accused said that when Amadea was pregnant with their first child she had a relationship with his "best mate". He said when he found out they ended their relationship but got back together when Amadea had their daughter. He said that Amadea also didn't trust him. "We used the same password for all our social media, she used to accuse me of not being at work. To this day I still use the same password and I have access to her Instagram," he said.

He admitted to having a tracker on Amadea's phone so he could check her text messages. Asked by his barrister whether "that was a bit weird", the accused said: "No, I just didn't trust her".

He agreed that Amadea would become agitated on the occasions when she consumed alcohol. "Mostly verbal, insults and all," he said. Mr Munro told his client that the prosecution had suggested he had stabbed Amadea that night. The accused said he did not stab his partner and had done "everything to save her".

He denied confessing to Niamh Higgins that he had stabbed Amadea. Hayes described his relationship with Ms Higgins to the jury as "just toxic as well". "We just ended; I was in a bad place with drugs and she was abusing Xanax. I just left her, I got my parents to collect me from her house on December 30".

Hayes said that when he and Ms Higgins were talking about their past relationships, he had told her [Ms Higgins] about his relationship with Amadea and how she had killed herself. "You had a conversation [with Ms Higgins], did it conclude with you telling her that you stabbed Amadea?" asked counsel. "Ah no," Hayes had replied. Asked by Mr Munro whether he had anything else to say, the accused said: "She was a brilliant mother, she really was and I didn't do this".

In cross-examination, Sean Gillane SC, prosecuting, told Hayes that he had used a "borrowed word" to describe his relationship with Amadea as toxic and used the same word for his relationship with Ms Higgins. The barrister asked the witness were both relationships toxic in the same way. Hayes said they weren't and that he had trusted Ms Higgins. Mr Gillane put it to the accused that when he gave his statement to gardaí, he said everything was fine that night until Amadea "lost her marbles" and the booze ran out. Hayes said Amadea had turned into a different person.

"You are like a UN peacekeeper: you remove yourself from the argument and go to the bedroom, so you are the peacekeeper and she is the aggressor?" asked Mr Gillane. "That's the truth," Hayes replied. The lawyer put it to the accused that his "mask had slipped" when he "confessed" to Ms Higgins "in respect of the murder of Amadea". "I'm not going to confess to something I didn't do," Hayes said.

Mr Gillane told the accused that about two hours before Amadea met her death by his hand, she had texted Ms Deacon in the most ordinary, regular and banal way about getting her make-up done. "She was like Jekyll and Hyde," Hayes replied. Mr Gillane also asked Hayes whether he accepted he had a "demented fixation" that Amadea was having a relationship with a relative. "No, she told me about it," said the accused.

He also denied that Amadea having a relationship with a relative was "an invention and concoction". The barrister told the accused that Amadea had asked him to get help for what was going on in his head. Mr Gillane pressed Hayes that a beautician had described Amadea's body as looking like it had been in a car crash. "She wouldn't let me go to work, I threw her into an L-shaped sofa," the accused replied. "If someone is hitting me, I'll hit them back. I've every right to," Hayes told the court.

In his closing address to the jury, Mr Munro described his client as being "distasteful but unguarded". He said Hayes had not tried to "pull the wool" over the eyes of either the jury or "experienced, expert gardaí" in his account of events on the night Ms McDermott died. Mr Munro said Hayes went to both the gardaí and to the hospital on the night of Ms McDermott's death, which was "consistent with his innocence". "We know he has a history of violence, can be callous and uncaring but he goes to the guards and that is consistent with innocence. She [Ms McDermott] seems to have been suffering with depression.

"Maybe if you are going out with Martin Hayes anyone could feel like that – and then you add drink and drugs into that volatile relationship," Mr Munro said.

‘A coming storm’

However, Mr Gillane told the jurors that there was a "coming storm" on the week of July 20, 2017 and that Amadea knew it. He said it could be seen from the text messages between the couple leading up to the night, when Ms McDermott was trying to steady the ship but Hayes was becoming deranged about an idea in relation to Ms McDermott's relative, which counsel submitted was unconnected to reality.

Mr Gillane suggested that the wool had been pulled over the eyes of gardaí and the jury in relation to what happened on the night of the incident. He said it was not a question of past violence but rather the violence inflicted on Ms McDermott on the night she died. "When you tie it together, it leads to the irresistible conclusion that Mr Hayes inflicted those injuries. They couldn't have been inflicted by her on the account he has given," he said.

Mr Gillane submitted that the accused said he had decided to get away from the argument with his partner that night and leave the room. "You have seen the knife, she stabs herself with it without so much as a cry, yelp or a whimper. She seems to take the knife out of herself, she must place it neatly on the table and then simply lies down and expires until Mr Hayes arrives like a white knight to save her," said counsel. Counsel went on to tell the jury that this version of events made no sense.

"How does any of that fit with what you have seen with your own eyes? The act of violence is the application of the knife to Amadea's stomach. The second greatest act of violence isn't black eyes or bruises on her back, not punches or slaps. The second greatest act of violence is the way he holds her baby finger [in a video clip] and it speaks volumes," said Mr Gillane.

Referring to a video clip of the couple a week before Amadea died, Mr Gillane asked the jury to look at the victim’s face to get some sense of the fear and control that the accused had exercised over her. "That's even before you come to consider the words he is using," he said.

Mr Gillane said when he put it to Hayes that he was the aggressor in the video clip, the accused told the jury he was sitting down and that Ms McDermott was standing up.

"He didn't need to get off his backside to do violence and control her. The extent of the control he had, that cool, calm, controlled cruelty; that didn't involve him raising himself from that chair," said counsel.

Counsel submitted that Hayes had as much contempt for Ms McDermott in death as he had for her in life. Mr Gillane continued by saying that the jury had been sold a narrative, "as if Mr Hayes is the victim of this tragedy instead of its cause".

He finished by asking the jury to bring their life experience to the evidence in the case to conclude what had "undoubtedly happened" that night. "You will see it like a glowing ember in the fire, when you go through those text messages, in the week leading up to this, listen to what Amadea said; she sent him a message saying she was scared he was going to kill her. "It's as if she had a crystal ball; she knew the storm was coming and that storm landed on this night."