Whelan Colin - Till death do us part : the true story of misguided love, marriage, death and deception

Published in 2005by Maverick House Publishers,
47 Harrington StreetDublin 8, Ireland.

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Copyright for text Siobhn Gaffney, 2005.
Copyright for type setting, editing, layout, design Maverick House Publishers.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for insertion in a newspaper, magazine or broadcast.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

For my parents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank a number of people for their help and support with this project. Firstly thanks to Mary Whelans mother Marie Gough for her time and patience. Also to Valerie Hanley and Darren Boyle for their invaluable assistance. I would also like to thank all the journalists who I work with in the Four Courts in particular my boss Diarmaid McDermott.

Siobhn Gaffney

Contents

CHAPTER 1

Colin Whelan was a methodical killer. He had spent months planning his crime and rehearsing the murder and his alibi. There would be no unforeseen problems on the chosen night of the killing. More than anything else, he knew his victim wouldnt scream with fright or summons help when he walked into her bedroom to kill her because the victim was his wife of just six months.

Whelan decided to go through with his plan on the night of Wednesday, 28 February 2001. His motive was money. A year earlier, he had taken out a 400,000 (500,000 approximately) insurance policy on his wifes life. He also wanted to begin a new relationship with a Welsh woman he had met over the internet.

He maintained his composure throughout the day in question and gave away no clues as to what he planned. He left his office at Irish Permanent on St Stephens Green at 5pm to catch a train home. He was so casual he even read the Evening Herald as he travelled to his home in Balbriggan.

He had spent the previous seven months trawling the internet for information on how to commit the perfect murder. He had typed in the word asphyxiation followed by loss of consciousness and how to asphyxiate to learn about death.

During the course of the day, Whelan slipped out of work to purchase a gift for his wife. He bought a cast-bronze figurine of a man casting a fishing line from a boat, entitled A Days Fishing in Brown Thomas. It matched a similar piece they had received as a wedding present.

When he returned to his desk that afternoon, he spent 30 minutes on the phone to his online girlfriend, Helen Sheppard, arranging to travel to Wales later that weekend. When he finished the conversation, he next rang his wife at her place of work while at the same time searching the internet for information on loss of consciousness.

When he arrived home at 6pm, he changed clothes and left for the Body Lab gym, leaving his wife to prepare his dinner.

His wife, Mary Gough, was in good spirits. She had told friends at work that she was going into Drogheda town that evening to collect the results of a blood test from a homeopath in an attempt to lead a healthier lifestyle. She wanted to attend a detox programme to lose weight and she was looking forward to it.

Whelan spent an hour in the gym before returning home. After they had both eaten, he drove her to Drogheda where she had an appointment at 9.15pm with her homeopath, Michael Hughes, who noticed that she was in good humour that night. Whelan gave away no indication of what he had in mind. When the couple arrived home, he told his wife that he was going to take a shower and he walked upstairs.

Oblivious to her husbands psychosis, Mary Gough spent some time attempting to work out her new detox programme before going upstairs to prepare for bed. She was attacked moments after she had changed into a pair of white, teddy bear patterned pyjamas in the master bedroom of the couples new home.

There was nothing to suggest that anything was wrong. Her husband simply walked into the room, took his wife by surprise and started choking her to death. Mary hadnt a chance. She stood just 5ft 4 inches in her bare feet while Whelan towered over her. A mixture of sheer strength and surprise gave him the advantage. As he entered the bedroom, he gripped the cord of a dressing gown in his right hand. Standing a few inches behind his wife, Whelan grabbed her from behind without warning and grappled with her neck. Attempting to fight her husband off, Mary summoned all her energy and turned around to face her husband, probably staring at him with terror stricken eyes.

In stunned disbelief, she tried to break free from her husbands forceful grip but as she flayed her arms in the air, Whelans hold on her neck became stronger and stronger. She could barely breathe. In an effort to pull his hands free from around her neck, Mary scraped her nails down her husbands bare chest. This caused him to relax his grip temporarily. For a moment she was able to breathe and took a huge lungful of air. She then made an effort to run but Whelan grabbed her left arm while she tried to get free, ripping the left sleeve of the pyjama top just above the cuff. The tear extended almost all the way around the sleeve, such was the force he used.

Maddened, Whelan grabbed his wifes long, brown hair and dragged her onto their king-size bed. Mary kicked to fend him off and screamed at him to stop but he wouldnt. Whelan was not listening, but was transfixed by his sickened mission.

Pulling the cord from his dressing gown free, Whelan took his wifes head in his hands and first wrapped a towel around her neck, followed by the cord. The towel, Whelan had researched on the internet, would disguise ligature marks left by a manual strangulation. He hoped this would make it difficult for detectives to identify the cause of death. As she continued to scream, he pulled the cord tighter and tighter. Marys face soon began to turn blue and the first trickle of blood oozed from her nose.

In a desperate effort to save herself, she scraped Whelan down his chest once more. This gave her a few moments grace from the relentless stranglehold he had around her neck. Wiping the blood from her face with her right hand, she tried to escape but was unable because she was too weak. Her face had now turned from blue to purple and her breathing had become laboured. Sensing that her death was imminent, an enraged Whelan pulled the cord with such force that Mary bit her own tongue. Unable to scream anymore, Mary resigned herself to her fate.

She was going to die at the hands of her husband. When she lost consciousness, Whelan removed the cord from her neck. His young wife was now paralysed and dying. He then looped the cord around his dressing gown and tied it. Like a rag doll, Mary was then dragged from the bed by her killer. Holding her two limp arms, Whelan pulled her across the house landing and down the stairs, head first; thud, thud, each time her back hit a step.

Halfway down the stairs, Whelan accidentally dropped her right arm. She was still clinging to her life and tried desperately to grab hold of the side of the wall in a final bid to stop her husband. But he just pulled her harder down the stairs.

When he reached the bottom, he laid his wife out on the floor and stared down at her. Incapable of speech, she stared back at her husband of six months and cried in silence. She could feel her breathing getting shallower. Whelan sat in the dark, watching his wife lose consciousness as her life slipped away. He waited and waited until she passed out.