A friend of a man accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend in Kilkenny says he told her he had “demonic tendencies” on the day she was killed.
Mairead Moran (26) was repeatedly stabbed just before finishing up work at a Holland & Barrett outlet in the Market Cross Shopping Centre.
Helen Cruise invited Shane Smyth to have tea in her home on the morning of the alleged murder on May 8th 2014.
They had been friends for years, but she started to feel uncomfortable when he began talking about people stealing “unusual things” from him.
She said he was very agitated and took out a bag of crystals, from which he gave her a purple one.
He told her he was a solitaire, which is someone who practices witchcraft alone, and had “demonic tendencies”.
Ken O’Reilly, whose family owns the flat where Smyth lived at McGuinness House, Evans Lane, Kilkenny City, said he called over to him just over an hour before Mairead Moran was stabbed to death at the Market Cross Shopping Centre.
He said his eyes were “unusually wide open” and he claimed he had been bitten in the face by spiders.
Smyth, who is 29, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2005, and has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the murder of his ex-girlfriend.
