Paula Farrell pleads guilty to manslaughter, denies murder

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Paula Farrell pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter. The case concerned the unlawful killing of her partner, Wayne McQuillan, at her home in Drogheda on New Year’s Day 2014.

The proceedings were reported on 16 March 2020. Farrell was giving evidence at the Central Criminal Court before Mr Justice Paul McDermott and a jury. The judge had arranged for jurors to sit apart because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Farrell testified that she and McQuillan had been drinking on 31 December 2013. She said he tried to have sex with her on the sofa, despite her efforts to push him off, and then strangled her. She said she thought she was dying.

She said she did not remember taking a knife from a block but remembered using it twice. She accepted that she had stabbed McQuillan four times and caused his death. Farrell said she did not intend to kill him or cause serious harm and wanted to hurt him as he had hurt her.

In cross-examination, Gerard Clarke SC for the DPP put it to Farrell that her account of a sexual attack was fabricated. She denied that it was lies. She accepted that she had not mentioned the attack in four Garda interviews and said she had not wanted to believe it had happened again because she had been abused as a child.

Former Deputy State Pathologist Dr Michael Curtis said he found four stab wounds and that there could have been potential survival with prompt medical intervention. Farrell’s cross-examination was due to continue.