Court told about Doush killing
A Mountjoy prisoner accused of murdering his cellmate told detectives he killed him with “three digs, three kicks and a stamping” before rubbing excrement in his face.
Stephen Egan (aged 25) of Belcamp Crescent, Coolock, Dublin has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to murdering 20-year-old Gary Douche at the prison on August 1, 2006.
Egan’s barrister, John Aylmer SC, said that his client admitted beating Mr Douche to death that morning in Cell 2, B Base, but said he had a mental illness, which diminished his responsibility.
Detective Sergeant Mike Smith said that Egan, Mr Douche and five others entered the cell the night before, and were last attended to by prison officers at 10.15pm.
When the two officers returned to the holding cell shortly after 6am, they found Mr Douche unresponsive. He was pronounced dead at 7.35am at the Mater Hospital, and Egan was subsequently arrested and interviewed.
Egan told gardaí that he used “16 and a half stone of anger” in the attack because he believed that Mr Douche had “raped his sister and abused my mother”.
However he said he had “supernatural strength” and the punches, kicks and stamps were obviously “a bit too hard” because he had not intended to kill him
“No-one deserves to die in Mountjoy,” he said, indicating that he would therefore plead guilty to manslaughter or assault, but not murder.
“I probably dropped onto his chest,” he said, after recalling he was in a frenzy at the time. “It was like his neck was after collapsing and he was making noises.”
He said he told his victim to take it like a man and not to scream. “He didn’t,” he said. “I wanted to burst him.”
Members of Mr Douche’s family had to leave the courtroom while Ms Roisin Lacey BL, prosecuting, read certain details from Egan’s statement.
“I was kicking him into his head,“ he said. “A kick into the chest, like a football kick, like Ryan Giggs.”
He said that when stamping on his victim, he told him that the beating was for his sister.
“He didn’t harm my mother, but in my head he was saying things about her,” he said. He also admitted that Mr Douche was not a rapist or sex offender.
He also demonstrated to gardaí how he had danced on the back of Mr Douche’s head.
He said that after 10-minute beating, he washed himself and defecated into a plastic bag.
“I put it on his face as a going-away present for his sister and my own sister. I rubbed it onto his face, but not into his mouth. I didn‘t mean to put it in his ears,” he said, explaining that Mr Douche was still breathing and making sounds at the time.
He said his cellmates then covered his victim with mattresses and he put his walkman on and went to sleep.
“Any chance I can get my walkman back?” he asked the detectives.
He identified white Adidas runners as his. “They were the kicking ones,” he said. He explained that he tried to clean them, but that blood turns orange when washed.
When shown a white vest, he said it was “Nigga’s” and that he took it as “a token of his appreciation”. When asked who Nigga was, he replied: “Gary Douche, the dead piece of s**t”.
State pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy’s post mortem examination indicated that Mr Douche died of blunt-force trauma to the head and neck.
The trial continues today tomorrow before Mr Justice George Bermingham and a jury of six men and six women and is expected to last another day.
