A 54-year-old Cork woman murdered her brother because of a row over the inheritance of the family home.

The victim, Paul Jones was murdered on Wednesday, September 4. His body was discovered on Saturday, September 7.

When a dying Cork man who was known as The Horse called his solicitor to his bedside to change his will a week after his wife died, it was the start of a chain of events that ended years later with his daughter stabbing one of his sons to death in the hallway of his cottage home in the city.

According to Irish examiner, Solicitor Kevin Hegarty had been the Jones family solicitor for many years and he responded to the call from William Jones, a hardworking man known as The Horse, to oversee the re-writing of his will. It wasn’t the first time that William Jones had re-written his will. He had done so several times over the years. But the one he wrote on May 27, 2013, was his final will and he was dead less than two months later.

As Brendan Grehan, defending Helen Jones, remarked in his closing speech at the end of the four-week trial, “Many a property dispute dates back to people who are long since in their graves.”

In the will at the heart of this case, William Jones left his home at 27 Cahergal Avenue, Mayfield, Cork, not to his three adult children but his two sons, Paul and Liam. There was a provision that Helen could continue to live there.

Indeed, the lawyer for the woman on trial suggested that the will was not all that divisive. After all, Helen Jones could have lived out her life at Cahergal Avenue. Certainly, if she married she would have had to move out. But obviously, the simplest way around that was not to marry.

In any event, there was division and, indeed, a court case was due to be heard in May 2019 between the siblings, with Paul and Liam on one side and Helen on the other. It was not until the day of that civil trial that an agreement was reached in the hallways of the courthouse on Washington St. In effect, it was agreed to sell the house, Helen was to get €50,000 from the sale, and the balance was divided equally between the two brothers.

So the house was put on the market in May 2018 – four months before Paul Jones’s murder – at an asking price of €199,000. The top offer was €180,000. Helen was happy with that offer but the auctioneer could only act on the instructions of the person who had employed him for the sale, and that was Liam Jones. And he wasn’t happy that it was enough.

He went further and told the auctioneer he was going to take it off the market through that company and get another auctioneer. By now the dispute between Helen and her two brothers was unraveling.

Nicola Barry, who works at Dunnes Stores on St Patrick’s St, Cork, met Keith O’Hara and Helen Jones in the store on August 30, 2019 – just days before Paul Jones was killed. Ms. Barry said Helen Jones told her what was happening: “She was having terrible trouble with her brother and she spent nine grand on solicitor’s fees. Keith said he was going to pay for not handing over the house. And Helen said the same…

She was saying she was entitled to the house — I can’t remember what she said, it was all about the house, house, house… She said she was going up to her brother’s house.

It was suggested by the defense that this reference to her brother could have been about Paul or Liam. The jury in the murder trial at the Central Criminal Court never heard from Liam Jones even though he was listed as a witness in the book of evidence. But Liam Jones did speak in the district court following the killing of his brother, Paul. He came to court as a witness for the State against the application for bail by Helen Jones two years ago.

Liam Jones testified that he was in fear of his sister.

“I have cancer and every time she sees me, she calls me cancer balls and says ‘I hope you die roaring.’ I am afraid a petrol bomb will come through the window,” Liam Jones said during his sister’s application for bail.

Looking back on that application for bail in October 2019, the argument about the house was still very much to the fore. Helen Jones did something at that court hearing which she chose not to do in the murder trial — she gave evidence.

Eddie Burke, a solicitor, cross-examined Liam Jones on that day and suggested he wanted his sister kept in custody so that he could sell the family home. Mr. Jones said that was not the reason. He said there was a court agreement that the house would be sold, the proceeds divided between the siblings and that Helen Jones could stay in the house until that happened.

In the course of her bail application, Helen Jones said her brothers Liam and Paul bullied her in court: “The boys wanted me out on my ear and I said buy me out.”

Asked about the allegation that she made insulting comments about him having cancer and threatening him, she said: “I am just in shock at that. I never threatened Liam.”

Liam might have been the first to say that he was in fear of Helen but he wasn’t the last. Her partner at the time of the murder, and for several months beforehand, Keith O’Hara testified memorably in the murder trial that on the night that Paul Jones was murdered, he (Keith O’Hara) was in fear of being “victim number two.” He said that was the only reason he never called an ambulance for Paul Jones as he lay in a pool of blood in the hallway of his home on Bandon Road.

Helen Jones and Keith O’Hara have now been sentenced to life imprisonment at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork today.

The mandatory life sentence was also imposed on Keith O’Hara, who was engaged to be married to Helen Jones