Life Sentence For Dublin Murderer

40-year-old Wayne Kinsella has been sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Adil Essalhi in Dublin last year.

Mr Essalhi (31), a father of five, died after suffering a violent assault during which he was struck almost 60 times in the head, neck and arms with a machete-type weapon and a knife.

His burned and bleached body was found partly submerged in a drain a week later by gardaí who had been directed to its location in a cornfield by his killer, Wayne Kinsella.

The Central Criminal Court jury of seven women and five men took two hours and 38 minutes to reach their unanimous guilty verdict following the two-week trial.

In the days after Mr Essalhi’s disappearance, Kinsella voluntarily sat in a Garda patrol car and told two detectives he could direct them to where the body of a missing person had been.

The jury heard that Kinsella behaved in an “eccentric” manner and told the detectives that if they were to find the bleached and burned body of the killer of his brother Lee, they could “come looking” for him. Sgt Ann Ellis testified that on the following day she walked “arm in arm” with Kinsella up to a balcony on the Plaza apartment complex in Tyrrelstown after he told her: “Walk with me and I’ll point to where the body is.”

The jury accepted the prosecution’s case that Kinsella and a relative lured Mr Essalhi to a field and murdered him having “got it into their heads” he was involved in the death of Kinsella’s brother Lee. But speaking outside the court, the victim’s mother, Geraldine Essalhi, denied that her son had anything to do with Lee Kinsella’s death.

(H)