Around Ireland Wedding mayhem in Kilkenny

By Patrick Markey

For Lisa Evans, it should have been the happiest day of her life. Instead, the young Kilkenny woman’s wedding bliss turned into a bloody nightmare.

The Irish Independent recently reported that Evans’s wedding reception at a Kilkenny hotel turned nasty after an argument ended up with her husband, Paul Denieffe, and his father charged with assault, and the bride’s dress ripped and bloody. Other guests were left in a state of shock.

A court session on the charges against those involved heard that the mayhem erupted when a minor argument broke out at the reception.

The groom, his brother and father started fighting. The bride went over to separate the men, but gardai said all she managed to get was a punch in the head from her husband. Suddenly chairs were flying and ashtrays, glasses and bottles littered the floor.

Gardai found the bride with her dress torn and covered in blood as she appealed to the gardai to take everyone home. Evans, apparently, was the only sober one at the party.

Several other guests were also charged in the fracas. All the accused have denied the charges.

Ghostly screening

It’s a ghoulish tale worthy of the "X Files."

A Dublin teacher claims to have captured the image of a famous ghost while making a documentary film about Malahide, reports the Dublin newspaper Northside People.

The teacher says he only noticed the image while re-editing his film, "Malahide Castle to the Velvet Strand."

"We’re dead serious about this," he said.

"We’ve a shot of the Oak Room in the castle and the face is clearly visible in one of the high-back chairs. We didn’t notice it at the time, but it’s very clear on the film. The image seems to fit the description of Puck, the castle ghost. Staff at the castle are very excited about this. We’ve shown it to a number of people and they’re convinced it’s Puck. It’s really amazing."

A shortened version of the film has already won a number of awards, and it was while reshooting additional scenes for a full version that the ghostly image appeared.

"It’s already a great film, but having Puck certainly adds an extra dimension to it," the teacher told the paper.

Tralee killer gets life

The Tralee man who made headlines when he was arrested in January 1998 after an extradition order was issued by English police was sentenced to life imprisonment recently in Preston for the murder of a 17-year-old.

According to the Kerry’s Eye newspaper, Stuart Michael Diamond, 21, who was wanted for the killing of Chris Hartley, was in Tralee in January last year and visited a few pubs. He even stayed with relatives and mixed with friends he had met while living with his family in Shanakill.

It was only after Diamond was arrested that the grisly story of what he had done surfaced. He was wanted for killing and chopping up the body of Hartley, whose headless corpse was found in a bin at the rear of a Blackpool hotel in 1997.

Hartley’s body had been cut in half and also the head was severed. One half of the body was found in a bag near the bin. Police identified the victim by his fingerprints, the paper reported.

Diamond was described by British police as an "extremely dangerous person." He had been involved in a number of slashing incidents since 1995. English police claimed at the time Diamond was arrested in Tralee, he had said if he could not kill the people he wanted to kill, he would attack anyone to relieve his frustration. He has shown no remorse for the attacks he carried out, police claimed.