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THE MOTHER OF an Irish woman allegedly murdered by her partner during a Spanish holiday broke down in tears today at the start of his murder trial.
Spanish public prosecutors are seeking a 21-year-prison sentence for Keith Byrne, who had been living in Duleek, Co Meath, for allegedly strangling Kirsty Ward in their hotel room while on holiday.
Byrne was charged with the murder of the 36-year-old in November last year. The trial started this week in the east coast Spanish city of Tarragona.
Jackie Ward said her daughter’s vacation with Byrne was a “make or break holiday” and revealed she found out after her death that the mother-of-one was going to leave him.
Ward recalled her daughter’s state of mind in the lead-up to the 2 July 2023 hotel incident: “She was not herself. She was not happy the morning she left.
“I could tell as her mother when she left that there was something not right,” she said.
Asked if her daughter had confided in her that she was having problems with Byrne before the pair’s holiday in the Costa Dorada resort of Salou, she added: “I knew it wasn’t right. I didn’t like him. I didn’t trust him.”
“Afterwards I found out from friends and colleagues she worked with that there were issues, that she had decided it was the make or break holiday, that she was going to leave him.”
Private prosecutors acting for Ward’s family want Byrne jailed for 30 years if he is found guilty of intentionally strangling her to death in their hotel room.
The 32-year-old has been held on remand in jail since his arrest nearly two years ago.
He was formally charged last year after a long-running criminal probe by a specialist gender violence-investigating judge.
A five-page public prosecution indictment submitted to the Spanish courts accused him of strangling Kirsty Ward to death with a hair straightener power cord hours after she dumped him following a row in their hotel room.
They claim he acted with the intention of killing her because he couldn’t accept the end of their eight-month relationship.
And they allege that Byrne took advantage of his “superior strength” and the fact his alleged victim had no easy escape from their room to prevent her from defending herself.
Byrne insisted soon after his arrest over the 2 July 2023 killing he was innocent, claiming he found Kirsty lying prone with a ligature around her neck and tried to revive her in the doorway of their room.
Tarragona-based public prosecutors outlined their version of events the day of the killing, which detailed a “climate of conflict and disengagement”.
They said at 9pm on 2 July he returned to the hotel and had another row with the victim. During that argument, they say he was unwilling to accept the break-up and “with the aim of causing death or knowing that was a possibility” took the power cable of a hair straightener and strangled Ward, causing her death by mechanical asphyxiation.
Public prosecutors are accusing Byrne of aggravated murder and not simple homicide under Spanish law because of his alleged execution of the crime in a way or with means that left the victim defenceless.
They are demanding he pay Kirsty Ward’s teenage child Evan, 14 at the time she died, €150,000 in compensation and her mum €100,000.
During her court evidence today, Jackie Ward was asked whether she thought her daughter could have killed herself.
She responded angrily: “She would never do that. She did everything for her son. She would never ever leave him. She would never do that to him.”
Bryne’s trial is scheduled to last until the end of this month.
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