Costa News Spain Breaking News | English News in Spain.
A TARRAGONA Jury has convicted Irishman Keith Byrne for killing his Dublin-based partner Kirsty in a Salou Hotel in July 2023.
Prosecutors want the former British soldier jailed for 20 years, while a private prosecution on behalf of Kirsty’s family is demanding 30 years behind bars and a €400,000 compensation payment.
The Prosecutor’s office has called for a lower sentence due to the fact that Byrne suffered from drug problems, which impaired his mental reasoning at the moment of the murder.
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After the verdict was released on Wednesday evening, sentencing is scheduled to take place later.
Kirstyward, 36, a mother-of-two, was strangled to death with a straightener cord, just hours after Byrne left her.
They went on a vacation to the four-star Magnolia Hotel, hoping that they could mend their broken relationship.
Keith Byrne, 34, told the court that she took her own life, and that her use of alcohol and cocaine had made their relationship ‘toxic’.
The jury, however was swayed to a certain extent by the prosecution argument claiming that he had used his physical superiority in order to kill her.
Several witnesses including Mossos d’Esquadra, forensic doctors and others contradicted Byrne’s story of what happened.
Mossos’ spokesperson said at the time: “Officers were called to find a woman laying on a hallway floor, and a man lying next to her with an apparent self-inflicted cut.”
Experts concluded that the marks on the victim’s neck were not compatible with suicide, and that no knot was found in the cable of the iron with which she would have allegedly hanged himself.
Byrne was placed in pre-trial confinement on July 3, 2023.
Exclusive 2023 interview from a Catalan jail Olive Press Byrne insisted: “I found her cold. She was already gone. I tried CPR and yelled for help. I loved her.”
He said that a CCTV showed he was in a beach bar when he discovered Kirsty’s body with a ligature on her neck and blocking the entrance from within.
