Why Did They Kill Scarlett Faulkner? Inside the Murder Trial of Two Accused

The Central Criminal Court in Dublin has heard that a 41-year-old woman and a 17-year-old girl are standing trial accused of murdering 28-year-old Scarlett Faulkner at Birdhill, County Tipperary, on 21 March 2025 — a killing the prosecution alleges was driven by a domestic jealousy that spiralled into a joint enterprise to hunt down Ms Faulkner and the older accused's husband. Both defendants deny murder; the teenager has admitted manslaughter. Daily Dazzling Dawn understands the case hinges on the precise nature of the relationship between the two accused and whether they acted together in the hours before Ms Faulkner was fatally struck with an iron bar.

The prosecution, led by Seoirse Ó Dúnlaing SC, told the jury that the motive was straightforward: Ms Faulkner had begun a relationship with the older accused's husband. Mr Ó Dúnlaing said the State would seek to prove the older woman "hunted down" her husband and Ms Faulkner for some 24 hours before the fatal confrontation at about 5.20pm on 21 March, when she spotted her husband's van, chased it and rammed it off the road at the Birdhill roundabout off the M7. It is alleged the 17-year-old then used an iron bar to inflict the injuries that caused Ms Faulkner's death.

The connection between the two accused is central to the case. The older woman, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the teenager, is alleged to have been in a joint enterprise with the 17-year-old to kill or cause serious harm to Ms Faulkner. The court has heard that the teenager was known to the older accused and was present during the pursuit and the roadside attack.

Neither accused can be identified in reporting of the trial, and the 17-year-old's exact link to the older woman's family has not been detailed in open court beyond her involvement in the events of that day. What is clear from the evidence is that the older accused's marriage had collapsed in the weeks before the killing. She told gardaí she had been married for 25 years after leaving school at 16, and that her husband had left her about a week before the attack. She described discovering he was with Ms Faulkner as the breaking point.

Daily Dazzling Dawn learned that the prosecution's case rests on a trail of digital evidence recovered from mobile phones. Sergeant Jennifer Skelly told the court she analysed devices belonging to several people of interest and found 267 completed or attempted calls to and from the older accused's phone on the day of the alleged murder. Messages dating back to December 2025 referred to her husband cheating with a woman she called "a scabby smelly whore." The court also heard that less than 20 minutes after the assault, the older accused sent "panicked" voice notes begging another person to "come fast" and to "bring mammy, she'll know what to do."

A voice note recovered from the teenager's phone, played to the jury, allegedly described the attack in graphic terms: "I was running up the road and I battered her with the bar, her brains were open… I got the bar and stuck it into her eyeball. I gave her some beating." In further messages after the incident, the teenager told a friend she was "bored of her brains" and "chilling out," to which the friend replied: "you're gonna go to jail girl. I'm so scared." The reply from the teenager's phone said: "ha ha … be singing like Beyonce".

The older accused has consistently denied involvement in the fatal assault. In recorded Garda interviews at Nenagh Garda Station on 26 March 2025, she swore "on my children's life, I did not put one finger on that girl." She told detectives: "I don't need a solicitor because I didn't do anything." She insisted that her husband was the aggressor at Birdhill, claiming he rammed her car, broke its windows with a hatchet and told her he would "kill you stone dead." She said: "He did all this to me, I'm the victim, not him," adding that if Ms Faulkner was struck with a hatchet, "the only person that had a hatchet at all times" was her husband.

She did not, however, pretend to approve of the relationship. She told gardaí: "She was wrong to go with a married man, but she wasn't the one who was married to me and didn't know my children, he did." She added: "It was wrong what happened to the girl. I do not condone that in any way." She also said of Ms Faulkner: "It's her third time in ICU for being with married men. You would think she would have respect." Earlier, in a phone call to her cousin recorded about 12 hours after the attack, she said: "I'd kill no woman over a man," and swore "on the blessed lady I never put a finger on her."

The 17-year-old's defence is different in shape: she admits manslaughter but denies murder, meaning she accepts she caused Ms Faulkner's death unlawfully but disputes that she intended to kill or cause serious harm. The jury has heard she described the older accused "ramming" the van off the road and claimed others present could not tackle the man because he had a "big axe" and "we had a machete but it broke." The trial continues before Mr Justice Kerida Naidoo and a jury of eight men and four women, and is expected to last until 30 November.