A jury has heard that a former Bradley man on trial for a 1997 double murder gave a statement to police where he admitted stabbing two women after breaking into a house in Ireland.

Detective Garda Gerard Dillon read a written statement given by the accused Mark Nash in Galway on August 17, 1997, in which he wished to volunteer information in relation to a double murder he “committed in Dublin five months ago.”

Nash, 42, who attended All Saints College and moved to Ireland in 1996, has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin to the double murder of 59-year-old Sylvia Shields and Mary Callanan, 61.

They lived in sheltered accommodation in a house attached to St Brendan’s Psychiatric Hospital in Grangegorman, Dublin, between March 6 and March 7, 1997.

Mr Dillon read Nash’s statement made on August 17, 1997, to the court.

The court heard that Nash had been to a fundraising event at the GPO on O’Connell Street around 10.30pm and walked along the quays where he had a few drinks in a club known as the Ormond Centre. At 11.30pm upon leaving the club he said he took a wrong turn and ended up at Orchard View where he came to a two-storey house.

Nash said in his statement: “I cannot explain my mind at time, but everything seemed to turn black. I lost control and decided to break into a house. I went in a side entrance to the back of house.” The court heard how Nash said he broke the bottom right hand frame of a window at Orchard View to get into the house and put a spare pair of socks he had in his pocket on his hands.

Reading the statement, the jury heard how Nash said he picked up a red-handled bread knife in the kitchen before he went upstairs.

The court heard how in the first room there was a “large lady” in her mid 50s asleep, lying on her back, in a single bed and Nash said he pulled the duvet down to her waist and stabbed her in the

chest, through her night dress.

Mr Dillon read: “I don’t know how many times, it was a frenzied attack. I cut her throat, I think just once.”

Upon going into the second bedroom, Mr Dillon read how Nash said he saw a lady of a “slim build” getting out of a double bed which was up against a wall and he walked to the foot of the bed and stabbed her in the chest.

In the third bedroom there was a woman asleep in a single bed.

Mr Dillon read that Nash said he still had the knife in his hand but he regained his self control and left the room. Nash said he took the socks off his hands and dropped them with the knife at the bottom of the stairs.

Mr Dillon read how Nash said he went back to his flat between 12.30am and 1am, showered and went to bed and “spent the night crying.”

All his clothes from the night, including his black trousers, were discarded in a bin collection except for a black velvet jacket which was later handed into the police.

Mr Dillon described how Nash looked for some paper and a pen as he wanted to write a letter to his girlfriend, Sarah Jane Doyle.

In the opening lines Nash says: “I tried to die before my arrest by throwing myself at a van and as I’m writing this now I didn’t succeed.”

The letter contained an excerpt which described Mark Nash’s “violent tendencies” which he has “had for a long time now, episodes where I lose all self-control.”

The trial continues.