Michaela McAreavey

Michaela McAreavey, née Harte (Irish: Micheáilín Mhic Giolla Riabhaigh née Ní hÁirt, 31 December 1983 – 10 January 2011) was found strangled in the bath of a hotel room in Mauritius, where she had travelled for her honeymoon.

The daughter of Tyrone's multiple All-Ireland Senior Football Championship-winning Gaelic football manager Mickey Harte, her death and subsequent events prompted continuing widespread international media coverage.

It was the first murder of a tourist in Mauritius, and the Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam expressed his sympathy to the Harte and McAreavey families.

Attendees included Cardinal Edward Daly; 1992 All-Ireland winning manager Brian McEniff; GAA President Christy Cooney, Northern Ireland's First Minister and deputy First Ministers, the Democratic Unionist Peter Robinson and Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness; sports minister Nelson McCausland, enterprise minister Arlene Foster and justice committee chairman Maurice Morrow.

She had been the Ulster Rose at the 2004 Rose of Tralee.

McAreavey was Catholic and a Pioneer and was seen to be religious.

She taught Irish and Religion at St Patrick's Academy, Dungannon, where she ran the "Pioneer Club" encouraging young people to abstain from alcohol.

On 10 January 2011, McAreavey and her husband John had lunch at their hotel in Grand Gaube.

After lunch, at about 2:44 PM, she went to her room.

Investigators believe she was wrestled to the ground on entering her room and strangled.

She was put into the bath and the water was turned on.

Her body was discovered by her husband soon after.

Three employees of the hotel were later arrested for the murder: Avinash Treebhoowoon, Sandeep Moonea and Raj Theekoy.

They appeared in court in Mauritius on 12 January 2011.

Treebhoowoon and Mooneea were charged with McAreavey's murder and Theekoy with conspiracy to murder.

DNA tests were taken on the suspects.

Dassen Narayen and Seenarain Mungoo were arrested the following week and charged with aiding and abetting a crime.

Narayen and Mungoo were both security officers at the hotel.

Mungoo was released and had all charges against him dropped on 12 February 2011.

Narayen was also cleared; his fingerprints had been found on a towel in the room because he had given it to her husband when he called for help upon finding her body.

McAreavey was brought home and a traditional Irish wake was held.

McAreavey's funeral, which took place on 17 January 2011 at the same church where she had been married less than a month earlier, (St Malachy's, Ballymacilroy), was attended by thousands of mourners, including then President of Ireland Mary McAleese and Northern Ireland's First Minister and deputy First Minister Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness respectively.

Mourners from both nationalist and unionist communities paid their respects and offered condolences.

A special Mass was held simultaneously in Mauritius, led by the island's senior priest, Father Philippe Goupille.

The two hotel workers who were accused of her murder were tried and declared not-guilty by the Supreme Court of Mauritius: they were acquitted on 12 July 2012.

Michaela McAreavey, born Michaela Harte, was a 27-year-old Irish teacher from Glencull (Ballygawley, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland) and the daughter of Tyrone Gaelic football team manager Mickey Harte.

The trial of two hotel workers for the murder began in Mauritius on 22 May 2012.

On 6 June 2012, John McAreavey said he had been handcuffed by police officers and they examined his body for marks on the day of his wife's murder.

He also said that he had seen one of the accused (Avinash Treebhoowoon) on two occasions within a few minutes the day his wife died.

McAreavey said that he had gone back to the hotel room looking for his wife when she failed to return to the restaurant after leaving him to get some biscuits from their room to eat with their cups of tea.

He found her unconscious in the bath with the tap running, and laid her on the floor and then tried to revive her.

A DNA test made by a forensic expert from England found that no DNA traces of the two men accused or of the other two original suspects were present on the body or at the crime scene.

The Major Crime Investigation Team (MCIT) of Mauritius Police Force faced severe criticism for its handling of the case and for claims by Treebhoowoon, who alleged that police beat a confession out of him, since he was subjected to three days of beatings by officers before he confessed that he strangled McAreavey because she caught him and co-defendant Sandeep Moonea stealing from her hotel room.

On 12 July 2012, Judge Prithviraj Fekna told the jurors not to worry about the effect of any verdict on the reputation of Mauritius.

He reminded the six men and three women that they were not politicians and it was not their job to protect the image of the country.

"You have been told that this will have an international ramification and will affect the image of Mauritius… this is not your role," Fekna said.

"You must not allow yourself to be influenced by this, you are not politicians, you have to base yourself on what has happened."

The case was originally scheduled to run for nine days, but the verdict came in its eighth week.

After two hours of deliberation, the jury returned a unanimous verdict, finding Avinash Treebhoowoon and Sandeep Moonea not guilty.

In a statement released after the verdict, the McAreavey and Harte families said that following the endurance of "seven harrowing weeks of this trial" there were no words to describe "the sense of devastation and desolation now felt by both families".