Stephen Mooney was facing losses of over €200,000 for his Dublin-based estate agency, McCarthy Mooney & Associates when he ‘snapped’ and stabbed his wife, Anna, to death.

At the time of the murder, the 52-year-old’s business was said to be haemorrhaging cash, and he was about to be forced out of his rental home with no hope of getting a mortgage.

His agency was on the first floor of Dublin’s Donaghmede shopping centre (pictured). A worker at a neighbouring business told the Sunday World that Mooney had originally occupied a downstairs property, where rents are higher, before moving to the upstairs unit.

Few visitors

She said: “He was a one-man operation. It’s a big unit and he looked very small in there by himself. And he wasn’t ever very busy. You’d see the odd person going in, but that was it.”

According to the company’s records, the business had not made a profit for years and when the last set of accounts were filed in 2021, it owed a total of €200,912.

Mooney had been married to his wife, Anna, for 20 years, with whom he had two children and, according to neighbours, he was a nice, quiet man who ‘must have just snapped.’

They were a nice family and good people to have as neighbours.”

One said: “They were a nice family and good people to have as neighbours. There was never any sign from the outside that it was anything but a happy home.

“They were renting and it did come out afterwards that they were going to lose the house. Their landlord had passed away and the new owner wanted to sell it.”

Guilty

Mooney only pleaded guilty to the murder of his wife after the police revealed they used software to unlock his phone and discovered he had filmed the whole thing.

He now faces a mandatory life sentence for murder, but Mr Justice Paul McDermott has adjourned sentencing so members of his wife’s family can make statements to the court.

Picture: JLL