Rachel O'Reilly's natural mother, Teresa Lowe, attends the murder trial most days. She sits at the front of the public gallery, accompanied by friends and a victim support representative.

She was 17 when she gave birth to her daughter on 10 October 1973. Soon after, she gave the baby up for adoption.

At the time, the court heard, she indicated that she would be amenable to contact if her daughter requested it when she grew up. Contact was established when Rachel was 18, and they were on good terms when Rachel was beaten to death on 4 October 2004.

Rachel O'Reilly's adoptive mother, Rose Callaly, attended the first day of the trial and gave evidence on the second. She sat in the well of the court, on a bench reserved for her family. Every day her youngest son, Anthony, and only surviving daughter, Ann, attend and sit on the bench.

When Rachel was a baby, Rose Callaly brought her home to a family that would eventually include five adopted siblings, the court heard.

They grew up in the north Dublin suburb of Whitehall, and when Rachel married Joe O'Reilly in 1998, the couple settled in nearby Santry. The O'Reillys moved out of the city to a bungalow in The Naul just 18 months before Rachel's death.

Rose Callaly was the person who found her daughter's body. On Tuesday, the court heard how Rose arrived at the house after being alerted on the phone by Joe that Rachel hadn't collected the younger of the couple's two sons at the local cr�che.

� 'I knew she was murdered' Rachel's Renault Scenic was in the driveway when Rose arrived around 2pm. The O'Reillys' two dogs didn't race her to the door, which was unusual. The patio door was open - also strange.

"And the curtains were drawn. I had never seen that before, " Rose Callaly told the court.

Inside, she noticed that the sink tap was running quite strongly. There were clothes folded on the kitchen table. Other items looked like they had been "placed on the floor", she testified.

She walked through the house, calling her daughter's name. She looked in the boys' room. She came out and noticed something at the door to Rachel's room.

"As soon as I saw her I knew that she was dead and I knew she was murdered, " Rose Callaly told the court. She knelt down beside her daughter.

Forensic evidence would show that the knees of her trousers were stained with Rachel's blood.

"I talked to her. I felt her arm but it was hard, " she remembered.

Eventually, through her panic, Rose Callaly managed to ring somebody. Within what she estimates was five minutes, a neighbour and friend, Sarah Harmon, arrived at the house.

Minutes later, Joe O'Reilly arrived with the couple's son, Adam, whom he had collected at the cr�che.

The following day, Rose Callaly went to the mortuary where the dead woman was laid out.

There, she told the court, she formally identified the body of "my daughter, Rachel".

The state's case against Joe O'Reilly for the murder of his wife is largely circumstantial, the court was told by prosecuting counsel Denis Vaughan Buckley when the trial opened. O'Reilly denies the charge.

There is unprecedented interest in the trial.

Each day, a large swathe of spectators begins gathering outside Court Two from soon after 10.30am for the day's hearing, which is scheduled to begin at 11am. By Friday, all of the public gallery was taken up by the media and relatives. Even those members of the public who were out bright and early for their seats had to make do with standing.

The trial is expected to last about six weeks, but twice in the opening days it veered close to the rocks. On Tuesday, it emerged that one of the jurors had made a comment about Joe O'Reilly before her selection. She was discharged. On Thursday, Judge Barry White announced that a copy of the book of evidence had made its way into the jury room the previous evening. The jurors were asked whether any of the nine men and two women had read from the book. When all said they hadn't, the trial proceeded.

Most of last week's evidence was taken up with a reconstruction, from witnesses, of the days surrounding the killing. Other evidence concerned statements O'Reilly is alleged to have made to friends and neighbours in the weeks after the killing which, the prosecution alleges, are incriminating. In nearly all of these instances, the defence seeks to elicit evidence which puts what it claims is a proper context on the alleged statements.

� Notes placed in the coffin On Monday, the court had photographic evidence of a note written by Joe O'Reilly and taken from the dead woman's coffin when it was exhumed six months after her burial. The note was one of several written and placed in the coffin by relatives before it was closed on 8 October 2004.

The note is heavy with affection, apart from one passage which reads: "Rachel, forgive me.

Two words, one sentence, I'll say them forever."

Throughout the week, O'Reilly made notes as the trial progressed. Now and then he passed notes across to his solicitor, Peter Mullan, who usually passed them on to the defence barrister, Patrick Gageby. A couple of times, unable to attract his solicitor's attention, he reached out and tossed a note across onto the defence table.

On Tuesday, a knot of young mothers stood to one side of the room, away from the three middle-aged mothers of the two principals in this case, the victim and the accused. These young mothers had earlier given evidence of being among the last people to see Rachel O'Reilly alive, apart from her killer.

Helen Moore told the court that she ran a Montessori school in Lusk, Tots United. On 4 October 2004, one mother of a child attending Tots United, Kathy Henry, met Rachel there around 9.25am as they dropped off their respective children. She recalled Rachel wearing a grey tracksuit bottom and dark top. She was speaking with Paula Matthews at the door when Rachel arrived. Matthews also exchanged pleasantries with Rachel. Naomi Gargan knew Rachel to see from Tots United, and she recalled seeing her outside the school between 9.15am and 9.30am.

Some minutes before that, a few miles away in Swords, Rachel's best friend since childhood, Jackie Connor, was getting into bed, having come off a night shift at Beaumont hospital, where she worked as a nurse.

Connor would be one of the early arrivals at the O'Reilly house following the discovery of the body. She told the court she was roused from her sleep at some time that morning by a call from Joe O'Reilly, looking for Rachel. Later, sensing something was wrong, she drove over to The Naul, where she was met by the awful news.

A few weeks later, at a birthday party for one of the O'Reilly boys, Connor told the court, Joe said to her that he was going to be framed. "He said you have to help me prove my innocence. I asked him had he an alibi and he said there are a few hours unaccounted for."

� 'You might be targeted' Naomi Gargan didn't really know the O'Reillys before 4 October, she told the court, but a few days later she met Joe at Tots United, and offered help in collecting the O'Reilly boys if it was needed.

Once, around a month later, she drove to meet Joe in the Little Chef car park in Swords, when he couldn't make a rendezvous to collect Adam from her.

"He said, 'I'm going to be arrested but don't worry, you didn't have a murderer in your house', " she told the court. "He said, 'they're saying I had an affair and you might be targeted'." After that incident, she says she panicked, and told her husband she couldn't pick up Joe's kids any more.

One witness who spoke to Joe on the day of the killing was garda Thomas Cleary. He was on duty outside the house, protecting the crime scene. He says O'Reilly approached him.

"He said there was a box of books next to the body and he moved them and made contact with the body. He said, 'I'm really sorry, I'm probably after ruining it for you'."

In cross-examination, it was put to the garda that the words were spoken in the context of O'Reilly's request to go back into his house to retrieve a jacket.

Another friend of the O'Reillys was Fiona Slevin, who recalled for the court a conversation with Joe at a function after the funeral on 11 October. In reference to the garda search for the murder weapon, Slevin told the court, O'Reilly said: "I don't know why they're searching the fields, it's in the water."

"I was shocked, " Slevin testified. "I could see from his face he knew he'd said something and then he said, 'If I had done it I would have thrown it in the water, to get rid of the DNA'."

Under cross-examination it was put to her that it was Joe's brother who made that statement in the context of media reports about the killing.

Slevin disagreed.

Evidence was also heard of the discovery of two bags taken from the O'Reilly household in a drain around half a mile away. One of the items was a travel bag with a flight tag marked 'O'Reilly Santry'. Garda Nicola Sheeran described the items as being "placed in the culvert".

When the bags were produced in court, Ann Callaly, Rachel's sister, broke down, as she did on other occasions during the evidence. She and her younger brother Anthony are the only members of the immediate Callaly family ever present in the court.

� Violently beaten More difficult evidence was heard on Thursday from forensic scientist Diane Daly, who told the court her bloodstain pattern analysis led her to believe the victim was "violently beaten over a sustained period while she lay on the ground".

Dr Daly also discovered a bloodstain on the door of the washing machine in the kitchen.

On Friday, Rachel's half brother Thomas Lowe gave evidence that he had been close to Rachel after she was reunited with his mother, who was Rachel's natural mother. In August 2004, he built a deck adjacent to the house and cut his hand while sawing timber. He recalled that some of his blood had got onto the washing machine door on that occasion.

A friend of Joe O'Reilly's also gave evidence on Friday. John Austin recalled that Joe had confided in him that marital difficulties had meant he and Rachel were sleeping in different bedrooms.

He told of a dinner party on 8 September, a week before the killing, which Joe attended with a friend, Nikki Pelley. When pressed, Austin said the pair were in a close relationship. Asked would he say it was platonic, he replied "No".

The trial continues on Monday.

The state's case against Joe O'Reilly for the murder of his wife is largely circumstantial, the court was told by prosecuting counsel Denis Vaughan Buckley when the trial opened.

O'Reilly denies the charge