November 2003 Man gets three life sentences for murders  The sheer horror of the scene that met gardai as they entered the home of Gregory and Debbie Fox and their two sons will not be easily erased from the minds of investigators. Debbie (30) lay in a pool of her own blood amid smashed bottles on the kitchen floor, while upstairs in two separate bedrooms lay the bodies of nine-year-old Trevor and seven-year-old Cillian. Not far from the tragic scene lay the husband and father, who had inflicted the fatal wounds on the three people he told gardai he loved. Gregory Fox (36) yesterday received three life sentences for the murders carried out at the family home in the village of Castledaly, Co Westmeath, after he admitted in the Central Criminal Court that he killed his wife and two boys. The brief court proceedings were over within a half-hour, with only a few shocking details given about the wounds inflicted, the causes of death and the state of mind of Gregory Fox at the time of the killings. On the night of the murders, the couple, who owned a grocery shop and petrol station in Castledaly, had gone for a few drinks to the local pub. Neither one had much to drink. It was when they got back to their house, which adjoined the shop, that a fierce row broke out between them. Fox later told gardai he believed his wife was having an affair and was going to leave him, and he attacked her. The Dublin couple had married in 1990 in their native city. Trevor was born in 1991 and Cillian followed in 1994. The family had moved to Portarlington before buying the grocery and petrol station in Castledaly. By all accounts the couple were popular and had integrated well into the area, where both boys were at school. The first anyone knew something was wrong at Fox’s was when locals turned up on Saturday, July 28, 2001, at around 9am to get the morning papers and a few necessities only to find the shop closed. By 9.45am some locals, noticing that one of the doors to the family car was open, went to the back of the house to see if everything was alright. One of them, looking in the kitchen window, made the shock discovery of seeing Debbie’s body lying on the floor. The gardai were called and it was only then that the full extent of the tragedy emerged. One investigator told the Irish Independent it was the worst scene he had come across in all his years in the gardai. Gregory Fox was found behind a counter in the shop drifting in and out of consciousness and with slash wounds to his forearms and left hand. He had cut himself with razor blades from the shop and had taken some tablets from the medicine cabinet in the house. He was taken to Portiuncula hospital as he had lost a lot of blood and was still falling in and out of consciousness. On July 30 he was taken to Merlin Park hospital for surgery to his left hand. He had severed tendons in his bid to kill himself. He was discharged from hospital on July 31 and immediately arrested. Gregory Fox did not deny the killings. In fact, he made a number of admissions both to hospital staff, to gardai at the hospital and to gardai at the station. It is understood he knew his wife was unhappy in the marriage. He admitted in his statement he was possessive and controlling for the 11 years of their marriage. He told gardai he was prone to jealousy and he believed she was having a relationship. On the night of the murders, when they returned home, the issues bothering him flared up and it is understood Debbie intimated that she wanted a break from the relationship. In the course of the row, Fox punched his wife, knocking her off her feet. As she fell, a bottle or two fell onto the ground. He then used a beer bottle to slash his wife’s throat, he hit her head off the ground and he took a knife from a block and stabbed her repeatedly. He also used a hurley stick with which to beat her over the head. The pathology report showed she died after her jugular vein was slashed and she received multiple stab wounds and several blows from a blunt object which fractured her skull. Fox then proceeded to his sons’ rooms, where he stabbed them. In his garda statement, Gregory Fox said he was sorry. “I’m so sorry. If I could only turn back the hands of time. I never did anything wrong, never,” he said. “I loved the three of them. I loved my wife so much but she didn’t love me and I just went mad. I begged and pleaded with her to give me a chance and that I had changed but she wouldn’t.”