Ms Ward, a 36-year-old mother of one from Dundrum in Dublin, was killed by her partner Keith Byrne in a hotel room in Salou on July 2, 2023 because she was going to leave him
09:51, 09 Jan 2026Updated 09:54, 09 Jan 2026
Kirsty Ward
The parents of Kirsty Ward, the Irish woman murdered by her partner in Spain, have spoken about the warning signs they missed, the sentence imposed on her killer and the devastating impact of her death on her teenage son and wider family.
Ms Ward, a 36-year-old mother of one from Dundrum in Dublin, was killed by her partner Keith Byrne in a hotel room in Salou on July 2, 2023 because she was going to leave him. Evil Byrne, a 34-year-old former soldier who lived in Duleek, Co Meath was convicted by a Spanish jury and sentenced to 15 years in a Spanish prison for murdering Ms Ward by strangling her.
He never admitted what he had done or expressed any remorse and after his arrest released a video from his prison cell, falsely claiming he was innocent and referring to her only as “the girl.” Ms Ward had wanted to get out of their volatile relationship and had bought a ticket from Spain to Dublin. Byrne murdered her two days before she had been due to fly home.
Keith Byrne
Now, in an interview broadcast on Prime Time on Thursday night, January 8, Jackie and John Ward also warned of the dangers of coercive and controlling behaviour, saying they fear the man who killed their daughter will one day return. Speaking to presenter Miriam O’Callaghan, Kirsty’s parents, Jackie and John, said that while they had felt uneasy about their daughter’s relationship in the months before her death, they never believed her life was in danger.
“I thought maybe he’d break her heart,” Jackie Gough said. “I never thought for one moment that she was in danger.” In the interview, broadcast on RTE One and RTE Player, the couple recalled the day they learned of their daughter’s death.
John was at home alone recovering from open-heart surgery, while Jackie was out with their youngest daughter, Zoe. “As soon as I arrived, it was obvious there was something wrong,” Jackie said, describing how she saw two plain-clothes Garda officers at the house. “I said, ‘What has he done?’ I knew.”
Kirsty Ward
Kirsty’s parents also speak about the lasting impact of her death on their family and the pain they feel about the length of the prison sentence handed down to her killer. They said they were determined that Kirsty’s life, and the circumstances of her death, should not be diminished or forgotten.
Part of their decision to speak publicly, they said, was to raise awareness of the early warning signs of coercive and controlling behaviour in relationships. “He’s going to return home at some point to this country when his sentence is finished and complete. He’s going to take up a job. He’s going to take up a relationship,” Jackie said. “People need to know Keith Byrne’s name and how dangerous he is.”
John described Byrne as sharing traits with other high-profile Irish murderers, saying: “This is another Joe O’Reilly. This is another Richard Satchwell. Same character traits. And all of that came out in the court.”
During the court hearing in a Spanish court in July 2025, the sentencing judge Susana Calvo Gonzalez ruled the fact that Byrne and Ms Ward had been in a stable eight-month relationship made the crime more serious. But she said his consumption of alcohol and drugs before the murder diminished his cognitive faculties and was a prevailing mitigating factor.
In May 2025, jurors found Byrne guilty of murdering Ms Ward after three days of deliberations. Byrne had claimed, during his trial in Tarragona, that she died by suicide at the four-star Magnolia Hotel.
Public prosecutor Javier Goimil, a domestic violence specialist, dismissed Byrne’s claim that Ms Ward took her own life during his closing speeches to the jury. He claimed the former soldier decided that “you’re mine or you’re nobody’s” and strangled Ms Ward with a hair straightener power cord because she wanted out of their relationship.
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