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Accused Irish killer Gary McGurk claims innocence

By
APRIL DREW,

Published Wednesday, June 10, 2009, 12:24 PM
Updated Thursday, July 23, 2009, 6:07 PM

 

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Gary McGurk (left) after his arrest last month.

Gary McGurk, the County Tyrone man living in the U.S. since he was 10 and now accused of murdering his NYPD criminologist girlfriend in April, told detectives he once considered joining the priesthood.

 McGurk, 23, told police the night after Michele Lee’s body was found tied to her bed in her Sunnyside apartment on Monday, April 27, that he “considered the priesthood from freshman to sophomore year.”

A statement from McGurk to police, released in Queens Supreme Court on Thursday, June 4, said he finds “crime scene photos and cadavers disturbing.”

McGurk, when questioned, was in his final year of a forensic psychology course at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, yet he told police that his stomach turns when he sees disturbing pictures.

“It’s too much to handle. I panic for needles,” he said.

McGurk, who moved to Sunnyside with his mother, Caroline, his father, Aiden, and his sister, Niamh, from County Tyrone in 1985, told police that although he didn’t have a job while he was at John Jay, he worked once in a while as a bartender or in construction with a family friend.

McGurk met Lee, 24, in 2004 on the John Jay campus.

“I saw her on the treadmill sometime in the fall of 2004,” he said in a statement to police. 

“I asked her out. Dating did not work for us. Didn’t click as a couple. It was more physical than anything else. It turned into a friends with benefits from then on,” McGurk explains.

The Irishman explained in explicit detail the type of physical relationship they had, which included bondage and biting.

McGurk, a soccer star at his college, once borrowed money from Lee because he was out of work. He told police he paid her back, “plus I gave her more money.”

He said towards the end of her life Lee owed him money. McGurk later admitted to police that he told Lee he had cancer and needed the money she owed him for his treatment.

McGurk, whose father Aiden once had links with the IRA in Northern Ireland, said very few people knew about their relationship. The couple used to meet at McDonalds on 39th Street close to Lee’s new apartment in Sunnyside.

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