POLICE FIND NEW ANGLE IN HOTELIER´S MURDER

By Humphrey Carter THE family and close friends of the murdered Soller hotelier Siobhan Kearney in Dublin and Majorca were yesterday refusing to make any comments about the 37-year-old's death on Tuesday while the investigation took an unexpected turn in a new direction. Detectives from the Irish national bureau of investigation were brought in to handle the case yesterday after similarities with the murder of another Irishwoman at her home in 2004 were spotted by the police. What is more, police sources said that it is looking increasingly unlikely that the woman, who took over the luxury Hotel Salvia with her husband in Soller three years ago, was murdered in a dispute over finances. Detectives are now investigating a recent falling out with an associate who the Irish police believe could be responsible for Kearney's death. She was found dead at her home on Tuesday, apparently having been strangled with the flex of a vacuum cleaner. Her husband Brian, an electrical engineer and former musician, was at work at the time. Her three-year-old son Daniel, recently enrolled at a Soller kindergarten, was on the property but in another area of the luxury house in the wealthy Dublin suburb of Goatstown where they spent their time when not running the hotel in Majorca. The 49-year-old man held and questioned by police for the maximum 12 hours without charge on Thursday in connection with Kearney's death was yesterday revealed to have been living in temporary housing in south Dublin. Regardless, it now appears that detectives are focusing their attention on an “associate” of Kearney. Apparently, Kearney instructed her lawyer to write to the associate in question last week to confirm that she wanted no more contact. Police and forensics continued to comb the murder scene for evidence yesterday while officers from the national bureau of criminal investigation studied similarities between the two murders. What is more, police sources have revealed that the killer tried to make the murder scene appear like a suicide - but failed and, as forensics studied the cable of vacuum cleaner flex found just yards from Kearney's body, they were also waiting on the results of the port mortem. In Soller, the luxury five star hotel remained firmly closed up yesterday with no one wanting to make any comment about the Irishwoman's death.