Entries by McDonald, Elaine

It is 11.00pm on an August night in Silver Spring, Maryland, 2002. Nine year old Erika Smith is at home with her Dad Gregory Russell. Greg is relaxing in his bedroom, chatting to a friend on the phone. His little girl's voice can be heard floating in and out of the room, laughing and giggling as she plays. An innocent little girl and her doting father, at home together.

"Daddy Daddy!" Erika can be heard screaming, according to the woman on the other end of the line with Greg. "Erika!" Greg can be heard before he slams down the phone. What happened next, only Erika and Greg will ever know.

The tiny body of Erika Smith was found beside her closet door in her bedroom. Many speculate that she had been attempting to hide in the closet from the armed intruder. She had been shot once in the nape of the neck and the bullet made its way through her heart, killing her almost instantly. Greg Russell was found on the landing at the top of the stairs with eight bullet wounds in his body. He had made a heroic 911 call lying at the top of those same stairs, as his precious daughter lay executed in her bedroom close by.


I am sitting in courtroom 11, Montgomery County Circuit Court and I am looking at the man who knows this case better than anyone else in the courtroom. He sits with his files arranged carefully on the desk in front of him. His expression remains serious at all times. He flicks through his papers and glances back at the clock on the courtroom wall. As anxious as every lawyer in the courtroom, he is eager for the judge to appear and for the trial to begin. However, this man is not a lawyer. He is Anthony Kelly, the man charged with the murder of Erika Smith and Gregory Russell. Shockingly, Mr. Kelly chose to represent himself at trial.


Mr. Kelly came to be a permanent fixture in my day-to-day life working at the State Attorney's Office. I was fortunate enough to work alongside Assistant State Attorney Ms Kathy Knight and the State Attorney himself, Mr. John McCarthy as they prepared the prosecution's argument for this high profile murder trial. I became intimately involved in every aspect of the case, and each day was as shocking as the next. I attended meetings with policemen who had arrived at the murder scene, detectives who had worked on the case, crime scene investigators who had photographed and examined the scene, and even U.S. marshals who had hunted Kelly down. Listening to the evidence was sometimes heartbreaking. I had to quickly learn how to counterbalance the emotions I was feeling with the professionalism that was expected of me in the workplace. Meeting with the victims' family and friends was particularly upsetting. Perhaps the most shocking of all my experiences this summer was the day I spent at the Medical Examiner's office. There we met with the pathologist who had performed the autopsies on both murder victims. I will never forget what I saw that day, and to be quite honest, I'd rather forget...


Tuesday 5th August 2008 and it's six years almost to the day since Erika and Greg were brutally murdered. I am sitting at my computer at home in Ireland and I gaze at the Washington Post headline: "Man Found Guilty of Killing Girl and her Father". In the accompanying photograph, Erika's bright smile beams up at me. Justice has been done. Finally, after all these years, little Erika and her heroic father can rest in peace. Their killer, Anthony Kelly, will spend the rest of his life in prison, without the possibility of parole.


I will never forget the people I met or the things I saw and heard at the State Attorney's Office this summer. Thank you to Kathy Knight for lighting a spark somewhere within me. You have been a true inspiration and have propelled a deep desire within me to pursue a career in criminal law. Mr. McCarthy, thank you for taking such an interest in me and for involving me as much as you did in the Kelly case. Most of all, thank you to Cathy Wolfe for making my work placement happen. I can assure you that my six weeks spent at the State Attorney's is an experience that I will never ever forget.

To the family and friends of Erika and Greg, from across the Atlantic, you are in my thoughts.

It’s Sunday. Its three weeks into the program. The sun beats down on the streets of DC and on Mount Lebanon Baptist Church, where I find myself sitting in a pew next to my fellow wippers..
A dead silence fills the small church. It is the first silence amongst the WIP team since we arrived! For this reason, it seems slightly out of character and a little awkward. Gathered in each pew, standing side by side, are individuals with entirely different religious beliefs from both the North and South of Ireland. Some of us feel like we don’t really belong here. After all, “this is not my religion”. “This doesn’t look or feel like my church at home.” There is, perhaps, a strange sense of intrusion.

The service begins. The pastor welcomes us all, and the choir begins to sing. Almost immediately, the congregation burst into clapping. They clap. We follow. I look around me, catching the eye of a few other team members. Without words, they speak to me. Nervous smiles, uncertain hand claps and rigid stances. It is almost as if we are afraid of letting ourselves go. What are we afraid of?
The music continues to crescendo and I begin to see the odd body begin to sway, hip begin to relent and even vocal chords begin to loosen up amongst us! The atmosphere begins to change. The church feels warmer, homelier, more natural.
The pastor surprises us with his, shall we say, direct approach to the service! He orders that we spread out amongst the congregation (most of whom are African Americans) because the church is “beginning to look like an Oreo cookie”!!! “We need to mix it up a bit. Create more of a swirl than an Oreo cookie!”. I position myself beside a sweet old lady who greets me with a tender smile.
The choir move down the aisles of the church and as they spread out amongst us, they begin the most beautiful song. “We are so happy to have you here today, welcome to our church…” they sing. One of the choir members looks at me and gives me the biggest, warmest, heart-felt smile I have ever seen.

That one smile, spoke a thousand words. I could see the sincerity in her eyes. I don’t know whether it was the singing, or the smile or the service that followed, but from that point on, I had suddenly become part of the experience.
The pastor spoke, in a way I have never heard anyone speak before. He had a rhythm to his speech, his phrases had hard-hitting emphasis, and his voice was overpowering. His booming words carried upwards, across the congregation, and they hit me, causing a stir somewhere inside me. I began to cry quietly. I didn’t know why I was crying. I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t worried about anything. But it felt good.

I have spent all week trying to rationalize my experience at Mount Lebanon and I have come to a conclusion, rather than an answer. Sometimes, there are moments in our lives where we surprise ourselves. Moments when we discover the true fragility of our hearts and the hidden depths of our souls. Day to day, we hide these vulnerabilities and lock them away in our busy schedules and our fast-paced lifestyles. Discovering one of these moments for ourselves is not something we can plan for. It just happens. When we least expect it. But it usually happens when we take time out to sit back and think about the world. Shutting out the background noise of our daily lives; the worry about the next deadline, that jam-packed social calendar, or the bills we forgot to pay, to take a moment. A silent moment. To reflect. That’s when we can find who we really are, and we may surprise ourselves. As K.T. Jong once said:

“It is only when we silent the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear the whispers of truth that life reveals to us, as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts.” ~K.T. Jong

Hi folks!

WOW. What a week it has been! I can positively say, I’ve NEVER experienced anything like it! I never knew my poor, fresh out of college, lethargic body could actually hack the whirlwind adventure that has been the past week! Or should I say, the whirlwind WIP timetable!

It has been an intense week but I enjoyed every minute of it. I never thought I’d say this but 6am starts and falling into bed at 10pm, crestfallen, has many advantages!:

1. you manage to visit most of the major sights of Washington in a few short days,
2. you manage to organise and produce a musical, theatrical and dance performance for a group of school children in the space of 24 hours,
3. you manage to form bonds and potential lifelong friendships with people you’ve never met before and whom who might not normally encounter,
4. you manage to meet a congressman, a famous speechwriter, a movie star (ive never been so excited to see a new Batman movie!), and a handful of other VIP’s from the DC “high society”,
5. you manage to become successfully adopted by a wonderful family, with a wonderful house and a singing dog,
6. and while you’re at it, you even manage to squeeze in making a speech at one of DC’s most famous venue’s!

As I said in my speech and I will say it again, that’s not bad for a wee girl from Longford!

Friday the 13th June, and the 13th floor of the National Press Club, Washington DC...

As Sarah, Gary, Andrew and I reached the venue, we realised that the day itself bore all the ingredients for a potential speech-making disaster!

Luckily for us, we managed to make it a speech-making success! We succeeded in outshining those who had gone before us, such as the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela. Those dudes just couldn’t command that podium with such grace as we did!

I have to say, I enjoyed every second of it and I felt such an immense sense of achievement and pride that I haven’t felt in a long time. I’ve learnt that the more daunting the task (preparing a speech in the space of 3 days and presenting it in front of a crowd at the National Press Club in Washington DC), the harder you work at it, and the greater the sense of achievement you get at the end of the day. That’s what this summer is about; challenging myself, pushing my boundaries and feeling a sense of reward in doing so.

Ok, enough of the chat, here’s the speech for those who are interested, or indeed those who would like to relive the experience of witnessing Longford’s answer to the Dalai Lama!! ................................



Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, fellow wippers.

Dia dhiabh go leir, Is onóir mór dom a bheith anseo libh inniu.

My name is Elaine McDonald, a graduate of the University of Limerick. I am so proud to stand before you today, in this wonderul venue, as an ambassador for my country and for the Washington Ireland Program. Today marks the end of our first busy week in DC and many would say, our journey has finally begun. However, the journey really began long before we left Dublin on the 7th June.

The best way I can describe the Washington Ireland Program is as follows: we are like 26 chicks! No, I don’t mean the American reference to girls! I mean, we are like birds! Before we entered the Program, we were happy little chicks, safe in the warmth of our various nests scattered throughout the island of Ireland. However, WIP has literally flown us away from these nests to brave an 8 week journey of personal, professional and inspirational development here in Washington DC.

As part of the Washington Ireland Program, I was given the opportunity to interview ex Taoiseach of Ireland, Albert Reynolds. Not bad for a wee girl from Co. Longford! Albert Reynolds was one of the key players, along with Bill Clinton and Prime Minister John Major, who played a vital role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland. During this interview Mr. Reynolds spoke of how he was forging bonds and friendships with people from the North long before he became Taoiseach. Sarah has already outlined the importance of entrepreneurship in building a brighter future. This had echoes of my interview with Mr. Reynolds who was one of Ireland’s first entrepreneurs, setting up ballrooms across the country in the 1960s. Along the way, he made many good friends through business dealings with people from the North. He explained to me that these contacts were invaluable in trying to establish a formula for peace on the island. So you see everybody, the dreaded “networking” that we all fear, can really be worth it! Networking doesn’t just bring business together, it brings people together.

Mr. Reynolds was captivating: he revealed to me how very few people even believed him when he said he could bring peace to the North of Ireland, but he kept going! He told me he drew strength from his motto, that is: “I believed that I could make it happen”.

In my 22 years of life I had never visited Northern Ireland. There was no real reason to; after all, I was not trying to setup ballrooms! The Washington Ireland Program has changed that. As part of our orientation to the Program I visited the beautiful city of Belfast for a weekend and was even welcomed through the doors of Stormont, the political heart of power in the North of Ireland. I remember thinking to myself – I could reeeally get used to this!

Not only that, but I was connected, sorry, networked, with my WIP teammates who come from all over the island of Ireland, both North and South. I have only been on the Program for a short time, but it has been a long week, and already I feel that I have made lifelong friendships as a result.

John M Richardson Jr. once said: “When it comes to the future, there are three kinds of people: those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened”. Albert Reynolds chose to make it happen because he was a leader.

As I draw to the end of my time with you, I’m sure you’re all wondering, what happened to those chicks she was talking about earlier?! Well, as the next generation of young leaders hatch from the Washington Ireland Program 2008, I know that my fellow chicks will take flight, spread their wings and as Albert said “make it happen” so that we can better ourselves and the whole of Ireland.