Boyfriend convicted of strangling Kirsty Ward with cord during holiday in Spain

A TARRAGONA jury has convicted Irishman Keith Byrne of killing his Dublin-based girlfriend Kirsty Ward at a Salou hotel in July 2023.

Prosecutors want the former British soldier jailed for 20 years, while a private prosecution on behalf of Kirsty’s family is demanding 30 years behind bars and a €400,000 compensation payment.

The lower sentencing call from the Prosecutor’s Office surrounds the fact that Byrne had drug issues which meant his mental reasoning was impeded at the time of the murder.

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Sentencing will happen at a later date after the verdict was announced on Wednesday evening.

Mother-of-two Kirsty Ward, 36, was strangled with a hair straightener cord just hours after she dumped Byrne.

They had gone for a holiday at the four-star Magnolia Hotel to see if they could patch up their relationship.

Keith Byrne, 34, told the court that she took her own life, and that her use of alcohol and cocaine had made their relationship ‘toxic’.

The jury however were swayed by the prosecution argument that he used his physical superiority to kill her.

Several witnesses including Mossos d’Esquadra and forensic doctors contradicted Byrne’s version of what happened.

A Mossos spokesperson at the time said: “Officers arrived to find a woman lying on a corridor floor and a man next to her with a self-inflicted wound.”

Experts concluded that the marks on the victim’s neck were not compatible with suicide, and that no knot was found in the cable of the iron with which she would have allegedly hanged himself.

Byrne has been pre-trial detention since July 3, 2023.

Speaking from a Catalan prison in an exclusive 2023 interview with the Olive Press, Byrne insisted: “I found her cold. She’d already gone. I screamed for help and tried CPR. I loved her.”

He claimed CCTV proved he was at a beach bar before discovering Kirsty dead with a ligature around her neck, blocking the door from inside.