Three years for woman who staged her housemate's suicide to impede murder investigation

The judge took into account the fact that the accused was ‘one of life’s victims’ and in an abusive relationship with the killer at the time.

That man, whom the judge said ‘could undoubtedly be described as the murderer’, was never charged.

This was due to his limited brain function arising out of an injury sustained months later while fleeing gardaí after a car he had hijacked crashed.

A self-confessed neo nazi, he is currently living in a care facility, where he is spoon fed.

However, his 34-year-old former partner was convicted by a Central Criminal Court jury earlier this month.

She was found guilty of impeding the killer's apprehension or prosecution, knowing or believing him to have murdered Antra Ozolina (49).

Egita Jaunmaize, of no fixed abode, admitted placing a blue cord around her fellow Latvian’s neck so as to simulate her suicide in order to make it more difficult to establish that her death was suspicious.

She had pleaded not guilty to carrying out the offence, without reasonable excuse, at their home at The Old Post, Main Street, Kilnaleck, Co Cavan on or about June 27 or June 28 2014.

The mushroom picker told gardaí that she was in fear for her life and acting on her boyfriend’s orders at the time, having just seen him strangle Ms Ozolina.

Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy noted that the authorities’ initial view was that the deceased had taken her own life, but that suspicion grew and tests were sought.

“She was a lady, who had appeared happy in herself, had family, and there was no indication that she had any suicidal ideation,” noted the judge.

The trial heard that a forensic autopsy showed that the deceased had sustained blunt force injuries, as well as the fatal asphyxia.

The judge accepted that the accused woman's involvement had sprung from her relationship with the assailant.

“There’s little doubt but that, on perusal of the psychiatrist’s and psychologist’s reports, her relationship with the assailant, the man who could undoubtedly be described as the murderer, was an abusive one,” he said, adding that the aggression had been extreme.

He said the accused might be described as a vulnerable person, noting evidence that this was due to her being the victim of a violent crime as a child.

“Notwithstanding the abusive nature of the relationship, the jury held her fully responsible for her actions,” he noted.

However, he pointed out that that sentencing was a subjective matter and he therefore had regard to the fact that she was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and was ‘one of life’s victims so to speak’.

He took into account her lack of a previous criminal record and the fact that she had worked hard in Ireland, as well as ‘certain vulnerabilities of temperament and of personality’.

He said that the true suffering of the deceased woman’s family could be attributable only to the death itself and that the impeding offence could not be regarded as having a significant effect.

He noted that the maximum penalty was 10 years in prison, but imposed a custodial sentence of three years, backdated to 22nd February 2017.

Garda James McDevitt told her sentence hearing last week that the accused had alerted the authorities to what appeared ‘at first flush’ to be a suicide in her home.

He told Patrick Gageby SC, prosecuting, that gardaí found the deceased’s body lying on her bathroom floor with a rope around her neck and an open bible and vodka bottle nearby.

The results of an autopsy by a non-forensic pathologist were also consistent with it being a tragic death.

However, the deceased’s employer rang gardaí and informed them that, on his and her colleagues’ knowledge of her personality, she was unlikely to have commited suicide.

Gda McDevitt agreed that this triggered a fresh look at the matter and a forensic pathologist found blunt force trauma to her body, along with death by asphyxiation.

The accused painted her boyfriend out of the picture in her first statements. She later explained that this was because he had a suspended sentence due to be activated in his native Latvia and did not want to come to garda attention.

She eventually admitted there had been a disagreement between the two women, that she had gone to bed, but woke to the sounds of screams.

She said that she went into her housemate’s room and found her boyfriend ‘throttling’ her.

Once he had succeeded, he asked her to assist him in covering up by putting a rope around her neck so the death would appear like suicide.

She went on trial for assisting an offender, arguing that she was under duress and had a reasonable excuse, but the jury found that she had none.

She remained in a relationship with that offender until October 2014, when he hijacked a car and was involved in a large car chase across Co Longford.

In trying to evade gardaí, he was knocked down by another car and suffered a severe brain injury.

Giollaíosa Ó Lideadha SC, defending, put forward a number of factors in mitigation, including the killer’s violence towards his client.

He also reminded the judge of a major trauma she had suffered as a child, which experts said had led to her getting into and remaining in the abusive relationship with the killer.

He asked the judge to take into consideration her role as a mother and the fact that, as a foreigner, she would have particular difficulties in custody here. He asked for a sentence at the more lenient end of the scale.