Pensioner's killer gets six years
A Tipperary man involved in the killing of Galway pensioner Tommy Casey, who was beaten and left to die in his home in 1996, was sentenced to six years today in the Central Criminal Court.
Ms Justice Carroll said she had taken into account the fact that the accused man, Patrick O’Connor, was co-operating with gardai in their investigation into another man, said to have a larger involvement in the attack on Tommy Casey.
She also took into account pleas by O’Connor’s elderly mother, Mrs Margaret O’Connor of Clonmel, Co Tipperary, that her son was "the best boy" without "a bad bone in his body" who had come under the influence of his then girlfriend, Alison Connors, who has also been convicted in relation to the
attack.
Patrick O'Connor, aged 37, a native of Poulboy, Kilgainey, Clonmel, Co Tipperary had pleaded not guilty to the murder of Mr Tommy Casey, a 68-year-old pensioner who died between January 15 to 23 1996 at his home in Oranbeg, Oranmore, Co Galway.
Last December, the DPP accepted a lesser plea of guilty to manslaughter mid-way through his trial.
Mr Casey's body was found on his kitchen floor eight days after he was attacked in an attempt to get him to divulge the whereabouts of his savings.
O’Connor and three other people were arrested in a motor car containing false number plates and offensive weapons under an hour later in Galway city.
Superintendent Anthony Finnerty told the court today that "the saddest thing" about the case was that if O’Connor and his accomplices had told gardai about Mr Casey shortly after their arrest, his life could have been saved.
Sentencing O’Connor, Ms Justice Carroll said Tommy Casey had no one to speak for him, but it was not difficult to put oneself in his place and imagine the terror and pain he suffered before he died.
She said she had to accept however, that O’Connor was "drawn in to the Kathleen and Alison Connors gang because he was Alison Connors’ boyfriend.
"You must rue the day you met her", the judge told O’Connor.
The six-year sentence imposed was back-dated to the date in March 2000 when O’Connor finished serving a two-year sentence for possession of offensive weapons in connection with the attack on Mr Casey. The judge suspended the final three months of the sentence because of O’Connor’s plea of guilt mid-way through his trial.
O’Connor’s trial last year heard that those weapons were found when Garda Colm Finnerty and a colleague, Garda Ray Dooley (now retired) stopped a car for a minor traffic violation in Galway city at around 8.40pm on January 15 1996.
O'Connor was driving the car, its other occupants were his then girlfriend, Alison Connors, her mother Kathleen Connors and another named man. The car's tax and insurance disc did not match its registration plate, and there was a set of false plates in the back boot. The car also contained a dagger, a tomahawk and a wooden baton.
The State's case was that the attack on Mr Casey took place sometime before the car was stopped that evening. Alison McCarthy, nee Connors gave evidence for the prosecution that the gang went to Mr Casey's house to rob it. She said that she and her mother knocked on the front door and then returned to the car when they got no reply. O'Connor and the other man went around the back and were gone for 15-20 minutes, she said.
Alison McCarthy, who had four previous convictions for larceny and robbery, served time in jail for trespassing on Mr Casey's property with intent to steal. Her mother, Mrs Kathleen Connors received a three-year jail term for the same offence.
The jury heard that Tommy Casey died from a combination of the way he was tied up, the injuries to his chest and the posture he was left in after he was beaten and bound. The cause of death was asphyxia caused by those combined restrictions to his breathing, but there was no evidence that he
had been strangled. The pensioner had been subjected to a "a severe beating" that left several ribs fractured, the State Pathologist Dr John Harbison said. That beating caused nuerogenic shock, which contributed to his death.
His body lay on the kitchen floor of his house for eight days before concerned locals alerted gardai to his absence from the village. The trial heard that he was known locally as a loner and a recluse, whose extreme shyness led him to take the long route home from the shops so as to avoid
meeting people, and to turn his face to the ditch rather than greet passers-by.
In interviews with gardai that featured in legal argument during his trial, O’Connor admitted beating Tommy Casey but he denied intent to murder. His offer of a plea of guilt to manslaughter came suddenly in the course of the legal argument on December 6 last.
