A 21 year-old Clare man who killed his sister with a hammer has been found guilty of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility by a jury in the Central Criminal Cour.
Patrick O'Dwyer, then 19, of Shrohill, Ennistymon, Co Clare, had pleaded not guilty to murdering his 17 year-old sister Marguerite at the family home on 29th November, 2004.
Patrick O'Dwyer smiled as the verdict was read out and the O'Dwyer family, who sat beside him throughout the trial, all linked hands.
The jury of six women and six men took seven and a half hours to reach a verdict.
Mr Justice Paul Carney remanded Mr O'Dwyer in custody and adjourned sentencing until a later date.
This is the first time since the introduction of the Criminal Law (Insanity) Act 2006 that a person accused of murder has proved their responsibility for the killing was substantially diminished due to a mental disorder.
Defence psychiatrists gave evidence that the accused suffered from a mental disorder called 'depersonalisation disorder.'
Dr Cleo Van Velsen said she believed Mr O'Dwyer's 'emotional autism' and sense of 'always being an external observer of himself' led him to self-medicate with alcohol.
On the day of the killing, Mr O'Dwyer went to work as usual as a butcher's apprentice.
When he got home that evening, his sister had made him Shepherd's Pie for dinner and they spoke with their parents on the phone.
Marguerite put the fire on in the living-room and they watched TV comedies together until halfway through 'The Office,' when Mr O'Dwyer went into the kitchen and picked up a hammer.
Depressed, he planned to 'bash his brains out,' but when he saw Marguerite, he feared she would prevent him from doing so and was taken over by a feeling of being in a 'movie.'
He told psychiatrists 'it was like watching a video' and not being able to turn it off. As he approached her, she looked up at him and smiled. She thought he was joking, he said, as he often messed around with her with a hurley.
The six 'blows' from the hammer were described by State Pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy as 'fatal and irrecoverable'.
The accused then went into the kitchen, picked up a scissors and a knife and stabbed his sister 90 times in the neck, trunk and legs. After going for a walk, the accused went to his bedroom and wrote the words 'Butcher Boy' on the wall with blood he drew from his arm with a scalpel.
He then hit himself four times in the head with a hammer and fell asleep until 11.30 the following morning.
When he woke, he realised the seriousness of what he'd done and once again tried to commit suicide by drowning himself in the bath.Later that afternoon, he handed himself into gardai.
In her evidence, his mother, Claire O'Dwyer said: "All I know is that something awful came over him. It wasn't our Pa."
She said that he and his sister were 'like peas in a pod' and that he loved her.
Speaking after the verdict, his sister Louise O'Dwyer said the family were happy justice had been done.