A 53-year-old Co Dublin mechanic has been jailed for seven years for killing his girlfriend in his garage in Castlebagot during the summer of 2010.
Bernard Curran of The Weir, Lucan admitted shooting dead 30-year-old mother-of-one Helen Donegan. He also admitted hiding her body in the boot of a car for seven weeks, during which time he helped her family search for her.
The father-of-two had originally been charged with murdering the Ballyfermot woman between May 4th, 2010 and June 22nd, 2010.
However, the prosecution accepted his plea of not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter and he was sentenced by the Central Criminal Court today.
Curran claimed that he was trying to shoot himself when his partner of almost a decade tried to grab his shotgun out of his hand. He said the gun went off and the young woman died of a single shotgun wound to her head.
Mr Justice Paul Carney noted that the only information in relation to the crime came from the accused. He noted that Curran had previously threatened suicide.
“On his account, he took his lawfully possessed shotgun from his car with the intention of killing himself and loaded it,” he said. “His partner saw what he’d done and tried to take it off him and it went off, killing her.”
He noted that Curran claimed that it was an accident but accepted that ‘there was negligence on his part, which fixes him with criminal responsibility’.
“I assess his negligent acts in exposing Helen Donegan to the fate which befell her as warranting six years,” he said.
The judge then moved on to the issue of Curran’s cover-up of the crime, when he told her family she had gone on a drug run to England.
“It’s difficult to imagine a more callous treatment of the family as occurred in the cover-up,” he said.
He referred to the victim impact statement of Ms Donegan’s brother, Martin Donegan, and members of their family sobbed in court as the judge read out Mr Donegan’s words.
“He can use all the excuses he wants but there’s no excuse for the pain he put us through,” wrote Mr Donegan, recalling the seven weeks that his sister was missing. “Thinking she would show up, and him phoning her in front of me, knowing she was in the boot of his car. His conning us is 10 times worse than killing her.”
He said he would never forget the smell coming from her coffin at her funeral, even with the incense burning.
“I still get that smell sometimes,” he said.
Mr Justice Carney said that these aggravating circumstances warranted an extra three years in jail, bringing the sentence to nine years. However he suspended the final two years of the sentence in light of Curran’s previous good character on condition he stay away from the Donegan family in perpetuity.
Curran’s two daughters broke down in tears as their father was led away to spend seven years behind bars.
Ms Donegan’s aunt, Caroline O’Connor, spoke outside the court on behalf of the victim’s family. She said the family would try to move on but would never believe or accept Curran’s version of events.
“We let ourselves be convinced by Ben Curran,” she said of his story about the drug run.
She described the seven weeks of her niece’s disappearance as a nightmare. She noted that Ms Donegan’s brother had taken Curran in during that time and had looked after him.
She said that the sentence would not bring back her niece. “It’s some kind of justice and it’s closure for us,” she said.