A homeless man has been jailed for six and a half years today for killing a young mother he had been in a relationship with.
Clive Butcher (44), of Ranelagh Road, Dublin, was found guilty of Rebecca Hoban’s manslaughter by a Central Criminal Court jury in February.
Butcher, originally from the UK, had admitted to the manslaughter of Ms Hoban (28) before the trial got underway, but his plea was rejected by the Director of Public Prosecutions and he was tried for murder.
During his trial, the court heard that he stabbed Ms Hoban six times in the back with a bread knife after they had spent the afternoon of December 17th, 2008 together drinking and smoking heroin.
The two had met while sleeping rough in Phoenix Park and had been in and out of a relationship for a year before the killing.
Just before 7pm that evening, Butcher dialled 999 and asked for an ambulance to be sent to his bedsit, saying Rebecca was “dying rapidly on the floor.”
He told the operator he was an “evil f***er” who had just stabbed a woman three or four times.
In his subsequent interviews with gardaí, Butcher described a “violent struggle” after a row broke out over money for drugs.
He said Rebecca snatched up a bread knife and came towards him threatening to mutilate him.
Butcher said he had pressed her up against the wall, and that’s when the knife must have “went in”.
“I’m sorry it happened, I loved the girl,” he told gardaí.
In handing down sentence, Mr Justice George Birmingham said the two had lived a “chaotic lifestyle” together.
He said the killing was “desperate and serious” and that there were a number of aggravating factors he had to consider, including the extent of the violence, the six stab wounds and the use of a bread knife.
He said the killing was made all the more tragic by the fact that it happened when Butcher seemed to be getting his life back on track, taking part in the re-settlement programme for homeless men.
Referring to the accused’s relationship with Ms Hoban, and the fact that she had texted Butcher in the hours before her death saying “ I love you”, Mr Justice Birmingham said the accused had “brought a violent and brutal end to a relationship that seemed to have promise.”
The court also heard Butcher had 16 previous convictions in the UK including common assault and making indecent photographs of children.
Ms Hoban’s relatives, who were not present during the murder trial, attended the court for the sentencing.
Taking the witness stand to read out her victim impact statement, Jodie Hoban described her sister Rebecca as a lovely person with a heart of gold, and said her death had had a huge affect on her eight siblings.
“She had a hard life and she made mistakes, but no one deserves to die the way she did...we have had many sleepless nights thinking of the way she died.”
Jodie said she had to attend counselling, and that her family’s photos and keepsakes of Rebecca are “some comfort, but we would rather have our sister alive.”
Mr Justice Birmingham said it was clear Rebecca’s siblings were experiencing a real sense of loss, and that her son Brandon (10) was now left without a mother.
He said he had to balance the seriousness of the offence with Butcher’s guilty plea, the fact that he rang the emergency services immediately and waited at the scene, and the fact that he was now drug-free.
Butcher had also written an apology to the Hoban family, saying he was sincerely sorry and that Rebecca’s death was never absent from his mind.
Mr Justice Birmingham jailed Butcher for six and a half years, backdating the sentence to December 17th, 2008 when the accused was taken into custody.