Murder trial told man attacked his sister with hammer

A 21 year-old Clare man accused of murdering his 17-year-old sister told gardaí he did not know why he killed her and that he…

A 21 year-old Clare man accused of murdering his 17-year-old sister told gardaí he did not know why he killed her and that he loved her, a jury in the Central Criminal Court heard yesterday.

Patrick O'Dwyer, then aged 19, of Shrohill, Ennistymon, Co Clare, has pleaded not guilty to murdering his sister Marguerite, at the family home on November 29th, 2004.

Det Garda Gerard Fahy told prosecuting counsel, John Edwards SC, that during Garda interviews, Mr O'Dwyer admitted killing his sister by "belting" her on the head with a hammer and then stabbing her with a knife and scissors.

Mr O'Dwyer told gardaí that on the day of the killing - a Monday - he bought two cans of Red Bull and two packets of paracetamol on his way back from his job as a butcher's apprentice.

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He said his parents were away on holidays and that he still had a headache on the Monday following a drunken fall on the Saturday night when his sister had a party in the house.

He claimed he had about eight paracetamol on the day of the killing.

He spent the evening of the killing watching TV with his sister. He said halfway through a programme The Office, he went into the kitchen and picked up a hammer from the press.

He told gardaí he was annoyed because he had made a fool of himself on the Saturday by getting sick and falling after drinking too much and that he intended to hurt himself with it.

Instead, he said he walked into the sitting room and approached Marguerite.

He said she must have thought he was joking because she looked up and smiled at him. "I'd often be messing with a hurley and things," he said.

He said he then hit her across the head with the hammer and paused before striking her a few more times. She never screamed because the first "belt did enough damage".

After she fell to the floor, he said she was still alive and that he picked up a scissors and a knife from the kitchen. He admitted "jabbing her" in the torso and legs to make sure she was dead, before going outside to smoke and walk.

When he returned, he said he drank half a can of beer in front of the TV and threw a blanket from the couch on her body.

He claimed he considered lighting the entire house on fire but used a blade to stab himself in the wrist in his bedroom. With the blood from this injury, he wrote "Butcher Boy" on the wall beside his bed, because "it was the first thing" that came into his mind.

He said he then used the hammer to hit himself on the head until he could "feel the blood coming out" and that he tried to fall asleep.

When he woke at 11.30am the following morning, he claimed he realised the seriousness of what he had done.

He said he tried to fall asleep in the bath but when he failed, he left the house with the intention of hitching a lift to his other sister in Galway but changed his mind and handed himself in to gardaí.

He told gardaí he had not been fighting with his sister - a Leaving Cert student - on the night of the killing. He said he loved her and that he regretted her death because she had a "great life" ahead of her.

"I just can't explain why I did what I did," he told gardaí.

In his opening for the prosecution, Mr Edwards said the main issue was whether the accused was suffering from a mental disorder at the time of the incident.

He told the jury that the defence would be basing its case on the defence of diminished responsibility, as introduced in the Criminal Law (Insanity) Act 2006. If they accepted the accused was suffering from a mental disorder, they would have to find him not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter, but that they first had to decide on other issues in the case.

The trial before Mr Justice Paul Carney and a jury of six women and six men continues.