Triple killer gets life as insanity plea fails

ALAN MURDOCH

Dublin

A 22 year-old County Clare man with a history of mental illness was yesterday jailed for life for the murders of three people.

Brendan Patrick O'Donnell had denied murdering 29-year-old artist, Imelda Riney, her son Liam, three, and Father Joseph Walsh, 37, of Eyrecourt, Co Galway between 29 April and 8 May 1994. But the jury at Dublin's Central Criminal Court found him guilty by a majority of 10-2.

O'Donnell, of no fixed address, was first treated with prescribed drugs in mental hospital at the age of three, and diagnosed as possibly psychotic at 14. He had attempted suicide on four occasions and twice went on hunger strike after his arrest.

He claimed he had been told to shoot the victims by the Devil. He also claimed to have been told that Ms Riney was the Devil's daughter and that Fr Walsh was going to baptise her child, the Devil's son.

O'Donnell had also pleaded not guilty to kidnapping a schoolgirl, Fiona Sampson and the attempted abduction of a farmer, Edward Cleary, on 7 May 1994. He also denied having a shotgun and ammunition with intent to endanger life.

Ms Simpson had an extraordinary escape. Taken barefoot and still in her nightclothes, she was forced to drive the fugitive then dragged three miles through a forest. The court was told that O'Donnell did not kill her because he decided he liked her, and she was rescued by armed gardai as he tried to seize another car at gunpoint.

The trial hinged on whether the defendant was sane. In his summing up, prosecution counsel Kevin Haugh argued that O'Donnell was "cunning, thinking and rational, a clever, self-interested liar. Patrick McEntee for the defence highlighted "the virtual hell" that had been his life, and described him as "a badly damaged creature".

Mr Haugh said O'Donnell had "set out with pleasure to kill" - arguing there were "vast numbers of people who have bloodlust, who enjoy killing and are not insane".

Mr McEntee countered that O'Donnell's disturbed behaviour indicated all the signs of schizophrenia. He said O'Donnell did not know the nature of his acts, whether they were right or wrong, and was unable to stop himself. "It is my case that this is insanity in anyone's language."

He said it was "breathtaking" that, despite evidence that he had stabbed his sister and tried to stab her child in 1992, he was freed from a mental hospital in Ballinasloe, Co Galway after just two weeks, without the institution consulting either police, his doctors, or his sister.

It emerged O'Donnell had been in seven prisons and detention centres and two mental homes before the age of 20.

A schoolteacher said he was "the most disturbed child" he had encountered in 22 years. At his mother's funeral, when he was aged 10, he jumped into the grave. He claimed to hear voices from an early age, thought there were worms coming out of his ears, and believed he was able to walk on water and kill cats by looking at them.