Married man who strangled lover jailed for eight years

A MARRIED man who strangled his lover in her bed after she allegedly threatened to tell his wife about their affair was jailed for eight years yesterday.

Deirdre McCarthy’s body washed up on Fanore Beach, Co. Clare, days after Colm Deely dumped her in the ocean.

Although he was originally convicted of Ms McCarthy’s murder by a jury, that conviction was quashed after it emerged the work of then deputy State pathologist Dr Khalid Jabbar’s was not peer-reviewed.

In January of this year, Deely, 45, of School Road, Ballyvaughan, Co. Clare, pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to the manslaughter of Ms McCarthy, 43, at a place unknown on or about March 28, 2011.

His plea was accepted by the State at that hearing.

Yesterday, Judge Patrick McCarthy said the sentence he was imposing was ‘in the absence of evidence which might have or might not have supported a more serious charge’.

Describing Ms McCarthy as a ‘quiet, modest and vulnerable person’, Judge McCarthy said the accused subjected her to a ‘homicidal attack’. The judge said the victim had been friends with Deely, a married father of two, for a number of years and that their friendship later became ‘romantic in nature’.

Referring to Deely’s admission to manslaughter, Judge McCarthy said: ‘The evidence in the case would not have been sufficient to have proved murder’, adding that ‘one needs medical evidence in a case of unlawful killing’.

Prior to handing down sentence, Judge McCarthy said the offence had been aggravated by a number of factors, including the fact that the accused had gone to work with the dead woman’s brother hours after disposing of the body, and also that Deely treated the body in a ‘callous manner’ by dumping it in the sea. He added that the victim’s mother passed away ‘having never recovered from the loss of her daughter’.