Wild rages, delusions and death...
OISÍN CONROY
OISÍN Conroy strangled his girlfriend, Natalie McGuinness, with his bare hands in 2015.
‘I strangled her with a rear naked choke which I learned from Brazilian jiu-jitsu. She struggled so hard, I knew I had to kill her, kill her, kill her,’ he told gardaí.
He suffered from chronic paranoid schizophrenia and believed he was ‘in the Matrix’. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2017.
Conroy, 34, from Boyle, Co. Roscommon, told gardaí that there was a struggle in his mind ‘between the devil and Jesus’, and that a voice told him to kill Ms McGuinness.
He also caused injuries to his own head, and tried to ‘skin himself alive’ after he strangled his girlfriend.
From his hospital bed in Sligo, he told visiting gardaí: ‘I can’t believe what I’ve done, I’ve killed Natalie, my friend. I’ve killed her.’
He was committed to the Central Mental Hospital for treatment. In a victim-impact statement, Ms McGuinness’s parents said their family’s lives ‘stopped being normal’ following her death, and that they feel ‘emotionally battered and bruised as parents’.
DANIEL O’CONNELL
KILKENNY man Daniel O’Connell knifed his pregnant sister four times because he didn’t want her to raise a child in Dublin. His sister, who was six months pregnant, managed to flee and raise the alarm.
He was diagnosed with autism when he was young and had developed a life-long hatred for Dublin people during a school trip when he was 13. The 33-year-old was angry that his sister had moved to Dublin, married a man from Dublin and was going to have a baby in Dublin.
When O’Connell was tried on a charge of attempted murder, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity after experts from the prosecution and defence agreed that he was suffering from a mental disorder.
TOMAS GAJOWNICZEK
A VERDICT of not guilty by reason of insanity was handed down to a man who stuffed underwear in his girlfriend’s mouth and beat her with a hammer.
Tomas Gajowniczek, of Dolphin’s Barn, Dublin, became enraged after his girlfriend fled from him to a neighbour’s house. When her boyfriend discovered that she had kissed the neighbour, he became furious and attacked her.
Mr Gajowniczek was charged with attempted murder. The court heard that he was suffering from a delusional disorder and he was sent to the CMH for treatment.
SAVERIO BELLANTE
SAVERIO Bellante, from Sicily, met Tom O’Gorman through an international religious group that promotes benevolent values. Mr Bellante rented a room in Mr O’Gorman’s house in Castleknock, Dublin.
Unknown to Mr O’Gorman, Bellante had been diagnosed with a mental disorder, ‘religious hysterical delirium’, and had delusions he was Jesus.
He had been hospitalised in Sicily and been prescribed anti-psychotic medication after showing signs of stress by praying all day.
On January 11, 2014, both men were in the house and had played a game of chess. Mr Bellante left a message on an acquaintance’s phone asking him to mediate in a dispute over chess. He then killed Mr O’Gorman with a dumbbell and a knife. Afterwards, he called gardaí and told them what had happened.
There was an ‘a cutting open of the front of the chest’. Bellante opened up Mr O’Gorman’s chest to eat his heart but mistakenly ate his lung instead.