Young man who beat pensioner to death has string of convictions
Murderer gets life for ‘vicious and sustained attack’
A YOUNG man has been jailed for life for the ‘truly shocking’ murder of a 90year-old disabled bachelor farmer who was beaten to death in his own home.
The court heard that the 28year-old killer, Ross Outram, has 25 previous convictions which include burglary, theft, possession of stolen property and assault causing harm.
The jury rejected Outram’s claim that he repeatedly struck Paddy Lyons in ‘self defence’ after the pensioner, who suffered from osteoporosis and had the use of only one arm, ‘attacked’ him with a stick.
The trial heard that the farmer’s body was discovered slumped in his armchair at his home, with blood smeared down his face.
Pathologist Dr Margaret Bolster told the trial that Mr Lyons suffered multiple blows to his head and neck from a blunt weapon and had fractures of his hip joint, jawbone and ribs.
Mr Lyons lived alone on his farm and had ‘trusted everyone’, the court heard. It was the State’s case that Outram had carried out ‘a vicious and sustained attack on a defenceless old man’ with a nonfunctioning arm, and that the accused’s claim of self-defence did ‘not bear thinking about’.
Outram, of Ferryland, Waterford Road, Clonmel, Co. Tipperary, had pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Lyons at Loughleagh, Ballysaggart, Lismore, Co. Waterford, at a time unknown between February 23 and 26, 2017.
The jury of eight men and four women took three hours and 29 minutes to reach a unanimous guilty verdict. Defence counsel Michael O’Higgins SC told the Central Criminal Court that his client wanted to apologise for having killed Mr Lyons and said he was remorseful for his actions.
Judge Paul Coffey then sentenced Outram to the mandatory term of life imprisonment for murder. The sentence was backdated to when he went into custody on February 27, 2017. Addressing Outram, Judge Coffey said the killer had carried out ‘a truly shocking and outrageous fatal attack on a defenceless 90-yearold man in his own home’.
During the trial, Mary Fennessy, Mr Lyons’s home help, said the deceased was ‘very lively’ for his age and had no aches or pains.
‘The way Paddy lived, he trusted everyone,’ she commented.
Witness Kathleen Kiely gave evidence that she sold second-hand clothes around the country and would call to Mr Lyons’s home around four times a year.
She went to his house at around 4pm on February 25 and said she found it unusual that there was no lock or bolt on the gate as it was normally locked.
Ms Kiely said that as she stepped inside his house, she saw that Mr Lyons was sitting in his chair and that he did not move or respond.
He looked very swollen and she thought he was unconscious, she said, not realising at the time that he was already dead. The witness said she informed a couple who lived in a nearby bungalow what she had observed.
Sandra Walsh, a family friend of Outram’s, said the defendant rang her on February 26 and asked her had she seen ‘about the man’ on the news. Outram told her that he had hit this man because he would not give him money, she said.
She asked if this was the man who had died in Waterford and he confirmed that it was. Ms Walsh said she rang a sergeant stationed in Clonmel that evening to report what Outram had told her and he was arrested the following day.
Outram maintained throughout his final Garda interview that Mr Lyons was not dead when he left his home, as Mr Lyons had put on his grey hat and locked the door behind him.
‘A defenceless old man’