We feared Locke may get away with Sonia murder..
THE sister of murdered Sonia Blount last night spoke of her relief that her killer Eric Locke has been jailed for life. Claire Reddin said her family feared Locke might get away with his horrific crime. But the jury took little more than 90 minutes to find him guilty of murder. She told Claire Byrne Live: “It brought us a lot of relief. We were kind of doubting for a while - is he going to get away with this? We were doubting. We didn’t know whether to trust, did we? “When the verdict came back, the relieve we felt was amazing. He had to take responsibility for what he did.” Evil Locke, 35, lured mum-of-one Sonia, 31, to a hotel in Tallaght, Dublin using a bogus Facebook profile by the name of Shane Cully. For 11 days her relatives have had to listen to a tissue of lies put forward by her killer, who claimed he was suffering from a mental illness. Claire said: “The first time I heard of Shane Cully was after Sonia had been found in the Plaza hotel. “Someone from work rang and said she was meeting someone called Shane Cully. So I rang the guards and said this is who she’s supposed to have been meeting. “And I think at this stage they already had Eric Locke in custody. It actually didn’t dawn on me at first. I remember sitting and saying to my friend, she wouldn’t have went to meet Eric, she was going to meet some fella called Shane. “And my friend said to me then, maybe it was a catfish sort of a thing. And then it dawned on me. So then I went on and I seen that she just recently made friends with Shane Cully on Facebook.” Claire warned others to be careful about meeting people on social networks. She said: “Just be so careful. That Shane Cully Facebook page had friends, it had pictures, it had messages from people wishing him happy birthday. “Like, there was no way if she looked at that she would have known it was fake.” A NEW poll has found most people would like Simon Coveney to be the next Taoiseach – 39% opted for the Housing Minister while 37% chose Leo Varadkar. Another 24% said they didn’t know. The poll by Amarách Research for RTE’S Claire Byrne Live also asked the public about Ireland’s political relationships. The survey found that 65% of those asked opted for the EU, 25% favoured the UK and just three percent preferred the US. Seven percent didn’t know.