SENTENCING IN PATRICIA O’CONNOR MURDER TRIAL Jailed for helping cover up a murder

FAMILY members of Patricia O’Connor, who helped cover up the grandmother’s ‘grotesque’ murder and dismemberment, have received prison sentences totalling eight-and-a-half years at the Central Criminal Court. .

Passing sentence last Friday, Mr Justice Paul McDermott said the charges against all four defendants were ‘simply appalling’. He described the reaction and response of those who were present at the house on the evening of Mrs O’Connor’s death, which formed the basis of the prosecution case against three of the four accused, as ‘dreadful’.

The judge said Mrs O’Connor (61), a mother, grandmother and wife had been murdered in her Rathfarnham home and her body had been disposed of within a very short period of time. He emphasised that no effort had been made to obtain garda assistance nor call the emergency services. ‘The efforts to conceal the crime became in a very short time quite elaborate and even more elaborate as time went on’, he added.

Furthermore, Mr Justice McDermott said Mrs O’Connor, whose dismembered remains were found scattered at nine different locations in the Dublin and Wicklow mountains, had been discovered by ‘unsuspecting members of the public’ on a day out in ‘horrific circumstances’.

The judge pointed out that the object of the exercise to dismember Mrs O’Connor was to ensure that her body was never found and the crime never detected or prosecuted and this was a most ‘shocking aspect’ of the case.

The nature which Mrs O’Connor’s death had on her immediate family, her son Richard O’Connor and her friends has been ‘devastating and heart-breaking’ for them, he said. He highlighted that the deceased had worked hard all her life for her family and was set to enjoy her retirement if that had been made available to her.

The deceased’s daughter Louise O’Connor (41), her granddaughter Stephanie O’Connor (22) and Stephanie’s father Keith Johnston (43) were each found guilty in February of impeding the apprehension or prosecution of Louise’s former partner Kieran Greene, knowing or believing him to have murdered Mrs O’Connor on May 29, 2017.

Patricia’s husband Augustine ‘Gus’ O’Connor (76) was originally part of the trial but shortly before it began in January, he pleaded guilty to reporting his wife as a missing person to gardai at Rathfarnham Garda Station, Dublin 14 on June 1, 2017, knowing she was already dead.

The seven-week trial heard that the body of Mrs O’Connor was dismembered into 15 separate parts that were found at nine different locations over a 30km range in the Dublin and Wicklow mountains between June 10 and 14, 2017.

Former Deputy State Pathologist, Dr Michael Curtis, gave evidence in the trial that Mrs O’Connor’s head was struck a minimum of three blows with a solid implement and the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head.

Last Friday Mr Justice McDermott sentenced Augustine O’Connor to 18 months in prison and said his actions in later reporting her as a missing person knowing she had been murdered was a betrayal to both his wife and their son. The judge noted that Gus’ reaction to this appalling crime was ‘in itself appalling’ and he had behaved disgracefully. ‘He declined to give her all the decency and respect she was due as a person in life,’ he said.

The judge then jailed Stephanie O’Connor for one-and-a-half years in prison and her mother