Pensioner, 74, murdered wife and took weedkiller
Killer hit son over head with metal pole before ending his own life
THE girlfriend of a man whose parents were killed in a murder- suicide has revealed how she ran from the scene ‘bawling’ when she saw her boyfriend covered in blood.
Paul Fitzgerald, 38, had been struck on the head with a scaffolding pole by his father, Tom. The 74-year-old killed his wife Kitty, 72, with the same pole before killing himself by drinking weedkiller.
When Paul Fitzgerald’s girlfriend, Aoife O’Gorman, came upon the scene at the Mayo farmhouse, she found her boyfriend sitting on a bed in a confused state. Kitty Fitzgerald was dead in the hallway in her pyjamas.
The inquest into their deaths yesterday heard Tom was found dead in an adjoining farmyard with his head leaning into a water tank. Nearby was a bottle of weedkiller. The cap of the bottle was clenched in his hand.
Ms O’Gorman came on the scene when she travelled from Galway city to Irishtown on November 1, to try to find Paul, whom she had been unable to contact.
In a statement read to Castlebar Coroner’s Court, Ms O’Gorman said: ‘I went to the back door. It was closed. I saw a bloody handprint on the left jamb of the door. I tried knocking. I could hear the power shower going.’
Ms O’Gorman said that, after checking the sheds, she went to her car and rang her mother who told her ‘it doesn’t look good’.
After again knocking on the house door and getting no reply, Ms O’Gorman again called her mother from the car. As she did so, she saw the back door open.
‘Paul came out the back door. I saw he had black eyes and there was dried blood on his head, his face, nose and behind his ears. He had blue jeans that looked mucky and a mustard body warmer with some blood on it,’ she said.
‘I went over to him. I started crying. When I asked what happened to him he said he couldn’t remember. There was a big, deep cut to the back of his head. I could see into his skull. I started bawling.’
Ms O’Gorman said Paul wasn’t making sense and made a sleeping gesture by putting his two hands together at the side of his head.
After telling him she was bringing him to hospital, Paul Fitzgerald got wipes from his SUV and started cleaning blood from his face. He went into the house and when he did not re- emerge, she went in and saw a body – a woman in her pyjamas.
She found Paul on a bed. His duvet was ‘all messed up’ and his pillow was also bloodied. She left him and drove away ‘ bawling’. After passing Irishtown she rang 999 requesting an ambulance.
Paul was tasered by the Garda’s Regional Support Unit when they found him in a confused state, slumped near his father’s body.
Garda Aidan Foley of the RSU told the inquest this was because he wouldn’t obey instructions to take his hands from his pocket.
It appears from evidence at the inquest that painter- decorator Tom Fitzgerald fatally assaulted his wife with the bar part of a scaffolding pole, and attacked Paul, knocking him to the ground.
The inquest heard that blood
‘Paul had blood on his head’
patterns indicated 5ft 2in Kitty had been assaulted in the bedroom and made her way to the hallway, where she was fatally struck by the piece of scaffolding.
Blood patterns elsewhere indicated Paul had been attacked in the yard where he had collapsed. He subsequently made his way into the house and lay in the small bedroom while bleeding heavily
Tom Fitzgerald, who was 6ft 3in and of muscular build, had sustained three self-inflicted lacera- tions on his neck. These were not fatal.
Paul Fitzgerald said his parents’ relationship had been ‘strong’, but his father had a history of depression. He had recently injured his knee, been unable to work and was prescribed anti-depressants.
‘I have absolutely no recollection of what happened at my parents’ house,’ he said.
The cause of Kitty Fitzgerald’s death was given as ‘blunt force trauma to the head’. Tom Fitzgerald’s death was due to the ingestion of corrosive fluid – weedkiller.
The inquest jury returned a verdict of homicide in the case of Kitty Fitzgerald. They returned a verdict of self-inflicted homicide in the case of Tom.
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He lay in bedroom, bleeding heavily