Man who started fire after stabbing girlfriend is jailed

A MAN who stabbed his girlfriend multiple times and set fire to her home before then returning to the scene when the fire brigade arrived to give an ‘Oscar-like performance’ was jailed for life yesterday.

The family of Olivia Dunlea, 36, said their lives had become a recurring nightmare after their daughter was killed at her home by Darren Murphy on February 17, 2013.

The family members of the playschool teacher, from Passage West, Co. Cork, had to go through three trials in with a previous conviction being overturned on a technicality. Another trial ended in a hung jury.

Murphy, 41, of Dan Desmond Drive, Passage West, had pleaded not guilty to murder but conceded that he had committed manslaughter. The DPP declined to accept his plea. The Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork heard that Ms Dunlea was found with multiple stab wounds in a badly burned bedroom in her home. Gardaí recovered a knife at the property.

Prosecuting counsel Tom Creed SC said that Mr Murphy came to the scene of the fire and made it look like he was in disarray with his top on backwards and inside out.

Mr Creed said that Murphy wanted people to look at him so that people would say’ ‘Poor Darren in a panic.’

Murphy told gardaí that he ‘snapped’, stabbed Ms Dunlea in the neck, lit a quilt in her home before setting a fire in the middle of the kitchen table of her property.

In her victim impact statement yesterday following the guilty plea Ann Dunlea, mother of late teacher Olivia, said it was ‘gut wrenching and heartbreaking’ to watch her grandchildren struggle without their mother’s love. ‘How do you console a crying child pining for their mother? How do you tell three children that their mother was murdered and their family home set on fire by a deliberate act of evil?

‘We still have sleepless nights haunted by visions that no family should have to know.’

She said Murphy had denied them the right to view Olivia’s body and to say their final goodbyes. ‘The evil act of burning her body in her home will haunt us forever.’

Mr Justice Pat McCarthy jailed Mr Murphy for life and thanked the 11 jurors for their service. The jury took two hours and 21 minutes to reach their verdict.