LIFE FOR STABBING GIRLFRIEND TO DEATH
A MAN who stabbed his girlfriend and torched her home has been jailed for life over the murder.
The family of Olivia Dunlea, 36, said their lives had become a nightmare after their daughter was killed at her Cork home by Darren Murphy in 2013.
The relatives of the playschool teacher had to go through three separate trials with a previous conviction being overturned on a technicality.
Murphy, 41, had pleaded not guilty to murder but admitted manslaughter.
The Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork heard Olivia was found with multiple stab wounds in a badly burned bedroom with gardai recovering a knife from a sink and a phone from a toilet.
A lawyer said Murphy returned to the scene of the fire and made it look like he was in disarray with his top on backwards and inside out.
He added the accused wanted people to look at him and say:
“Poor Darren in a panic.”
The accused told gardai he “snapped” before stabbing Olivia in the neck.
He then lit a quilt and set a fire in the middle of the kitchen table of her property in
Pembroke Crescent, Passage West. In her victim impact statement, Olivia’s mum Ann Dunlea said it was “gut wrenching” to watch her grandchildren struggle.
She added “How do you tell three children 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.”
Mrs Dunlea said Murphy, from Dan Desmond Drive, Passage West, had denied her family the right to view Olivia’s final goodbyes.
She added: “No emergency services were contacted by him in an attempt to save her. The evil act of burning her body in her home will haunt us for ever.
“We have had to sit through three trials over the last five years, listening to the gruesome details of her murder.”
Mr Justice Pat Mccarthy thanked the jurors, who delivered their verdict after two hours and 21 minutes.
The trial heard Olivia was still alive when Mr Murphy set fire to her home but she was unable to raise the alarm because of her extensive injuries. body and say their