The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Speaking ill of the dead:
EARLY on the morning of April 4, 2017, elderly farmer Anthony O’Mahony was killed, in brutal fashion, when Michael Ferris repeatedly rammed his car with a pronged teleporter.
Just under two months later young Tralee mother of three Nicola Collins was brutally beaten to death in a Cork apartment.
The lives of the 73-year-old Ballyduff farmer and the Tralee woman couldn’t have been more different, but the trials of their killers bear a distinctly unpleasant similarity.
In both cases it was the victims who appeared to be on trial, with their personal lives laid bare in the courtroom.
As he tried to escape justice for his horrendous act of savagery, Nicola Collins’ murderer, Cathal O’Sullivan, did all in his power to paint Ms Collins in as poor a light as possible.
Nicola Collins died as a result of severe head trauma, one of 125 separate injuries O’Sullivan inflicted on her in what must have been a particularly vicious, frenzied and lengthy attack.
Rather than accept what he had done O’Sullivan – who has since lodged an appeal against the verdict against him – made the ludicrous claim that many of those injuries had happened when Ms Collins lunged at him and then slipped in the shower.
He even went on to claim that other injuries had happened as he tried to resuscitate her.
Those claims aside, O’Sullivan would also go on to perform a cruel character assassination on the woman whose life he had already stolen.
In court she was painted as a deeply troubled woman with severe alcohol issues and violent irrational tendencies.
O’Sullivan – who it later emerged had beaten a former girlfriend so badly she was put into intensive care – was portrayed very differently. He was, according to his defence team, a decent sort who was merely defending himself in the face of a supposedly deranged attacker whom he had loved and cared for deeply.
To say his claims were an insult to Ms Collins and her family would be a gross understatement.
His personal life wasn’t a factor, but Anthony O’Mahony’s reputation suffered a similarly brutal battering in court.
During his killer Michael Ferris’ lengthy trial, Mr O’Mahony was painted as a selfish, irrational, unreasonable and violent man; once again the implication was that the victim was, in some manner, responsible.
The onslaught on his character began from the opening moments of the trial and was a constant thread right up until the case’s conclusion.
The clear implication was that somehow the elderly man had deserved his fate and had brought about his own demise.
In the wake of the trial much of the public discussion revolved around Mr O’Mahaony’s personality and how he had allegedly driven Michael Ferris to kill.
What was missed, forgotten or wilfully omitted by many was what Michael Ferris actually did to his aged neighbour.
Having deliberately blocked the road with his pronged teleporter he waited for his victim to drive down the road.
Then, without saying a word to Mr O’Mahony, he jumped into the teleporter, turned it quickly and accelerated straight at Mr OMahony’s car, which he rammed at least three times.
Anthony O’Mahony suffered “catastrophic” injuries, the nature of which are too gruesome to record in full.
Suffice to say that the 73-year-old man’s body was essentially torn apart in what had been – by Michael Ferris’ own admission to gardaí – a pre-planned attack.
It was a particularly barbaric killing, and after the deed was done Michael Ferris had parked the teleporter in his yard before wandering down to his neighbours house.
“Mahony’s gone” Ferris calmly told his neighbour.
In a similar fashion to the Collins case, Michael Ferris – who was eventually found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter – was portrayed as another decent sort.
He was, the jury was told, a “quiet and obliging” man and a good neighbour who had been driven to kill after decades of rows with his “difficult” neighbour.