Man (49) found guilty by jury of Co Kildare murder

A convicted killer has been jailed for life for beating dissident republican Larry “Bomber” Keane to death in a laneway in Co Kildare.

Seamus Morgan (49) with an address at The Hollands, Athy, Co Kildare was charged with murdering Laurence Keane (56) in the town on July 19th, 2013.

Last week at the Central Criminal Court Mr Morgan pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Keane.

On Tuesday a jury of three men and nine women found Morgan guilty by unanimous verdict of murdering Mr Keane. They had deliberated for a period of three hours and six minutes.

Morgan was previously jailed for eight years in July 2005 after a jury found him not guilty of murder but guilty of the manslaughter of 29-year-old James Hand, who was stabbed to death outside a Dublin pub.

He had pleaded not guilty to the murder of Mr Hand, of Mountjoy Square, Dublin 7, on or between August 22nd and September 5th, 2002, at The Meeting Point pub on Dorset Street Upper.

In 1998, Keane pleaded guilty to having 980lb of an explosive mixture and devices, with the intent to endanger life or enable another to do so, at Dún Laoghaire port on April 2 of the same year. He was sentenced to 15 years in jail but the term was reduced to 10 on appeal.

The court heard that the explosives were twice the size of the bomb used by the Real IRA in Omagh in 1998. Gardaí believed that the likely target of the Real IRA was the Aintree Grand National.

Mr Justice Robert Eagar thanked the jury for "the clarity of their concentration in the case" and the amount of "thought" they had given to it.

Mr Justice Eagar then exempted them from jury service for a period of four years.

Mr Justice Eagar sentenced Morgan to life imprisonment, backdating the sentence to April 23rd, 2014.