A Liverpool man (47) has been jailed for nine years for killing his fiancée’s father in Co Westmeath 23 years ago in the State’s first "cold-case" homicide prosecution.
Mr Justice John Edwards described the killing of Bernard Brian McGrath (43) by Colin Pinder and the victim’s wife as "callous and vicious".
Vera McGrath was sentenced to life in prison in July after being found guilty of her husband’s murder. A Central Criminal Court jury found Pinder not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter to which he had pleaded guilty.
The killing took place between March 10th and April 18th, 1987, at the victim’s home in Lower Coole, Westmeath.
Mr Justice Edwards described as ‘savage, depraved and barbaric’ the manner in which the victim’s corpse was desecrated after the killing. He was initially buried in a shallow grave in his back garden. His body was exhumed days later and burned on what the judge described as a homemade funeral pyre.
Great effort was made to conceal the body, noted the judge, with the ashes scattered and any remaining bones splintered and put into drains and a septic tank.
The remains lay undiscovered until 1993 when Pinder’s former fiancée, Veronica McGrath, reported what had happened to her father.
The judge said this had caused much distress to the victim’s family, excluding Vera and Veronica McGrath, who the court treated as an accessory after the fact.
Mr Justice Edwards said the distress was felt by Mr McGrath’s three sons, who were children at the time. It’s understood that Brian, Andrew and Edward McGrath were led to believe that they had been abandoned by their father, who they remembered as being kind, hardworking and intelligent.
The judge described the victim impact statement they gave last month as poignant. They said that the way their father’s life had been taken was barbaric and left them numb with shock. They had been unable to grieve and mourn in a natural way. They had been deprived of a father figure in their life, they said.
The judge regarded the effect the crime had on Mr McGrath’s sons as an aggravating factor. However he said there were also considerable mitigating circumstances. These included Pinder’s guilty plea and lack of a serious criminal record.
He said that although there was no indication of remorse for some years, Pinder admitted his involvement as soon as he was confronted in 1993. He co-operated again two years ago when the cold-case review team re-opened the matter, even voluntarily flying to Dublin to be interviewed by gardaí.
He also took into consideration Pinder’s relatively young age and the ‘significant amount of adversity’ he had in life, including limited education, no skills or training and a number of medical problems. Pinder had epilepsy, agoraphobia and depression and had been suicidal, but much of it was linked to his involvement in the killing, he said.
“You were significantly active in the callous disposal of the body,” he said, not accepting Pinder’s arguments that he was under the duress of Vera and Veronica McGrath, who he married weeks later and separated from within a year.
“The manner in which he was killed was extraordinarily vicious. He was bludgeoned to death,” remarked the judge. “You weren’t the primary participant. Mrs McGrath rendered most of the blows,” he continued. “But when he fell you threw a concrete mould at his head.
“The fact you were involved in such a way weighed heavily upon you. You have realised the horror of what you were involved in and it has caused you suffering,” he said. “The fact it occurred belatedly is unfortunate. It should not have taken you as long as it did to come forward.”