Gardaí have ruled out foul play in the death of a convicted killer and sex offender who was found dead following a house fire at his home in Cork city on Tuesday afternoon.
Firefighters using breathing apparatus recovered the body of Conor Downey (54) from a back room of the two storey house in Douglas West on Cork’s southside where he lived alone.
Mr Downey had served a sentence in the UK for the manslaughter of Donegal woman, Suzanne Reddan and in Ireland for the attempted rape of a nurse in Cork, both offences occurring in 1988.
Cork City Fire Brigade had been alerted after neighbours noticed smoke coming from the building and three units of the fire brigade responded and battled to bring the fire under control.
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Mr Downey was pronounced dead at the scene by a local doctor and his remains were removed to Cork University Hospital for a postmortem examination on Wednesday morning.
Gardaí cordoned off the scene and garda technical experts began an examination of the house to try to establish the cause of the blaze in which Mr Downey suffered extensive injuries.
It’s understood that gardaí are satisfied that there was nothing suspicious about the fire and believe it may have started after Mr Downey fell asleep while smoking a cigarette in a downstairs room.
Mr Downey was known to gardaí and was being monitored by them as he was on the Sex Offenders Register following his conviction over 20 years ago for the attempted rape of a nurse in Cork in 1988.
He had come to garda attention for the crime when he was asked to give a DNA sample when gardaí investigated the murder and rape of beautician Rachel Kiely (22) in Ballincollig Regional Park in 2000.
Gardaí obtained the sample, and it excluded Mr Downey of any role in Ms Kiely’s killing but it matched a sample taken from a nurse who had been the victim of an attempted rape in October 1988.
The woman told Mr Downey’s trial at the Central Criminal Court in 2004 that she had being out with friends the night before and had gone to sleep in her apartment in a Cork City suburb.
She woke suddenly to find a man who was naked from the waist down standing at her bed. She asked him what he was doing, and he attempted to have sex with her.
She said her attacker struggled with her for what seemed to be an hour and tried to strangle her to make her remain quiet as he proceeded to indecently assault her and beat her around the head.
Mr Justice Kevin O’Higgins jailed Mr Downey for 12 years and suspended the final year as he noted that the accused had subjected his victim to a terrifying ordeal in which she feared for her life.
“She was so savagely beaten that when she arrived at the Garda station they thought she was wearing a Halloween mask,” observed Mr Justice Kevin O’Higgins as he jailed Mr Downey.
At the stage Mr Downey was already serving a jail sentence after he threatened the doctor who had taken the DNA sample in the Rachel Kiely investigation that linked him to the attempted rape.
Supt Brian Calnan told the Central Criminal Court that Mr Downey of Castlepark, Ballincollig had also been convicted of assaulting the doctor who had collected the blood samples from him in 2000.
Mr Downey pleaded guilty at Cork Circuit Criminal Court in 2003 to assaulting Dr Pat Lee at his surgery in Ballincollig after gardaí had matched the DNA sample he gave to the attack on the nurse.
Mr Downey arrived in Dr Lee’s surgery carrying the long-bladed butcher’s boning knife on the night in question and he shouted, “You took blood from me and I’m going to court because of you.”
Dr Lee told how he suffered cuts to his hands as he tried to protect himself. “He had the knife pointed directly at my chest. He said if I did not let go of the knife I was going to die,” said Dr Lee.
Judge Sean O’Donnabhain said that four years out of a maximum possible sentence of five years was appropriate in a case of someone who was assaulted while caring for people.
Gardaí had focused on Mr Downey and asked him for a DNA sample in the Rachel Kiely investigation as he had a conviction in the UK for killing a young Irish woman there in the 1990s.
A few months before the attack on the nurse in Cork, Mr Downey strangled his flatmate, Suzanne Reddan from near Letterkenny in Co Donegal and he cut up her body to conceal the crime.
In 1992, he walked into a police station in Surrey and confessed to killing Ms Reddan and a police investigation was launched and her limbs were later recovered but her torso was never found.
Mr Downey served a three-year sentence for the manslaughter of Ms Reddan, returning in the 1990s to Ballincollig where he grew up and where he was nominated as a suspect for Rachel Kiely’s killing.
He moved to Douglas West upon his release after serving the sentence for the attempted rape of the nurse, moving into his live with his elderly aunt until she went into a nursing home some years ago.
A butcher by trade, Mr Downey lived alone in the house in Douglas West in recent years and was very much a loner, keeping very much to himself and often drinking alone at home.
“He was very much a loner and he had given up the drink for a few years but after his aunt went into the nursing home, he started drinking very heavily again,” said one local who knew him.
