A violent criminal with 79 previous convictions has been sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering a “loving and caring family man” who he stabbed in the neck hours after threatening to do so.
A Central Criminal Court jury last week found Joseph Lawlor (39) guilty of the murder of Michael Ryan (51) in a car park behind the defendant’s home at Hampton Wood Road, Finglas, Dublin 11, on June 20th, 2024.
The jurors rejected Lawlor’s claim that he was acting in self-defence after Ryan threatened to have grenades thrown through his windows.
In a victim impact statement, read to the court by prosecution barrister Jennifer Jackson, Ryan’s partner Natanya Comerford said the “pain of losing my partner, friend, my children’s dad and my future all in one go was excruciating”.
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“The hurt and betrayal I felt when I realised his life was ended by someone he considered a friend will never leave me.”
Comerford gave birth to their second child weeks after the murder. She said Ryan was “delighted when we conceived” and was looking forward to meeting his son. Their youngest boy never got to meet his father, who she described as a “loving and caring family man”.
The trial heard that Lawlor and Ryan spent the hours before his death drinking together and had the first of three physical altercations at 8.30pm. These were captured by CCTV and neighbours using mobile phones.
In his evidence, Lawlor accepted that he easily got the better of Ryan and had strangled him on the ground during one of the fights, causing his face to turn purple.
After the first fight, the two men continued arguing and a neighbour recorded them through Lawlor’s back garden fence.
Gda Shane Gallagher told the trial that Lawlor could be heard at one point saying: “Get up and I’ll stab you with your own knife straight into your neck.”
When he took the stand in his own defence, Lawlor claimed that it was “100 per cent a coincidence” that he stabbed Ryan in the neck hours later.
Following the second fight, Ryan left in his car and was arrested almost immediately for drink driving. He returned to Lawlor’s home after being processed and released at around midnight, and accused Lawlor of calling gardaí in an attempt to get him arrested.
He also demanded that Lawlor return a watch he had left behind earlier. When Lawlor refused, Ryan threatened to get some “lads” to come and throw “pineapples”, slang for grenades, through Lawlor’s windows.
Ryan entered Lawlor’s home through the back door minutes later and left carrying a bag with almost €4,000 inside. Lawlor claimed the money was the proceeds of the sale of 17,000 sleeping tablets, but Ryan’s partner said the money was part of a loan she had secured for home improvements.
Lawlor chased Ryan to a car park at the rear of his home and stabbed him once in the neck, severing a branch of the carotid artery and causing his death.
Ryan fell to the ground and called Lawlor a “dirtbird” before shouting: “You stabbed me in the artery, you f***ing eejit.”
Lawlor later claimed he had not intended to harm Ryan and did not want him to come back with grenades. He claimed he was acting in defence of himself and his home.
Judge Patrick McGrath noted that in one of the letters handed in by Lawlor’s barrister Keith Spencer, the defendant sought to blame gardaí for what happened and stated he would be writing to the Minister for Justice.
The judge said Lawlor’s remorse was further “called into question” by an attempt to “slander” the deceased and to place the blame for the killing on him.
He said the use of “such extreme violence” had been “wholly unnecessary and unjustifiable”. He said the result was that Ryan’s family had been robbed of a father and partner.
Speaking outside court after sentencing, Ryan’s sister Elizabeth Kavanagh said Lawlor was not remorseful.
“He tried to slander Michael and he tried to blame the guards for his actions and his behaviour,” she said. “That doesn’t sound remorseful, that sounds like he is still deluded about what he did.”
Kavanagh said her brother “brought laughter, mischief and fun into the house” and had cared for their mother, who died of cancer six weeks before the murder.
