Three men have been sentenced to life imprisonment over the murder of Thomas “Toddy” Dooley in Co Offaly in 2014.
The 64-year-old was murdered by the men in his home in Edenderry in February 2014.
At a sentencing hearing at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin on Monday, the three men convicted last August of the murder were sentenced to life imprisonment.
At the hearing, Mr Dooley’s family described their shock and horror at the brutality of his death.
Mr Dooley’s four sisters, Catherine Darby, Cora McAuley, Ann Fennessy and Rose Murphy, his niece Denise Murphy and nephews John and William Murphy said they were “horrified and shocked at the cruel and heartless way he was brutally taken from us and his family never got the chance to say goodbye”.
They said no family should go through what they had suffered and they hoped for justice. The statement concluded: “We hope his death was not in vain.”
Matthew Cummins (22), of Churchview Heights, Edenderry, was convicted on August 5th last of Mr Dooley’s murder.
His co-accused, cousins Sean Davy (22), of Clonmullen Drive, Edenderry, and James Davy (25), of Thornhill Meadows, Celbridge, Co Kildare, were convicted on August 4th of the murder.
The trial had heard Mr Dooley suffered eight blows to the head with a baseball bat that smashed his skull and disfigured his face.
Det Joseph Bradley told the court on Monday that all three men had previous convictions.
Sentencing the men, Ms Justice Margaret Heneghan said the murder was a “brutal, motiveless attack on this defenceless elderly man”.
The court heard Sean Davy and James Davy had written apologies to Mr Dooley’s family.
Trial evidence
The trial had heard Sean Davy and James Davy had met in Mangan’s Pub in Edenderry on the evening of February 11th, 2014, where they drank several pints over a few hours.
James Davy was carrying a baseball bat, which he claimed he needed for protection because he had been beaten up the last time he was in Edenderry.
At about 9.30pm they went to a house party. Cummins joined them at about 11pm.
The following morning, the three men went to a local 24-hour garage, where they got cups and a mixer for a bottle of vodka they had bought earlier and made the decision to go to Toddy Dooley’s house.
Cummins had been in the house before and knew the 64-year-old man. He told gardaí he was a kind man who would always say “hello”.
Cummins climbed in a window of the house and opened another one to let the other two in.
Mr Dooley, who was described as “soft” by one Garda witness, sat in his armchair, opened a can of Budweiser and drank with the intruders.
The three men gave different accounts of what happened next.
Cummins claimed that “out of the blue” Sean Davy walked up behind Mr Dooley and beat him on the back of the head with the bat, before coming around the armchair to continue the beating from the front.
Sean Davy claimed that James Davy was responsible for most of the blows, and that he himself struck Mr Dooley once, but “not full force”.
James Davy denied laying a hand on Mr Dooley, saying that Sean Davy beat him with the bat and Matthew Cummins kicked Mr Dooley.
None of the three took responsibility for attempts to set Mr Dooley’s clothes and armchair on fire.
State Pathologist Prof Marie Cassidy said she found eight blows to Mr Dooley’s head which had shattered his skull, disfiguring his face and leaving fragments of bone lodged in his brain. Two blows to his torso had fractured three of his ribs.
She found extensive burn marks on his legs and arms where his attackers had tried to set him on fire after he died.
