A “CAREER criminal” who preyed on elderly people alone in their homes has been given an eight-year sentence for a string of crimes against vulnerable victims.
Alice Connors (36), who has 86 previous convictions including 22 burglaries, with victims ranging in age from 60 to 84, stole to feed her drug habit. The mother-of-three had children with her during some of her offences.
Connors, of Kiltalown Crescent, Tallaght, Dublin, pleaded guilty to two burglaries, two attempted burglaries and stealing a purse at locations in the city centre and south Dublin on dates between October 2007 and October 2008.
Judge Katherine Delahunt said she had to take into account the number of offences and the type of victims targeted in these “heinous crimes”. She imposed consecutive sentences totalling eight years and suspended the final three years on strict conditions.
Garda Neil Fogarty told Maire Torrens, prosecuting, that on October 2nd, 2007, an 82-year-old woman answered her front door after hearing rattling at the post box and a voice saying “it is Alice”.
A man barged into the house and the woman saw a female matching Connors’s description behind him.
The woman told the pair she did not know them and asked them to leave. She saw the man shove something up his jumper before he left and later discovered her handbag was missing. She told gardaí she was crying and had “never got such a fright” or been afraid in her home before this incident.
Garda Fogarty said the woman’s handbag was recovered from a wheelie bin and gardaí were able to recover fingerprints which they later matched to Connors’s fingerprints, which were already on record.
The following day an 83-year-old woman was walking home from a shop when Connors held out her hand to her saying “I know you, shake hands”. The woman continued to her home and her husband opened the door.
Connors put her arms around the woman’s husband and left after the woman told her to get out. The woman later noticed €25 was missing from her wallet.
On October 1st, 2007, an 84-year-old man, who had just returned from cashing his pension cheque, heard his wife screaming from the kitchen. He saw Connors there who told him: “You are all right, I minded you.” The man shook Connors and told her to get out but she continued looking through drawers. The man said he was afraid for himself and his wife. Connors then ran out the front door with a “young chap” and his wife called gardaí.
Garda Thomas Anderson said the neighbour of a 76-year-old woman called gardaí on July 27th, 2008, when she saw a woman, teenage boy and little girl tiptoe up the elderly woman’s driveway.
The elderly woman encountered the intruders in her hallway. They left when the woman’s neighbour came across the road and Connors was arrested shortly afterwards when gardaí arrived.