A HOMELESS man has been jailed for 6½ years for killing a young woman with whom he had been in a relationship.
Clive Butcher (44), originally from Britain but with an address on Ranelagh Road, Dublin, was found guilty of Rebecca Hoban’s manslaughter by a Central Criminal Court jury last February.
He had admitted to manslaughter before the trial got under way, but his plea was rejected by the DPP and he was tried for murder.
During his trial, the court heard that he stabbed Ms Hoban (28) six times in the back with a bread knife after they had spent the afternoon of December 17th, 2008, together drinking and smoking heroin.
The two, who were homeless and addicted to drugs, had met while sleeping rough in Phoenix Park and had been in and out of a relationship for a year before the killing.
Just before 7pm that evening, Butcher dialled 999 and asked for an ambulance, saying Rebecca was “dying rapidly on the floor.” He said he was an “evil f***er” who had just stabbed a woman.
In his subsequent Garda interviews, Butcher described a “violent struggle” after a row broke out over money for drugs.
He said Ms Hoban snatched up a bread knife and came towards him threatening him. Butcher said he had pressed her up against the wall and that’s when the knife must have “went in”. “I’m sorry it happened, I loved the girl,” he told gardaí.
Mr Justice George Birmingham said the two had lived a “chaotic lifestyle” together. The killing was “desperate and serious” and there were a number of aggravating factors he had to consider, including the extent of the violence, the six stab wounds and the use of a bread knife. He said the killing was made all the more tragic by the fact that it happened when Butcher seemed to be getting his life back on track, taking part in the resettlement programme for homeless men.
Referring to his relationship with Ms Hoban and the fact that she had texted him in the hours before her death, saying “I love you”, Mr Justice Birmingham said Butcher had “brought a violent and brutal end to a relationship that seemed to have promise”.
The court heard he had 16 previous convictions in Britain including common assault and making indecent photographs of children.
Ms Hoban’s relatives attended the court for the sentencing.
Taking the witness stand to read out her victim impact statement, her sister Jodie Hoban described Rebecca as a lovely person with a heart of gold and said her death had had a huge effect on her eight siblings.
“She had a hard life and she made mistakes, but no one deserves to die the way she did . . . we have had many sleepless nights thinking of the way she died.”
Ms Hoban said she had to attend counselling and that her family’s photos and keepsakes of Rebecca are “some comfort, but we would rather have our sister alive”.
Mr Justice Birmingham said it was clear Rebecca’s siblings were experiencing a real sense of loss, and that her son, Brandon (10) was now left without a mother.
He had to balance the seriousness of the offence with Butcher’s guilty plea, the fact that he rang the emergency services immediately and waited at the scene and the fact that he was now drug-free.