A Tipperary man who took part in the killing of Galway pensioner Mr Tommy Casey at his home in 1996 was given a six-year sentence in the Central Criminal Court yesterday. Ms Justice Carroll said she had taken into account the fact that the convicted man, Patrick O'Connor, was co-operating with gardaí in tracing another man involved in the attack.
Supt Anthony Finnerty had told the court that gardaí expect to make an application soon to the courts in relation to that man.
Patrick O'Connor (37), a native of Poulboy, Kilgainey, Clonmel, Co Tipperary, and father of four, had pleaded not guilty to the murder of Mr Tommy Casey, a 68-year-old pensioner who died between January 15th and 23rd 1996 at his home in Oranbeg, Oranmore, Co Galway.
Last December, the DPP accepted a lesser plea of guilty to manslaughter mid-way through O'Connor's trial. Yesterday, the judge suspended the final three months of O'Connor's six-year sentence to account for that plea.
Mr Casey's body was found on his kitchen floor eight days after he was attacked in an attempt to get him to divulge the whereabouts of his savings.
The jury was told Mr Casey died from a combination of the way he was tied up, the injuries to his chest and the posture he was left in after he was beaten and bound. The pensioner had been subjected to "a severe beating" that left several ribs fractured, the State Pathologist, Dr John Harbison, said.
His body lay on the kitchen floor for eight days before concerned locals alerted gardaí to his absence from the village. The pathologist thought his death was more likely to have occurred within minutes, but could have taken much longer. The trial heard that Mr Casey was known locally as a loner and a recluse. Within a half an hour of his attackers leaving him, Garda Colm Finnerty and Garda Ray Dooley (now retired) stopped their car in Galway city for a minor traffic offence but immediately became suspicious of its occupants.
O'Connor was later convicted of possession of offensive weapons in the car and jailed for two years. He absconded while on bail but was later extradited from England to serve the remainder of his sentence. A spate of attacks on the elderly in the west ended from the time the car was stopped in Galway.
Supt Anthony Finnerty told the court that O'Connor was not an established member of the gang. But he said that if O'Connor had admitted the crime at the time of their arrest for possession of offensive weapons in the car, Mr Casey's life might have been saved.
Ms Justice Carroll accepted that O'Connor was "drawn into a gang" that included his then girlfriend, Alison Connors, her mother Kathleen Connors, and another man who has not yet been before the courts.
Alison and Kathleen Connors have both been convicted of burglary in relation to the attack on Mr Casey and jailed for two and three years respectively.
Mrs Margaret O'Connor (75), of O'Callaghan Row, Cashel Road, Clonmel, said her son was "the best boy a mother ever reared". Pleading with the judge for leniency, she said: "He was a good boy, God bless him, and your honour, I would like you if you could to go easy on him, because he's a good boy and there's not a bad bone in his body."
Various character references and letters were also opened before the court, including one from Mr Seamus Healy TD, who said he knew the O'Connor family "as honest, decent people".