BACKGROUND:Even in a society becoming inured to violence, Oliver Hayes's crime stands out, writes BARRY ROCHE,Southern Correspondent
YESTERDAY’S CONVICTION of Oliver Hayes for the murder of 60-year-old widow Anne Corcoran marked a successful conclusion to a case which, even in a society becoming increasingly inured to violence, was shocking for its sheer brutality.
Hayes’s abduction and subsequent murder of Mrs Corcoran from her home at Maulnaskimlehane in Kilbrittain stands out for its vicious ferocity and ruthless coldness.
The description of how Hayes, a part-time painter and decorator from Clancool Terrace in Bandon, bludgeoned Mrs Corcoran into oblivion on the night of January 19th, 2009, after obtaining her bank card number from her, shocked people.
One of a family of nine children born to a farm labourer from Danganbeg some two miles outside Bandon, Hayes (49) was reared by a neighbour’s daughter after he was left with her by his mother when just nine months old as she went on a pilgrimage to Knock. “They came back from Knock and they said I could stay for another while. Week by week went by – it was grand because it was one less mouth to feed. My father was only an ordinary labourer,” Hayes told gardaí following his arrest.
Hayes targeted Mrs Corcoran because she was living alone following the death of her husband Jerry in 2007. He believed that, having a farm, she had money and he was two years in arrears in his mortgage and heavily in debt.
He called to her house on January 19th, grabbed her from behind, demanded money and when she told him that it was in the bank, he told her he would have to take her with him so he tied her hands with a washing line and bundled her into the boot of her car.
He brought her to his house in Bandon where after half an hour, she gave him her Pin number and he then hit her on the head with a table top until she fell unconscious. “I was afraid she’d escape while I was gone. I thought I’d knock her out,” he told gardaí.
Hayes then drove back to Mrs Corcoran’s house, collected her ATM card and withdrew cash from the AIB in Bandon before going home to bed and waking the next morning to find the widow, whom he had gagged, wasn’t breathing as she lay on the floor surrounded by blood.
He wrapped Mrs Corcoran’s body in two coal sacks and brought her to isolated woodlands near Garrettstown where he poured petrol on her remains and set her alight.
Hayes’s crime didn’t take long to be uncovered. Mrs Corcoran was well known for informing neighbours whenever she was leaving on holiday and when it was discovered that her dogs were not at kennels, but were soiling her house, the alarm was raised and gardaí alerted.
Gardaí found her green Peugeot 206 at Oldcastle just outside Bandon on January 28th and a check on her bank account revealed that somebody was withdrawing money using her ATM card.
Gardaí officially treated Mrs Corcoran’s disappearance as a missing person’s investigation and hundreds of volunteers joined officers in combing the countryside between Bandon and Kilbrittain in terribly wet weather.
Meanwhile Hayes, just two days after subjecting Mrs Corcoran to the most violent of deaths, was displaying an unnerving coolness as he went off on a skiing holiday to Austria with his girlfriend, Josephine Collins, and her son.
Before he went, he yet again gave vent to what one investigator described as his “Jekyll and Hyde personality”, returning to Mrs Corcoran’s house to feed her dogs. “I didn’t want them to suffer,” he later told gardaí.
Further insight into Hayes’s strange personality came when jurors heard evidence of how he attended his regular meeting of Clonakilty Camera Club just days after bludgeoning Mrs Corcoran to death.
“Oliver was always quiet at meetings – he photographed mainly flowers and abstract subjects. I remember one year we were holding our annual exhibition and two of his pictures sold and he donated the money to the Irish Cancer Society. We were shocked when all this broke.”
However Hayes’s violent and criminal tendencies were already well known to gardaí in Bandon. As far back as 1981, he had been investigated and prosecuted for breaking into the home of a local shopkeeper in her 80s and stealing cash and other items.
“The woman lived alone and he broke in just before Christmas. He removed the fuse so that she couldn’t turn on the light, so he was showing cunning even then,” said a retired garda who recalled how Hayes gave the family of his then girlfriend a Christmas cake that he had stolen.
“He admitted about five or six other burglaries at the homes of elderly people but he was unusual in that he wasn’t a persistent criminal. He would go straight for four or five years and then he would get a rush of blood and go off and commit crime again.”
That inability to go straight surfaced again in 2000 when, in a case premonitory of Anne Corcoran’s killing, Hayes targeted an elderly woman living alone in the townland of Baurleigh, just a mile from Mrs Corcoran’s home.
Hayes approached the elderly woman and grabbed her from behind, but the woman managed to scream and a neighbour heard her and was coming to see what was the matter when Hayes fled.
The woman told gardaí that her assailant had paint drops on his shoes and drove a grey van. Gardaí were able to identify Hayes, who received a suspended sentence in February 2001 for assault with intent to rob.
With such a record, it wasn’t surprising Hayes became a suspect in the Corcoran case, but it still took good police work by gardaí under Supt Eddie Mac Eoin – aided by the local knowledge of long-serving Det Jim Fitzgerald – to nail him. Det Fitzgerald had been giving evidence in the money laundering trial of Ted Cunningham when Mrs Corcoran went missing. During a break in that trial, he viewed CCTV footage taken of someone withdrawing cash from her account.
He recognised the suspect’s unusual gait as being possibly that of Hayes and when officers were able to blow up footage of a grey vehicle seen near the ATM to reveal a Notts Forest sticker on the back window, Det Fitzgerald nominated Hayes as a suspect.
His suspicions proved correct and after his arrest, Hayes confessed the killing to Det Fitzgerald and his colleague, Det Bart O’Leary, telling them where he had buried the body, thus launching the murder inquiry which ended last night with his conviction following an 11-day trial.