A Co Wicklow farmer suffering from Parkinson's syndrome has been found guilty of murdering his older brother in a row over their mother’s burial wishes.
Cecil Tomkins (63) of New Lodge Nursing Home, Stocking Lane, Rathfarnham in Dublin had pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to murdering Walter Tomkins (66) at Cronlea, Shillelagh on July 1st, 2010.
He was not present when the jury of nine men and three women returned a unanimous verdict of guilty of murder after five hours of deliberation following the seven-day trial.
Mr Justice Garrett Sheehan thanked the jury before excusing them from further service for a period of five years.
He remanded Tomkins on continuing bail for sentencing on March 26th.
The bachelor told gardaí that he shot his brother Walter, who was also a bachelor, in the hallway of the house they shared because he did not follow his mother’s burial wishes.
Tomkins told a consultant psychiatrist: “I got the gun and shot him. I regretted it the moment I did it.”
Deputy State Pathologist Dr Khalid Jabbar gave evidence in the trial that Walter Tomkins died from a single shotgun wound to the chest.
The trial heard their mother Bella Tomkins had been buried just days before the shooting on June 28th locally in Aghowle with her late husband who died of a heart attack in 1999.
The farm was divided into three before their father died, the court heard. Bella continued living with Walter and Cecil in the house for the next 11 years.
Her original wish was to be buried with family in Kilcormac, Co Wexford but she had later reserved a plot in Gorey in 2001 and left a letter outlining her wishes and money in an envelope to be buried there.
Garda Christopher Murray asked Tomkins when he arrived at the farmhousewhat had happened and cautioned him he would write down what he told him but Tomkins told him there was a “row” over where his mother was to be buried.
“There was a row. My mother wanted to be buried in Kilcormac or Gorey but she was buried in Aghowle. I shot Walter because he buried her in Aghowle,” he said.
“My mother didn’t want to be buried with my father, she mustn’t have gotten on with him,” he said.
The court heard he drove up the field in a tractor and told his nephew Alan Tomkins that he had shot Walter, that he was still groaning and to call an ambulance.
Cecil Tomkins’s legal team had presented four different defences during the trial.
The first defence was that the discharge of the firearm was accidental. Secondly that he could not help what he did, that it was an impulsive action which comes under the insanity act, if he was suffering from a mental disorder at the time. The jury was told they could then find him not guilty by reason of insanity.
Thirdly, the partial defence of diminished responsibility was used where a person who committed the act was suffering from a mental disorder and this had diminished his responsibility.
The fourth defence used was provocation, which only applies in the case of murder, the jury was told.
Consultant psychiatrist at the Central Mental Hospital Dr Paul O’ Connell told the court it was his opinion Cecil has dementia which “impaired his judgement” and that “a defence of diminished responsibility is available”.
Under cross-examination by Mr McGinn he agreed his mental health would not be the same in 2012 as it was in 2010 but said it was his concern “he would have been suffering substantial effects of his dementia.”
Dr O’ Connell said Tomkins had no psychiatric history, no previous convictions and he told him he would drink odd time but had never been drunk.