A 24-year-old Dublin man has been jailed for life for the murder of his girlfriend in a derelict house in Ballsbridge, Dublin, last year.
At the Central Criminal Court yesterday it took less than two hours for a jury to unanimously convict Phillip Reddin of the murder of 17-year-old Niamh Murphy at a house on Pembroke Road, Ballsbridge, on May 10th, 2002. Reddin, a father of one, originally from Donamore Park, Tallaght, and now of no fixed abode had denied the charge.
The deceased girl's adoptive parents and brother from Salthill, Galway, were in court to hear the verdict.
Speaking afterwards, her father, Ted, said: "We're very relieved this tragedy has reached its conclusion. We'd like to thank the gardaí, counsel, our family and many friends for their support during these difficult times."
Reddin closed his eyes briefly as Mr Justice Carney imposed the mandatory sentence in what he called "a distressing case". He thanked the jury and exempted then from further service for 15 years.
Reddin strangled the girl and cut her throat with garden shears before raising the alarm and leading gardaí into the semi-derelict house where he and the girl had been squatting for some months.
Gardaí gave evidence of accompanying Reddin to a "grisly scene" in "sordid and squalid conditions" where Reddin hugged the dead girl's body and cried: "Niamh, wake up. Why did you have to go away?"
Reddin made a voluntary statement to gardaí telling them he wanted to help them "catch the person who done this to Niamh".
He also said the couple were expecting a baby, but the post mortem showed that Ms Murphy was not pregnant.
One month later, when he was arrested and charged with her murder, Reddin confessed to killing the girl during a row over a former girlfriend, called Joanne.
He told gardaí he had been watching TV with the deceased and continued: "Niamh just snapped. I told her if I wanted to be with Joanne I could have the other night," he said. He said she was shouting at him and hitting him with bottles when he grabbed her by the throat.
"I grabbed her neck and I kept on choking her and before I knew it she was blue in the face," he said.
"I panicked. I tried covering my tracks by cutting her throat with the shears. I knew a lot of people's prints were on the shears," he said.