Sixteen-year-old Darren Goodwin remained chillingly calm throughout his trial for murder, writes Frank McNally.
Although he lured his victim to a brutal death, Darren Goodwin would later claim that 14-year-old Darragh Conroy was just "in the wrong place at the wrong time". The judge who yesterday sentenced Goodwin to life behind bars said the murder of the teenager may have been a "dry run" for a planned attack on a Garda. And a psychologist who profiled the 16-year-old defendant prior to sentencing found he had a deep hatred of the father he had not known for most of his life, and wished he had killed him instead.
Yet some of the most chilling evidence of the trial last July suggested a simple commercial motive for beating Conroy to death with a hammer. One witness testified that, before the murder, Goodwin had sold him a faulty mobile phone and promised to find a good replacement. A week later, he duly delivered, handing over Conroy's Nokia 3510, apparently only minutes after he had left the teenager dead, with his skull "like a jigsaw", in a field near Mountmellick.
Teenagers from the town also testified that, on the same day, Goodwin, then 15, spoke of how he would love to kill someone - "someone that no-one would care about, like Darragh Conroy".
This was one of many casual cruelties heaped on Patricia Conroy, the mother whose love for her dead son - an only child - and her torment at his loss shone through a statement read to the court before sentencing: "I will remember that Tuesday night for as long as I live, searching Mountmellick for hours, trying to contact Darragh on his mobile and then being told that the was dead," she said.
"He lay in that cold field all that night and till the afternoon of the next day. All I could do was wait and wait for that call to say that Darragh had to be taken to Dublin for a post mortem, but still not able to see him, being so terrified that I would never be able to see his face again and the pain of never knowing had he suffered, and had he called for me."
Further insult followed in the demeanour of Goodwin throughout the eight-day trial. At best, it was an attitude of indifference, the judge complained yesterday: "More probably it was one of scorn and contempt for the trial process in particular and society in general."
Goodwin's behaviour improved for the pre-sentence hearing on Tuesday, when his mother said that he was now speaking to his family for the first time in months and that he felt remorse, while the defendant himself wore an expression that was at least vaguely respectful.
There was certainly evidence of détente within the family. Darren's parents, Olive Goodwin and David Horan, who were teenagers when their son was born, seem never to have lived as a couple, but they sat together in court and exchanged glances with the son who was reared by Olive and his grandparents, before moving in with his father last year.
That move had followed problems at school and was designed to keep Goodwin out of Mountmellick, and out of trouble. It didn't work. He attempted suicide in September 2003, two months before he killed Darragh Conroy, and, as the court heard, still harboured homicidal feelings towards his father when assessed by psychologists in recent weeks. Despite that, his father - still so young that he could pass for an older brother - approached Goodwin in the courtroom at one point yesterday, and the brief exchange seemed civil.
Mr Justice Barry White was deeply sceptical about the transformation, however, a scepticism reinforced by the psychological reports he had been given on Tuesday. He saw no evidence of remorse, and neither did anyone else in the court.
Goodwin hung his head for a few moments before sentencing, but that was that. If it didn't touch its intended target, the judge's summary moved most other listeners in gloomy Court Number 4. In a voice soft but grave, he reminded the defendant of the awfulness of the crime.
"You killed an innocent 14-year-old in a premeditated, brutal and callous manner. Not only did you deprive Darragh Conroy of his life at a time when he had his entire future to look forward to, you also devastated the life of his mother, who will grieve and mourn to her dying day for her only child. You brought shame and disgrace on your family. Wrong as it may be, they will find themselves branded for the rest of their lives as the parents of a murderer. You have ruined your own life."
Handcuffs off and standing to hear his sentence, Goodwin returned the judge's gaze with apparent calm, which did not desert him even as it became clear that youth would not save him. Mr Justice White recognised that the defendant's "tender years" allowed for discretion with the sentence. But try as he did, he could see no mitigating factors in the murder, except age.
Only life imprisonment would be an appropriate sentence, he concluded: "and I now impose that sentence". In fact, after exchanges with lawyers, the judge altered "imprisonment" to "detention" in view of Goodwin's age, meaning that he will be held in a juvenile facility until he is old enough for prison. And he also recommended that the case come back to court for review on the tenth anniversary of the trial - July 2014.
The judge then moved to thank - and in one case to berate - the other participants in the trial. He repeated criticisms of the Garda, whose conduct of the middle-of-the-night arrest and interviews with Goodwin he had condemned.
On the other hand, he thanked the young witnesses from Mountmellick who helped bring Goodwin to justice, rather than succumb to a "misplaced sense of loyalty" to a friend: "Society owes them a debt of gratitude. But for them, in all probability, there would have been no conviction."
Lastly, he turned to Patricia Conroy, who wept at the back of the courtroom, surrounded by friends and relatives. In her statement to the judge, Darragh's mother spoke of how the trial forced her to relive her son's murder day after day. Yesterday, Mr Justice White apologised on behalf of the system. The nature of trials was such that most of the attention inevitably fell on the accused and the court could seem a "cold" place for victims of crime.
"That does not mean that judges are men with hearts of stone," he said, clearly moved by the case. "I am not a man with a heart of stone. I too have young children, and I know exactly how you must be feeling."