Woman gets 10 years over ‘slurry pit’ killing

A CORK woman was jailed for 10 years yesterday for her role in killing a new age traveller whose body was dumped in a slurry tank in West Cork.

Fermoy native and mother-of-four Úna Geaney, aged 45, had been found not guilty of murder but guilty of the manslaughter of Gary Bull.

Two others, father-of-two Jason Thomas, aged 39, of Exeter, England and Scottish-born mother-of -one Amanda McNab, aged 27, who shared a cottage with Geaney — were each sentenced to nine years.

They had pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Englishman Mr Bull at Shanlaragh, Dunmanway on September 23, 2007.

At the Central Criminal Court yesterday, Mr Justice Paul Carney said Mr Bull “suffered the indignity of his body being dumped in a slurry pit”.

He accepted the prosecution’s submission the gratuitous violence meant the crime was at the higher end of the manslaughter scale.

Meanwhile, Joseph Barrett, aged 25, of Drimoleague, Co Cork was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to withholding information.

Mr Bull, 37, died outside the Dunmanway farmhouse Geaney rented with McNab. His body was discovered by gardaí 18 days later in a slurry pit on the farm attached to the women’s home.

A few weeks earlier, a weekend-long birthday party had taken place at the house.

Mr Bull had been back and forth to the party at which alcohol and drugs were consumed. He arrived for the final time on the Sunday evening, was drunk and argumentative and got into a scuffle with Geaney.

He went out to his jeep and started his petrol-powered concrete saw with which he had attacked his ex-girlfriend a fortnight earlier.

He was on the way back to the house when a guest hit him over the head with a plank of wood.

He recovered and was back in the house drinking when he had another scuffle with Geaney and tried to leave. However she had hidden his keys down her bra.

Geaney, McNab and Thomas claimed they were afraid he would return with others to seek retribution if they let him go.

McNab and Thomas hid Mr Bull’s jeep in a laneway, known as “the escape route” and were returning to the house when they met Geaney and the victim in the front yard.

There was another scuffle between Geaney and Mr Bull and Thomas gave Geaney her own wooden mallet and told her to hit him. She hit him on the legs and handed the mallet back to Thomas, who continued the assault on Mr Bull’s head.

McNab got a knife but it was weak and bent as she tried to stab Mr Bull. No stab wounds were found on the victim, who died from blunt force trauma to the head. At one point, another party-goer saw Thomas kneeling over Mr Bull with the mallet held over his head, saying: “I can’t believe he’s still alive.”

Geaney later ran into the house and told the other guests Mr Bull was dead and they needed to plant a tree.

“Where a bad man stands, a tree should be planted,” she said. Geaney burned the mallet, the body was dumped and Thomas headed for England.

Mr Bull, it emerged, had distanced himself from his family and moved to Ireland, where he was a heroin addict. However, he had worked in landscaping in West Cork and had renewed his relationship with his two teenage daughters.

Mr Justice Carney said Mr Bull was a reliable, hard worker and it was his failure to turn up to work early that raised concerns for his safety.