Killer ‘knew Mary could not fight back’

THE “devil” who murdered Irishwoman Mary Griffiths with a bolt gun in front of her children knew she was defenceless from an injury when he attacked her, her sister has said.

John McFarlane was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 20 years at London’s Old Bailey last Friday.

Ms Griffiths’ sister Louise Scannell told the Today with Pat Kenny show on RTÉ that 40-year-old McFarlane became friends and study-mates with her 38-year-old sister when they both trained to be fitness instructors.

“The previous days before the attack, Mary had injured her knee while training in the gym,” said Ms Scannell. “Mary was in such a bad way that she could barely steady herself on her crutches, never mind stand.

“Her house was a three-storey house with a lot of stairs. For her to get around she had to shuffle up and down the stairs. She couldn’t defend herself in any way shape or form and he knew that. She was defenceless. He knew she was vulnerable and he still attacked her the way he did.”

On May 6 last, McFarlane, who worked as a slaughterman, smashed his way into the back of Ms Griffith’s house in Suffolk with an axe.

He switched off the fusebox and headed up to the Dublin woman’s bedroom, armed with a bolt gun, where she was sleeping with her 10-year-old daughter Hannah.

“He tried to strangle her and then shot her in the shoulder while she was in bed with her child. Mary put up the fight of her life against what can only be described as the devil.

“After he had shot her in the shoulder in the black dark of night she tried to struggle with him, as did the children, and he took her to the stairs and threw her down the stairs.”

Ms Scannell said: “The children opened the front door, they tried to get help and he got her outside on the street. He knelt down beside her and shot her further, two more times in the chest and while doing that all she could do was shout his name to alert people and she begged to be saved, but to no avail.”

She said her sister had gone to the police after McFarlane had began to harass her intensely but that they “didn’t follow up on it”. She said there was now a police investigation into the matter.

Ms Scannell said the sentence handed down was never going to be enough.

“To be honest, no punishment handed down could be ever harsh or severe enough to compensate for what we have lost, for Mary having lost her life and for her children having lost their mother.”

She said it was their “worst nightmare” made a reality. “We have struggled for the past six months to accept what has happened to one of the kindest, most beautiful, most loving sisters, [and] daughters in the world and having sat through court on Friday and hearing the detail of what she suffered at the hands of John McFarlane has been harrowing for all of us.”

Ms Scannell said friends of her sister had set up a fundraising campaign for her three daughters.

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