Man avoids jail over ‘bizarre’ blackmail

An energy therapist who carried out a bizarre campaign of blackmail against his sister-in-law and her husband wrote an apology to them while remanded in custody for the past week.

Pat O’Dwyer, aged 53, of 2, Wolfetone Place, Thurles, Co Tipperary, got a three-year suspended sentence yesterday. Judge David Riordan said: “He has seen the inside of a prison and knows what it means to disobey a court order.”

The sentence was suspended on condition he stay under probation service for two years and attend at a psychiatric facility recommended by the service. He is further required not to go within 5km of the injured parties’ home or workplace and have no contact direct or indirect with them.

Judge Riordan said yesterday’s sentence had to have a deterrent effect. The sentence was imposed on him for demanding money with menaces.

The judge previously referred to a psychiatric assessment of O’Dwyer as exhibiting lack of insight and a lack of empathy for the victims. “The doctor refers to a narcissistic type of person,” Judge Riordan said. Yesterday the judge said the apology was fulsome.

Ray Boland, defending, said the accused would comply with whatever directions were imposed on him.

O’Dwyer sent his sister-in-law three cards containing letters and naked pictures of a woman in various positions and he told her, in what was an entirely made up claim, that her husband was having an affair with the woman featured in the sexually explicit pictures.

O’Dwyer told his sister-in-law that he had a phial of her husband’s semen and a pair of his boxer shorts which he would send her when he got €10,000 in cash.

Mr Boland said the accused was, according to medical reports, suffering from paranoia if not psychosis at the time of the crime, possibly as a result of a series of tragedies in his life that occurred around the same time seven years ago.

Detective Sergeant Seán Leahy said the first letter sent anonymously by O’Dwyer arrived at the business address of his sister-in-law, Ria Burgoyne in Midleton, Co Cork, on October 9, 2015. The handwritten letter gave details of sexual activities which he claimed were going on between her husband and the naked woman in the photographs.

A second letter sent soon afterwards and in the same handwriting and with numerous spelling errors contained a demand for €10,000 in exchange for a phial of her husband’s semen, which was allegedly frozen, and a pair of his boxer shorts.

A third letter gave details of where to drop the money at a shed not far from the injured party’s home in Whitegate. Gardaí set up surveillance there. A man arrived in the shed, gardaí moved in, he ran but he was caught and arrested. It was Pat O’Dwyer and he was wearing a sock over one of his hands which he later said was to keep his fingerprints off the money.

As for why O’Dwyer came up with what Mr Boland agreed was a bizarre and disturbing plan, there was a skewed logic where he blamed his sister-in-law for the failure of his marriage to her sister.

Judge Riordan said that the demand made with menaces and the nature of the falsehoods in the letters had caused a lot of mental and emotional pain. He said the victim impact statement made for harrowing reading.