Computer analyst gets life imprisonment for wife's murder

A computer analyst who used the internet to discover ways to strangle his wife was today sentenced to life imprisonment for her murder.

Colin Whelan, aged 34, from Clonard Street, Balbriggan in Dublin, began the internet searches on topics like “death by strangulation” and “blocking the windpipe” in July 2000, two months before he married Mary Gough, a 27-year-old legal secretary, and seven months before he finally strangled her in their north Dublin home.