Dunbar sentencing adjourned

Mr Justice Barry White today described the victim impact statement of Melissa Mahon’s family as “disingenuous in the extreme”.

He made the remark during the sentence hearing of Ronnie Dunbar, the man convicted by a jury in May of killing the 14-year-old school girl.

Mr Justice White said he needed time to consider the sentence and adjourned the case to Friday morning.

Ms Isobel Kennedy SC, prosecuting, read a brief statement made by Melissa’s mother, Mary Mahon, on behalf of the Mahon family. In it Mrs Mahon said that she had attempted suicide but was saved by her husband, Frederick Mahon.

The statement also revealed that Melissa’s closest sister, Leanna, had taken an overdose and slashed herself, and another sister, Yvonne, had slashed herself.

Mrs Mahon said in the statement that there had been an emotional impact on her entire family in Ireland and England. “She was my baby and our whole life has been torn apart”. Mary and Frederick Mahon and a number of members of the Mahon family were present in court for the hearing.

Mr Justice White asked the prosecution to tell him how the Mahon family had behaved in the time between Melissa’s disappearance in September 2006 and the discovery of her remains along the shore of Lough Gill in Sligo in February 2008.

Detective Inspector John O’Reilly told Ms Kennedy that because Melissa was in the care of the Health Service Executive at the time she went missing, they felt that she was the HSE’s responsibility.

Det. Insp. O’Reilly said the family refused to give statements to gardaí in relation to Melissa’s disappearance despite being asked to do so on a number of occasions. He said that the family felt able to make statements only at an advanced stage of the investigation.

He agreed with Mr Justice White that the Mahons had maintained a pretence that Melissa was in England. Mary Mahon had told gardaí that “parties” had given her information about her daughter’s whereabouts but she refused to say who those parties were.

Mr Justice White said that he could not prevent prosecution counsel from reading the victim impact statement. He said he found it “disingenuous in the extreme” in light of the lack of co operation from the family in the early days of the investigation.

Ronald McManus, also known as Ronnie Dunbar, (aged 44) of Rathbraughan Park, Sligo, denied the murder of Melissa and denied threatening to kill his daughter Samantha on dates between September 14 and 30, 2006. A Central Criminal Court jury found him not guilty of making the threat and not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter, following a five-week trial.

During the trial two of Dunbar’s daughters gave evidence via video link in which they said that they saw Melissa and their father on his bed with his arm around her neck. They said that Melissa died and was put into the boot of Dunbar’s car wrapped in a sleeping bag. The jury heard that the girls went with Dunbar in his car to a secluded area by the River Bonet where he dumped the girl’s body.

There had been evidence during the course of the trial of an “inappropriate relationship” between the defendant and the deceased. Samantha Conroy/Dunbar said that Melissa told her, in a conversation overheard by Dunbar, that she was in love with Dunbar and they were having a sexual relationship. Samantha’s evidence was that Dunbar then admitted that that was true.

The court heard that Dunbar had 13 previous convictions in Ireland and England for offences including theft, burglary, possession of a controlled substance, criminal damage, shoplifting, larceny, assault, robbery with violence and car theft.

Brendan Grehan SC, defending, said that he would not call any evidence and said that he was unclear as to what offence precisely his client was to be sentenced for. He said that if the court accepted the jury’s verdict then the case must be one of involuntary manslaughter and one which could be compared to the Wayne O’Donoghue case.

Mr Grehan said that the jury had not been satisfied that his client had intended to kill or cause serious harm to Melissa and that the accused must be sentenced in terms consistent with the verdict. He said that no account should be taken by the court of any other criminal behaviour referred to during the trial.

Ms Kennedy said that this case could be distinguished from the O’Donoghue case in that there was a high level of remorse displayed by O’Donoghue who said the killing of Robert Holohan was an accident.

The court heard that Melissa moved to Sligo with her family in the summer of 2005. She became very close to the defendant’s daughters and then to him and spent a large amount of time in his house. In August 2006 she ran away from her own home and was missing for a number of weeks before being taken into residential care by the HSE. She continued to go missing to spend time with Dunbar and was last seen by social workers on September 14, 2006.

The partner of Dunbar’s daughter Shirley Conroy contacted gardaí on January 31, 2008 after Samantha had told her elder sister Shirley what had happened to Melissa. A search of the site to which Samantha led gardaí resulted in the discovery of human remains which turned out to be Melissa.

During the trial Samantha Conroy said that when she walked in on Melissa and her father she did not see him do any violence to her. Her younger sister, who cannot be named as she is under 18, gave evidence that her father strangled Melissa with his hands, tied a neck tie around her neck and put a pillow over her face. Mr Grehan said that two alternative accounts of the incident had been given.