Laois woman cleared of murdering husband

A 56-year-old mother of four was today cleared of her husband's murder by reason of diminished responsibility, following just 30 minutes of deliberations by the jury.

The eight men and four women found Anne Burke (aged 56), of Ballybrittas, Co Laois guilty of the manslaughter of Pat Burke (aged 55), at their family home on Sunday August 19, 2009.

Mr Burke, who had worked as a groundsman at the local convent, was bludgeoned over the head with a hammer 23 times as he slept in the downstairs bedroom of the family home.

Mrs Burke's daughter Linda, who had been at her side throughout the trial, held her mother's hand and broke down in tears as the verdict was delivered.

They jury had listened to two days of harrowing evidence detailing the 32-year marriage of Anne and Pat Burke, a marriage that was marred by violent rows, and regular and excessive drinking.

Mrs Burke said she was assaulted by her husband on their wedding night in 1975, and that the abuse continued throughout their marriage.

She said she only started drinking so she could “stand up” to her husband who started rows when he was drunk.

She described her marriage as “a litany of abuse” and as “rows, beatings, lots of clouts, swelled lips and black eyes.”

She recalled how once when she was pregnant with her son, her husband kicked her in the stomach, but that he would “deny it all in the morning".

She said he had thrown ash-trays at her, thrown his dinner on the floor, hit their dog with a shovel and poured boiling water over cats in the yard.

Mrs Burke said he told her if she did anything to him, she would be “brought to the Dublin mountains and never heard of again".

The court heard that six days prior to the killing, Anne Burke was admitted to the psychiatric unit of Portlaoise Hospital, after attempting to slash her wrists.

She was discharged two days later without having received any treatment or medication, at her and her husband's request, but she said she knew her head wasn't right.

She said her husband had come to see her that day and told her “ If you don't come out today, you need not bother your arse coming out at all".

Mrs Burke said he left without giving her any money for her bus fare, and when she rang him he told her to “thumb” home.

Nurses paid for her taxi, and when she got home, her husband told her he was ashamed of her and called her a fat pig.

Mrs Burke said they argued on and off for the next few days until the Saturday when he went to Portlaoise to go drinking with some friends.

He rang her from a nightclub at about 3am on Sunday morning to say he had been receiving calls from a woman who was in the club with him.

Mr Burke returned home at about 4.45 am and she said they rowed for hours until he went to bed, she then began drinking at around 10am.

She said it was about four in the afternoon when she picked up a hammer that had been in the bedroom and hit him over the head as he slept.

Mrs Burke told gardaí afterwards that “it was a haze… it was like someone else was doing it".

She said she remembered hitting him once or twice on the side of the head.

In her statements to gardaí she said she tried to wash his face and covered his body with a duvet.

At around10pm that night she wrote a suicide note to her four children and cut her wrists.

Her son found her in the hallway and brought her into the bedroom to bandage her arms, where he discovered his father's body on the ground.

He alerted gardaí and the emergency services who found Mrs Burke sitting on the bed saying “ I killed him at 4pm today".

Mrs Burke's daughter Linda also gave evidence in the case, and told the court that everything her mother had said about the marriage was true.

She said her earliest memory was standing at the top of the stairs in her pyjamas when she was aged 3 or 4, and seeing her father point a shotgun at her mother and threaten to “blow her head off".

She recalled another night when she was 13, how her father had struck her mother across the head with a sweeping brush, splitting her forehead open.

“He prevented me from getting an ambulance. I just had to tend to it myself,” she said.

She said that the weekend of her father's death, her mother had described a buzzing in her head that she couldn't get rid of.

Two psychiatrists who gave medical evidence on behalf of both the defence and prosecution agreed that Mrs Burke was suffering from a mental disorder at the time of the killing, namely severe depression.

Dr Harry Kennedy, a psychiatrist attached to the Central Mental Hospital, said that he was satisfied that “ at the relevant time, she was suffering from a mental disorder which caused her to have a diminished ability to think clearly or concentrate".

He said she was clearly suicidal, suffered from low self-esteem and a lack of confidence and that she believed her children would be “better off if she was dead because there would be fewer rows".

Counsel for the defence, Mr Patrick Gageby SC told the jury that it “wouldn't be right” to either acquit Mrs Burke, or to find her guilty of murder.

He said that the “overwhelming” evidence pointed towards a verdict of guilty of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility.

The jury returned that verdict after deliberating for just half an hour.

Mrs Burke is due to be sentenced on January 25.