Killer went after victim because she was living alone

Anne Corcoran’s killer targeted the 60-year-old widow because she was a woman living alone, the Central Criminal Court heard.

Oliver Hayes (aged 49) of Clancool Terrace, Bandon told gardaí that he had never met his victim, but on Sunday, January 18, last year he decided he would rob her at her Co Cork farmhouse.

He broke down in tears when he admitted that the woman for whom hundreds of people were searching was dead and that he had killed her. After initially denying involvement during questioning on February 5, 2009, the admissions came when gardai showed him CCTV footage of him withdrawing her money from ATMs.

Hayes sobbed in court as the jury watched his confessions on video during the sixth day of his trial. He told gardaí that it was about 5.30pm and dark on January 19 when he walked from Bandon to the widow’s house at Maulnaskimlehane, Kilbrittain

“I went to her house with the intention of getting money from her,” he said.

The painter has pleaded guilty to Mrs Corcoran’s manslaughter but not guilty to murdering her between January 19 and 21 last year. He also admits falsely imprisoning her and stealing €3,000 from her account over the following days.

“I was just walking around looking at the house, seeing was anyone there. As I walking around the house she went out in her car,” he said. “I was waiting around and after I think half an hour she came back,” he continued.

“As she was going for the front door, I caught her from behind and asked her for money,” he said.

“I just put my hand around her neck. She tried to struggle a small bit,” he confirmed. After a pause, he agreed that she also screamed.

“I just pushed her into the bathroom downstairs,” he said, explaining that his face was partially covered by his jacket and baseball cap.

“After about 10 minutes she wasn’t saying anything. She said she hadn’t any money, that ‘twas all in the bank. So I told her I’d take her away until I had some,” he said.

“She said she’d go to the bank with me and get it out. She only wanted to get away. I thought it was only a ploy to get out to the open and I wasn’t going to fall for that,” he explained.

“I tied her hands with washing line chord,” he said, explaining that he had brought some for this purpose so he would have time to get away if she had given him money.

Hayes then put Mrs Corcoran into the boot of her car.

“I drove around for a while,” he said.

She didn’t cry or beg, he said: “What she wanted to do, she said, was to go back to her dogs.”

“I stopped in a few places and asked her again,” he said. However Mrs Corcoran, who had no purse with her, gave him no money.

“So I took her to my house then and I asked her again,” he said. “I told her she’d have to stay here until I got some.”

By the time Hayes got his victim to his house, she had managed to climb into the back seat of her car.

“I just pulled her out really, with my hand kind of around her neck. I kept my hand around her mouth so she wouldn’t say anything,” he said, explaining that nobody saw them. “I had to kind of drag her feet.” He had tied her legs during one of the stops.

He asked the widow for the pin for her bank card but at first she wouldn’t tell him.

“So after about half an hour anyway she gave the number,” he said, recalling the pin for the detectives. “She had the card in her house,” he said. She told him where it was.

“So I wanted to knock her out. I hit her with a board and it didn’t take any effect,” he said, explaining that he hit the back of her head four or five times with this stick. “So then I hit her with the other board. It was a bit heavier.”

Having knocked her unconscious with two blows of a kitchen work top, Hayes drove back to his victim’s house.

“I knew she’d be there when I came back,” he said. “I got the card and I fed the dogs. I came back home.”

He left her car in school grounds near his house and walked home. This is also where he later hid his victim’s keys and bank card.

“She was still upstairs anyway so I just went back downstairs and stayed there the rest of the night,” he recalled.

He went back upstairs around 8.30 the following morning, Tuesday.

“She was dead I’d say,” he told detectives. “She wasn’t breathing and I saw an awful lot of blood on the ground. So I went back downstairs for about an hour and sat back down. I didn’t know what to do at that stage.”

Hayes had to think for a while before telling gardai that he disposed of the body on the Thursday.

“You withdrew money from ATMs here in Bandon while Anne Corcoran was dead upstairs in your house?” asked a detective.

“Yes,” replied Hayes.

He said he wrapped her body in two coal bags and drove it in his van to woodlands near Ballinspittle, explaining the location and drawing a map.

“It wasn’t easy,” he said of his journey on foot with the body from the road to a quarry.

“I put the body in the ground, put petrol on it and set it on fire in case of evidence,” he said. “Then I covered it with stones.”

He added that he returned to the widow’s house a couple of times to feed her dogs and give them water.

“The week before I went on holidays I brought out a bag of feed,” he explained, referring to the skiing trip he took two days after burying her body.

“I suppose I knew she was a woman on her own,” he said, when asked why he picked her house. He had an idea of where she lived.

He agreed with gardai that the admission was a weight off his mind.

“I never meant to do it,” he said, adding that he had never been in a fight in his life.

Earlier the assistant state pathologist told the trial that Mrs Corcoran died of blunt force trauma to the head associated with asphyxia with a gag.

Dr Margaret Bolster identified the white cloth ligature found around her mouth and neck.

“It looks like a shirt,” she said.

She disagreed with Blaise O’Carroll SC, defending, that some of the bruising she noticed on Mrs Corcoran’s head might actually be decomposition.

“I carry out 800 autopsies a year. I know the difference between decomposition and bruising,” she said.

“I know the difference between lividity and bruising,” she added, when asked if it might be the affect of gravity on the blood that gave the appearance of bruising.

The trial continues before Mr Justice Paul Carney.