Man admits killing partner

A 53-year-old Dublin mechanic will be sentenced next week for killing his partner after she caught him trying to shoot himself.

Bernard Curran of The Weir, Lucan was before the Central Criminal Court today where he admitted shooting dead 30-year-old mother-of-one Helen Donegan.

The father-of-two had originally been charged with murdering the Ballyfermot native between May 4, 2010 and June 22, 2010. However, the prosecution accepted his plea of not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter.

The court heard that Curran had been living with Ms Donegan at various addresses for eight or nine years. She had a heroin addiction and they were moving out of their home in St Patrick’s Park, Cellbridge on the day of her death.

Brendan Grehan SC, prosecuting, said she was last seen on May 4, 2010 and the accused reported her missing to their local garda station on May 17 of that year.

He said that on the same day, the defendant handed in his shotgun to another garda station to be destroyed as he was not renewing his licence.

Mr Grehan said that his garage in Castlebagot, Co Dublin was searched on June 22 that year.

Curran left while they searched and Ms Donegan’s body was found wrapped in plastic in the boot of an estate car.

A post-mortem exam found she had died from a single gunshot wound to her heart.

The accused had arranged meet the gardaí that evening.

“I know you know I did it,” he said. “It was an accident. It should have been me.”

Detective Sergeant Declan Dunne told the court what the accused had said in subsequent garda interviews.

“I wanted to shoot myself. She grabbed the gun and it went off,” he said.

“We were moving out of the apartment and I was considering killing myself,” he said. He said he had wanted to get away from her but couldn’t.

He explained that they had just moved their belongings to his garage while they found a new home.

“I just wanted to end it. I got the shotgun and put one into it and I put it into my mouth,” he told detectives. “She came in. I didn’t even hear her.”

He said he had been facing the back of his garage when she approached him from his left.

“She grabbed it. The gun turned and went bang,” he said.

“My finger was on the trigger. It just went off,” he explained. “I didn’t physically pull it.”

“It was over very quick,” he added. “Why didn’t she just stay outside and I’d be dead?”

He said he had considered calling the police but thought nobody would believe him.

“It should have been me,” he said.

He said he had put the gun back in its case and covered her with a blanket for a few days.

“I just couldn’t dump her,” he said.

He agreed that he had moved her body before a previous garda search of his premises but had moved it back afterwards.

“I was deciding where I was going to bury her,” he said. “I was thinking of looking for a deep overgrown ditch, but didn’t want her to be found like that.”

D Sgt Dunne said he was crying at this point.

He also confirmed that ballistics experts agreed that it was possible that the scenario put forward by the accused was correct.

The court heard that in the seven weeks between killing Ms Donegan and her body being found, Curran gave false information to the gardaí.

He said that she had told him on May 6 that she was going to England on a drug run to make some money. He had tried to convince her not to go, he said.

He claimed that when she hadn’t returned within 10 days he became concerned.

Curran even identified a woman as Ms Donegan from ferry terminal CCTV footage for gardaí.

Ms Donegan’s aunt, Caroline O’Connor, gave a victim impact statement on behalf of her family and handed Mr Justice Paul Carney two photographs of her niece.

She said the victim’s mother, Elizabeth Noonan, was too upset to make the statement herself and was now on anti-depressants to help with the grief. Ms Donegan’s death was also "sucking the life out of" her own 81-year-old mother, she added.

She said that although they tried to carry on, some days it was difficult.

“Suddenly that pain in your chest hits you and the grief takes over,” she explained.

“We always believed her drug problem would be the death of her, but not this,” she added.

She said that Ms Donegan’s son was only 12 when Ms Donegan died and that for the first six months, he hoped she was in Spain.

She said that he had not alone lost his mother, but now hated the man he had once viewed as a father.

She noted that for the seven weeks after killing her niece, Curran lived with his victim’s brother.

“He drank tea with us and told us everything would be ok,” she said.

She said he had even taken his victim’s son bowling and to a concert, while her body was in a car.

She said it sickened her to meet Curran out shopping the Christmas after he had killed her niece.

She said that by letting her body decay, Curran took away their chance of saying goodbye.

She said that "the grief and horror" that Curran had put them through would never go away.

Mr O’Higgins SC, defending Curran, handed the court a psychological report, which said his client was suicidal at the time of the killing.

Mr Justice Carney remanded Curran in custody for sentencing on Monday next.