Face of a murderer: O'Sullivan refused to accept responsibility throughout Nicola Collins trial
At times during his interviews with gardaí and in his court testimony, Cathal O’Sullivan spoke tenderly of the woman he killed - but at other times he dragged her character through the mud.
That was never more evident than in his account of how she came to have 125 bruises and lacerations from her ankles all the way up to her scalp.
He told gardaí that Nicola Collins fell in the shower and that she struck her head of the bath tap and landed on other items in the bath.
Throughout, he would repeatedly reference her attempts to “scrape him” and that he would have to defend himself. He said at one point she lunged at him and “my hand kind of snapped back into her eye, nose and mouth” adding of that event “it was an accident - no one tried to make it happen”.
In another alleged incident when he said she had a knife that he was trying to get from her, “I pushed her throat and chin area. Because I was pushing there, I could leave a mark there, like. It was just a game to Nicola”.
He portrayed Ms Collins as a violent, deluded drunk - drinking two-litre bottles of cider and becoming aggressive, blaming him for things.
“She was scraping me. I had to restrain her. I tried to prevent her doing harm to me. When she is violent she does not hold her balance too well. She has a personality disorder. She blames me for everything. She said she had the babies in the freezer. She said she had them in the shed… I don’t know if it is real or not. These stories a lot of the time turn out to be false. I don’t know if these stories are true” he told gardaí.
Yet, on the other hand during evidence to the court, O’Sullivan described how he and Ms Collins met on a 10 week-course ironically called “Effective Communication for Better Relationships”. He was on medication for anxiety depression and social phobia but she helped him to be a “lot better person”.
He even described a conversation they had barely hours before she died to show how the two still loved each other.
He said that on the Sunday night when Nicola Collins was in bed (she died in the early hours of Monday) he said to her: “Are we OK?”.
“And she looked at me like it was a stupid question and said, ‘Yeah, of course’. And she was comfortable.” Prosecution senior counsel Tom Creed put it to him at that point:
“With 130 injuries she is comfortable. That she died shortly after and she was comfortable.” O’Sullivan replied: “She was happy. We were happy with the things we had. We had a plan and we were going towards it.” In the same passage of evidence in the court, O’Sullivan told Mr Creed that the injury that caused Ms Creed’s death was the fall in the bath which, he said had caused “subdural haemorrhage”.
When Mr Creed asked him “What about the other 124 injuries?” O’Sullivan insisted the majority were “caused postmortem”.
“A number were accidental or as a result of incidents between myself and Nicola. They were not deliberate contact. There is no injury caused deliberately by me on Nicola.” When the senior counsel asked him did he strike her at all, he seemed to revert to the blame game.
“That depends on what you mean. Did I contact her? Yes. Did I do it on purpose? No. Did I cause it? I don’t know, that is English, that is where I get poor with my description.” Later he said, “I am not blaming Nicola at any stage. None of us were at fault. Nicola did not cause anything. I did not cause anything. These were outbursts, we cannot control her outbursts.”
As to the night in question and the events immediately prior to Nicola Collins’ death, O’Sullivan’s account seemed to verge on the bizarre.
He said she had got into bed after a shower and began drinking while he was watching television.
“At one stage she was making a gurgling sound and blood was erupting from her mouth…I put her in the recovery position. ‘Are you alright Nicola?’ She told me previously she vomited blood.
“Later I turned off the TV. I realised she was not breathing. I started giving her mouth to mouth. She was not responsive. I wanted the blood that was there out. I started giving her mouth to mouth. I gave her CPR. I thought she was dead. I rang 999.
“She was comfortable around me. She passed away beside me. She was safe with me. Despite whatever drinking or fighting I thought I could keep her safe.
“Maybe I should have kept my arms around her but my arms were not around her. I stopped drinking. I turned on the TV. I thought everything was OK. Maybe I should have kept my arms around her.
“I do not like any violence. I do not want to be part of it. It is part of Nicola. I have to restrain the woman. I cannot get scratched.
She would take the eyes out of you. I have to keep her away.
“I just think, mind this girl, take care of her. I don’t look at it as self-defence. I look at it as minding her.” He made a bizarre claim about her last few seconds.
“It was her dying with me. She was happy in her last moments. We were singing songs before she f***ing passed away.” O’Sullivan claimed he spent up to half an hour trying to revive her doing CPR - that he eventually lost strength in his hands and started using his feet and legs instead.
“I did hit her a number of times trying to bring her back. I thought she was joking.
“I am pretty sure she was dead when the jaw thing happened,” he said.
The deceased’s injuries included a fractured jaw.
All of that is at odds with what detectives said he told his friend Matthew Twomey in Limerick when he rang him in the early hours of that morning in question.
“You told him you had a fight with her, that she died and you brought her back to life,” it was put to him. He replied, “That is crazy.”
At times during his interviews with gardaí and in his court testimony, Cathal O’Sullivan spoke tenderly of the woman he killed - but at other times he dragged her character through the mud.
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