‘He is a serial woman beater and is just evil’

‘He is a serial woman beater and is just evil’

8 July 2020

THE mother of a young woman who died after being attacked in her home in Downpatrick has described her daughter’s killer as evil.

Michael O’Connor (34) will serve a minimum of 16 years in jail for the murder of Joleen Corr.

Ms Corr (27) suffered severe a brain injury and was left in a vegetative state after the attack in her Russell Park home on December 1, 2016. She died in hospital on April 26, 2018, after doctors withdrew life support.

O’Connor was sentenced at Downpatrick Crown Court, sitting in Belfast, last Thursday.

Outside the court, Ms Corr’s grieving mum, Carol, said there were “a lot of mixed emotions...but there’s relief as well that justice has been served”.

“Whether he got 16 years or 25 years doesn’t make a difference,” she said. “It’s not going to bring Joleen back and it won’t take away our pain.

“He is a serial woman beater and abuser who sought out vulnerable people. He is just evil.”

Mrs Corr said Joleen’s death had been “like a life sentence” for her family.

“Our pain will never go away and we will live with it for the rest of our lives,” she remarked.

She also praised the actions of the police, the prosecution and “everybody who helped bring this man to justice; they all did a fabulous job and I take my hat off to them.”

O’Connor, who appeared in court via video-link from prison, appeared to smile and then rub his hands together at the end of the hour-long hearing. 

Judge Geoffrey Miller QC told the “physical and psychological” bully he would serve at least the full 16 years behind bars and would only be released under a life-long licence when the Parole Commissioners considered it safe to do so. 

Praising the “dignity and fortitude” of Joleen’s family who also watched proceedings by video conference call, the judge described Joleen as a “bubbly young woman” whose life was “cruelly cut short” by the actions of O’Connor when he punched her in the face with such ferocity that he broke her jaw, “propelling her down the stairs” at her home. 

“As a direct result she sustained catastrophic brain injuries from which she never recovered,” said the judge adding that her plight was not discovered until the following morning when O’Connor asked a neighbour to go and check on her, issuing the “shameful” lie that she had tried to hang herself the night before. 

“By then there was no prospect of any form of meaningful recovery,” said Judge Miller who told the court that the 16 months until her life support was turned off and she sadly passed way, “was a traumatic time for Joleen’s family who sat with her, praying and willing her to recovery whilst all the time knowing in their hearts that the woman they loved had gone.”

O’Connor claimed that he and Joleen had been fighting over her mobile phone at the top of the stairs when he lashed out and knocked her down the stairs, claiming that she had got up and vomited at the back door. 

He further claimed he had gone to bed and in the morning, found Joleen “snoring” beside him in bed.

The court heard that even though he must have been aware of how badly hurt Joleen was, he had a bath and took a bus to Belfast with the couple’s five-year-old son where he had a haircut, essentially leaving Joleen to die. 

Joleen sustained a brain injury which was so severe that doctors initially opted not to treat her and was left in a vegetative state until a landmark ruling in 2018 when doctors withdrew life support. 

O’Connor had been due to go on trial last February but at the eleventh hour, with a jury sworn and witnesses poised to testify, he asked to be rearraigned and finally admitted his guilt, firstly to manslaughter and then, when that was not accepted by prosecuting QC Philip Mateer, to her murder. 

Sentencing O’Connor, Judge Miller said that O’Connor’s actions “have to be seen in the context of a man who used violence, both physical and psychological, as a means of control” and was the culmination of continual domestic violence perpetrated against Joleen who was vulnerable and with an infant child in the house. 

“One shudders to think what that little boy witnessed or heard,” said the judge who revealed that in a report compiled for the court hearing, during a therapeutic play session the little boy had used figurines to enact a scene where the male “warrior figure” struck the female toy “and then mimicked the male figure saying sorry over and over again.”

The judge said there was no real idea of what actually happened that night, but he described O’Connor’s account of events as “self serving” and “replete with unsupported assertion, contradictions and blatant and cruel lies”.

The judge said that according to O’Connor the incident was brief, yet neighbours heard “sustained banging” for around 30 minutes.

The judge said O’Connor claimed Joleen vomited but none was found by police or forensics. He said O’Connor claimed Joleen had taken drugs and tried to hang herself, but no traces of drugs or ligature marks were found. 

While the prosecution submitted that by taking a bath and getting his head shaved O’Connor was trying to forensically cleanse himself,  the judge said his actions highlighted that “his first and only thoughts were for himself” and whatever his motivation, “at the very least it again points to the defendant’s supreme indifference to Ms. Corr’s fate”.

He said while O’Connor had expressed “some remorse” and disgust at himself, “the question remains as to how far this goes” as he maintained denials of doing anything wrong until September 2017 and then pleaded guilty to murder “at the last possible moment”.

That delay, said the judge, had served to heighten the pain felt by Joleen’s family throughout that time by depriving them of a “sense of justice”.

Judge Miller said that had O’Connor not confessed and been convicted by a jury, he would have been handed a 19-year minimum term but that taking account of all of the mitigating and aggravating features he considered that the appropriate tariff was 16 years.