LAST UPDATE | 3 Oct
A HIGH COURT judge has described a teenage murderer’s actions in posting a video of his 51-year-old victim to Snapchat as “sickening”.
Mr Justice Paul McDermott noted that a probation report for the boy recorded that he had an “unhealthy interest” in well-known male role models who “peddle extreme beliefs” which had shaped his thinking and encouraged a negative attitude towards women.
The teenager has been sentenced to life in detention with a review after 15 years for killing 51-year-old Lorna Woodnutt in September 2023.
The Central Criminal Court heard at the child’s sentencing hearing last July that the boy, who is under 18 and cannot be named under the Children’s Act, had sent a blood-splattered selfie with the victim’s faceless body.
Passing sentence today, Mr Justice McDermott said Ms Woodnutt had suffered a sustained assault, which the teen had carried out with an “extraordinary level of brutality and viciousness”.
He said the attacker had used weapons and had the intention and determination to inflict appalling injury.
The victim’s niece previously told the court how she discovered her aunt had been brutally murdered when she received content that she described “as something a terrorist would create”.
The boy told detectives he recorded and shared the video on Snapchat with “everyone in his contacts, which the court heard was “a three figure number”, so that officers “would come”. Those individuals had access to the video for thirty minutes but the teenager took it down when gardai arrived, the court was told.
The court also heard during the sentence hearing that the now 17-year-old defendant, who cannot be identified because he is a minor, was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at 18 months old and there had been an increase in his aggressive and oppositional behavioural issues towards staff and students in his school in the weeks leading up to the killing.
Laboratory technician Ms Woodnutt had suffered fatal blunt force injuries to the head, face and chest in the attack when she was sitting at a kitchen table working on her computer.
A postmortem report revealed that Ms Woodnutt’s facial features were absent.
The boy appeared at the court last July for his sentence hearing having pleaded guilty to murdering Lorna Woodnutt at a property in a rural area outside Tullamore, Co Offaly on September 29, 2023.
Referring to the boy’s probation report, Mr Justice McDermott said it had expressed a concern that the teenager had an “unhealthy interest” in well known male role models who “peddle extreme beliefs and values”.
He commented that this had an effect in shaping the boy’s thinking and encouraged a negative attitude towards women.
Sentencing the teenage boy to life in detention with a review after 15 years, Mr Justice Paul McDermott said today that “defenceless” Ms Woodnutt had suffered “a cowardly, brutal and sustained assault”, which the then 16-year-old teen had carried out with an “extraordinary level of brutality and viciousness”.
He added that the killing was carried out without mercy, inflicting maximum terror and suffering.
The judge said the attack, which had “an element of planning”, was not “a spontaneous eruption of violence” but “conceived and executed with deliberate intent”. He said the posting of the “sickening” video afterwards showed complete disrespect to the victim.
Mr Justice McDermott said the boy has the prospect of being released in 2038 but that would depend on his progress in his education and in addressing his offending and his behaviour. He said the level of danger he poses to others would also be considered at that time.
He stressed to the court that the boy’s release after his review would depend on his progress and the level of danger he posed to others.
A probation report submitted to the court indicated that the boy had taken responsibility for the killing but showed little emotion. The teenager’s defence barrister, James Dwyer SC, had told the court that this was due to the boy’s condition rather than a “callous lack of victim awareness”.
The probation report found the defendant was at very high risk of reoffending because of the extreme violence he used, his inability to recognise and regulate emotions and his inability to articulate accountability or responsibility even though he knew what he had done was wrong.
Mr Justice McDermott ordered that a probation report and an updated psychiatric assessment be provided to the court every two years. He extended his sympathies to Ms Woodnutt’s family and friends.
The victim’s niece previously told the court how she discovered her aunt had been brutally murdered when she received content that she described “as something a terrorist would create”.
Lorna Woodnutt’s family had also previously described the sledgehammer attack as a “public execution, hosted on social media by her murderer”. “Evil entered the sanctity of our family that day,” they told the Central Criminal Court.
The boy told detectives he recorded and shared the video on Snapchat with “everyone in his contacts, which the court heard was “a three figure number”, so that officers “would come”.
Those individuals had access to the video for thirty minutes but the teenager took it down when gardai arrived, the court was told.
The court also heard during the sentence hearing that the now 17-year-old defendant, who cannot be identified because he is a minor, was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at 18 months old and there had been an increase in his aggressive and oppositional behavioural issues towards staff and students in his school in the weeks leading up to the killing.
A psychiatrist had also diagnosed the teenager with an adjustment disorder but pointed out that the defendant was too young to be diagnosed with other mental disorders.
Referring to the diagnosis today, Mr Justice McDermott said that the exact connection between the defendant’s conditions and the attack was not clear. He noted the boy had demonstrated increasingly challenging and deteriorating behaviour at home and at school, including by becoming verbally aggressive with women and threatening to set a female student alight.
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