On Tuesday, Richard Dekker (30) from the Blanchardstown area of Dublin, was found guilty by a unanimous jury verdict of the murder of Daniel McAnaspie at Tolka Valley Park on February 26th, 2010.
Trevor Noone (28), also from Blanchardstown, pleaded guilty to manslaughter last month for his role in the boy’s death.
Daniel McAnaspie – whose parents were dead – was in the care of the HSE in 2010.
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On February 25th, his carers dropped the 17-year-old off in Finglas where he was going to hang out with some friends. His curfew was 9pm, but he skipped it and went to Blanchardstown with a friend to meet two girls.
He was drinking and, according to several witnesses, was in good form.
Daniel, his friend Gary Arnold and the two girls, Denise Kelly and Shauna Burke, hung out on a residential street in Blanchardstown where they met Dekker and Noone.
It was the prosecution’s case that, later in the night, after Daniel’s friends had left, Dekker and Noone lured him to Tolka Valley Park where they stabbed him to death with a single blade from a garden shears.
The only reason given for the attack was that earlier in the night Daniel was boasting about some people he had fought. When he mentioned having fought a relative of Trevor Noone, Noone punched Daniel once in the face, knocking him to the ground. Daniel’s friends said the pair made up immediately and shook hands.
But later in the night, according to interviews given by Dekker to gardaí, Noone decided he was going to give Daniel “a hiding”.
At about 4am, Daniel’s friends went home. They tried to get Daniel to go with them but he wanted to stay. Once his friends were gone, Noone and Dekker lured Daniel to Tolka Valley Park by telling him they were going to fight “some lads from Corduff”.
Dekker said he knew Noone was carrying the blade from the garden shears and was intent on giving the boy a hiding.
According to Dekker’s version of events, while they walked along a wooden boardwalk that crosses the Tolka River, surrounded by trees and bushes, Noone stabbed Daniel in the back with the shears.
Dekker said Daniel begged for his life, but Noone insisted “he has to go” and stabbed him again and again.
Forensic scientist Dr David Casey identified 12 stab cuts on the jacket Daniel was wearing and former deputy state pathologist Dr Khalid Jaber found multiple stab wounds to his neck and torso.
Following the killing, the two men abandoned the body and went home, but at some point it was removed and taken 30km where it was dumped in a farmer’s drainage ditch at Rathfeigh, Co Meath.
There was evidence that it had been transported inside a suitcase, but by the time it was discovered by the farmer the suitcase had disintegrated and all that remained was its steel frame.
Daniel had been dead almost three months and his body was identified by matching it to DNA taken from his toothbrush. Despite extensive insect infestation and decomposition Dr Jaber was able to see at least some of the injuries that caused his death.
Dekker told gardaí he had no idea how the body got to Rathfeigh but he suggested that Noone could have moved it.