A young Dublin couple murdered in their Co Roscommon home last year after an attack by Mark Nash both died from multiple stab wounds, an inquest in Roscommon was told yesterday.
Mr Carl Doyle (29) and his wife, Catherine (26), died after being stabbed in the early hours of the morning at their new home at Carran, Ballintubber.
The couple had gone to live in the area under the rural resettlement scheme. On August 16th last year they died after a sudden attack on them by Nash, the boyfriend of Catherine's sister, Sarah Jane Doyle, who had arrived for a weekend visit.
Leeds-born Nash (25), with an address at Clonliffe Road, Dublin, is serving a life sentence for their murders.
Mr John O'Dwyer, acting coroner for Roscommon, extended sympathy to Catherine Doyle's father, Mr Joe Doyle, who was present at the inquest, and said the couple had possibly moved to the country to have a "new life". It was regrettable it had ended so tragically.
All but one of six children in the house, ranging in age from five months to seven years, slept throughout the attack.
Ms Sarah Jane Doyle (19), of Willow Wood Lawn, Clonsilla, Dublin, broke down in the witness-box yesterday as she recalled the events of that day when she travelled by train with her boyfriend, Mark Nash, to Roscommon. She told how after they had sat up drinking and listening to tapes, Nash arrived in an upstairs bedroom with a hammer in his hand.
"He had a scary, mad luck in his eyes. He hit me on the back of the head with the hammer without saying anything. He then said, `You have to die, Sarah'."
Her sister, Catherine, tried to save her, but he hit her with the hammer as well. She was terrified for herself and the children and was sure he was going to kill them.
Her statement went on to outline how after crawling out of the bedroom and tumbling down the stairs when he hit her again she pretended to be dead before crawling on her hands and knees to a neighbouring house, where they telephoned the Garda.
Garda Sgt John O'Gara described the scene at the Doyle home when he arrived at 3 a.m. He found the body of Catherine Doyle in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor and in the sittingroom he saw the body of Carl Doyle slumped on a couch. He had bloodstains and what looked like pieces of a broken knife on the front of his shirt. He noted a bloodstained piece of wood on the floor and a metal poker near the front window.
Upstairs he found bloodstains on the walls and doors and on the stairway.
There was a bloodstained kitchen fork on the floor and he found a black-handled bloodstained knife with a portion of the blade broken in the kitchen. He found another knife stuck in the ground on the front lawn.
A number of children in the house were removed for safety to Roscommon County Hospital.
The State Pathologist, Dr John Harbison, told the inquest that Catherine Doyle sustained a total of 16 stab wounds and there was evidence of attempted strangulation while the wounds were being inflicted.
He said that her blood alcohol level meant she was quite intoxicated and would have been less able to run away or defend herself.
There was also evidence of cannabis in her blood. She had died at a result of bleeding into the chest from stab wounds to both lungs and a stab wound to the heart.
Her husband, Carl, died as a result of stab wounds to the chest and heart. His blood alcohol level indicated that he would have been "moderately inebriated" at the time.
The jury of six men and one woman returned verdicts of unlawful killing in accordance with the medical evidence of the State Pathologist in both cases.