A 54-year-old man has been jailed for life for the murder of a Clare taxi driver in February 2005.
Liam Molony, a father of four, was found hacked to death with his trouser pockets pulled outwards inside the gates of an abandoned estate. He received 17 blows to the head with either a hatchet or meat-cleaver and his throat was slit.
Anthony Kelly, a native of Ruan, Co Clare, with an address at Emlagh na Muck, Emlagh More, Waterville, Killarney, Co Kerry, had pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Molony (56), outside the village of Ruan, Co Clare, on February 11th, 2005.
The defence admitted the killing but claimed Kelly was suffering from a mental disorder at the time. If the jury accepted this, they would have had to find him not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility. But the jury of five men and seven women took just over four hours to reach their unanimous verdict.
Kelly had already pleaded guilty to six other charges including robbing items belonging to the deceased, setting fire to his car and unlawful possession of a firearm.
Mr Justice Paul Carney, in the Central Criminal Court, imposed the mandatory life sentence on Kelly and backdated the sentence to 25th February, 2005. He adjourned sentencing on the other offences until 21st May.
During the trial the court heard Kelly had lived and worked in the US for 30 years. He married a woman from Paraguay and had two children but the marriage ended when Kelly became addicted to crack-cocaine.
During this period, he faked his own kidnapping in an attempt to extort money from his uncle, for which he spent 20 months in prison. In 2001 he was deported back to Ireland. A couple of months before the killing, a childhood friend introduced him to Mr Molony and the three men would drink together "infrequently".
On the day of the killing Mr Molony picked him up in his taxi, as planned, outside a pub in Barefield, Clare. Kelly got Mr Molony to stop the taxi outside Porthouse Estate, close to Ruan, and killed him. When gardaí arrived at his home on 25th February, Kelly confessed after initially denying any involvement.
In interviews, he claimed voices told him to carry out the killing. Prosecution witness, Dr Harry Kennedy, a psychiatrist and director of the Central Mental Hospital, said he believed Kelly had been "making up" the voices so he could "claim mental illness as some sort of excuse".