A man was jailed for life at the Central Criminal Court yesterday after a jury found him guilty of the murder of a grandmother .
Timothy Rattigan (26), St Dominic's Terrace, Tallaght, and Conor Grogan (26), Avonbeg Park, Tallaght, both Dublin, had pleaded not guilty to the murder of Joan Casey (65) at Avonbeg Park on April 3rd, 2004.
Mr Justice Paul Carney had directed the jury earlier this week to find Rattigan's co-accused, Grogan, not guilty due to insufficient evidence against him.
Mrs Casey was shot dead through her bedroom door at 6am after two men with a shotgun smashed in through the front door.
During the 12-day trial, the court heard how Mrs Casey had moved to sleep in that room "because she thought she would be safer" there, after a window was smashed in her front bedroom in November 2003.
During the trial, the court heard how Rattigan and Grogan had been together drinking from the night before the killing at Ahern's pub in Tallaght and had ended up at Rattigan's sister's flat in the early hours of April 3rd.
Mrs Casey's neighbour, Colm O'Brien, had woken at around 6am to shouting, smashing noises and two loud bangs. He saw two men, one of whom had a shotgun, at the dead woman's gate, walking away slowly.
The shotgun was found disassembled in three pieces in a blue bag in the bushes close to Rattigan's sister's flat. The bag also contained live and spent cartridges and a blank firing pistol.
Annette Forde of the Forensic Science Laboratory told the court the shotgun had fresh scratches on it, which contained powder from the same two types of glass that were smashed in on Mrs Casey's front door.
The one fingerprint found on the double-barrelled shotgun matched Rattigan's left ring-fingerprint. The fingerprint was on a part of the barrel, which would only have been exposed had it been taken apart or assembled.
"It conclusively represents a link between the gun and the accused, Timothy Rattigan," Edward Comyn SC, prosecuting, said.
"You may conclude that after the killing of Mrs Casey, that gun was wiped down," he said.
In his opening statement to the jury, Mr Comyn had said that Mrs Casey's killing was possibly a case of mistaken identity. The target "could have perhaps been her son, Gerard", he said.
Gerard Casey, who had lived on and off at his mother's home, was married to one of Rattigan's sisters.
The victim's daughter, Martina, told the court about the effect her mother's death had had on the family. Martina is one of the family's five children.
"She was the most wonderful person on earth. The loss is just something you cannot put into words," she said quietly. "We never got a chance to say goodbye. We were deprived of her."
The way her mother was murdered was particularly distressing for the family, Martina said. "There is absolutely no way we will be the people we once were," she said.