A Donegal woman has been found guilty of attempting to murder her elderly neighbour two years ago. Margaret McCole (43), of Magherard, Drung, Quigley's Point, Inishowen Peninsula, Co Donegal, was convicted of attempting to murder Mr William Harrigan - who was 83 at the time of the attack - at his home in Magherard Lane, Drung, in the early hours of May 9th, 1996.
The jury of five women and seven men in the Central Criminal Court took just under three hours to reach its verdict.
McCole's trial was to have begun on Monday but she failed to appear in court. Her defence counsel, Mr Brendan Grogan SC, said he could only put her nonattendance "down to panic".
On Tuesday, McCole pleaded guilty in court to causing Mr Harrigan grievous bodily harm with intent, and to stealing £340 in cash from him on the night of the attack. She admitted using a claw hammer in the assault.
She also pleaded guilty to charges of defrauding Mr Harrigan of most of £5,000 he had entrusted to her for safekeeping. She denied the charge of attempted murder.
Doctors gave evidence that Mr Harrigan had suffered multiple lacerations of the head and hands. One head wound involved loss of tissue about the size of the palm of a hand. A consultant plastic surgeon at St James's Hospital in Dublin, Dr Denis Lawlor, said it would take "quite a blow" to administer the wounds Mr Harrigan received. "I thought for a man of his age he had tremendous reserve to sustain it", he said.
Mr Harrigan was in court for the first two days of the trial and gave evidence that he had again changed his will after the attack. He said it was "a mystery" to him who had assaulted him.
Summing up the case for the jury yesterday, Mr Justice Quirke said that both prosecution and defence agreed that McCole was desperate on the night of May 9th, 1996. Mr Harrigan's niece had returned from the United States and it was to her the £5,000 was due. McCole had spent all but £20 of it over the Christmas period in 1995.
The prosecution claimed her desperation was induced by greed and that she feared she would lose the house and farm Mr Harrigan had willed to her if it was discovered she had taken the £5,000 he had given her for safekeeping.
The defence claimed her desperation was born of a deep sense of shame at the possibility of discovery that the money was missing.
Mr Gregory Murphy SC, for the prosecution, said the jury had to consider three things: the element of planning and calculation involved in McCole's actions, "the ferocity of the attack" on Mr Harrigan, and "the callous abandonment of the victim after she had beaten him".
He said there was "a self-serving thread" running through all of McCole's subsequent statements to gardai. She had tried to "cover her back", he said, albeit "in a rather inept way". Her actions and accounts after the incident indicated "a deviousness of mind consistent with premeditation."
Mr Brendan Grogan SC, for the defence, said up until May 9th, 1996, McCole was a woman of unblemished character. She had six children, the youngest just over two, the eldest 20. She worked in a local hospital as a careworker and, he said, the prosecution had accepted she had been "a very good and caring neighbour to Willie Harrigan".
McCole's children were in court for the end of her trial yesterday. She is expected to be sentenced by Mr Justice Quirke today.