TWO men jailed for a “cruel and utterly senseless” double murder were told yesterday they would serve every day of their prison sentences without remission.
Shaun Hegarty and Ciaran Nugent – a son of IRA blanketman Kieran Nugent – were jailed for a total of 32 years for the brutal murders of two friends at an apartment in east Belfast.
Caron Smyth (40) – who ended her relationship with Hegarty days before the attack – and her friend Finbar McGrillen (42) were beaten to death at Ravenhill Court in December 2013.
The friends – who were described in court as “two innocent people” – sustained multiple injuries including fractured ribs and damaged organs, as well as scores of internal and external wounds to the head, neck and chest which were consistent with being punched, kicked and stamped on.
Hegarty, formerly of Grainne House in the New Lodge area of Belfast, was jailed for a minimum of 18 years while Nugent, formerly of the Simon
Community on the Falls Road, will serve at least 14 years in prison.
Hegarty and Nugent, who are both 35, had initially denied the murders and were due to stand trial, but they later pleaded guilty.
Branding the double slaying as “truly shocking”, Belfast Crown Court judge Mr Justice Weir said the killings were cruel and utterly senseless and had been initiated by Hegarty’s jealousy and anger. Defence barrister Frank O’Donoghoe QC, representing Hegarty, said his client suffered from a “mental disorder”, and that the murder of his young brother “in the most appalling of circumstances” also had an impact on his mental health.
Hegarty’s brother Kieran was 11 when he was killed on his way home from a shop in Strabane in 1994. The schoolboy was battered to death in a horrific attack and his body buried in a shallow grave near his home. His killer Brian Doherty had released himself from pyschiatric care shortly before the attack.
Telling Hegarty he had “no doubt” that the murder of his younger brother when he was a teenager has had a significant impact on him, Mr Justice Weir said it was a “bitter irony” that someone who had suffered such a “violent bereavement” could go on to “casually inflict” the same suffering upon others as he had done.
Gavan Duffy QC, representing Nugent, said that despite offending in his younger years his client went through a settled period and had two
children.
However, after the breakdown of this relationship, Nugent reverted back to abusing drink and drugs.
Mr Duffy also revealed that Nugent, son of Kieran Nugent, the first prisoner to ‘go on the blanket’ after refusing to wear a prison uniform in the Maze in 1976, suffered from post traumatic stress disorder as a result of being the victim of several paramilitary beatings.
Branding the double slaying of the two friends as “truly shocking”, Mr Justice Weir spoke of the devastating impact the deaths had on their victims’ relatives.
“The lives of their close families have been permanently blighted by these dreadful crimes so casually committed,” he said.
