Court rejects ‘house of horrors’ appeal

BY PAUL NEILAN 

A CONVICTED murderer who threw a second man’s body into a Bandon river after that victim found out about the first killing has failed in a bid to overturn his conviction for impeding the garda investigation.

Jonathan Duke (27) was strangled at Bridge House, Sean Hales Place, Bandon, on November 12th, 2011. His body was moved downstairs in what was dubbed ‘the house of horrors’, trussed up with an electrical cord and then thrown into the nearby River Bandon.

Just 24 hours earlier, a resident of the building, 42-year-old John Forrester, met a similar fate, with his body also thrown into the river.

Mr Duke, a father-of-one, was visiting Mr Forrester’s murderers there when he became aware of what had happened the previous day. 

Mr Forrester’s former girlfriend, mother-of-three Catherine O’Connor, from Kinsale, is currently serving life in prison for both murders. Her boyfriend at the time of the killings, Ciprian Grozavu (49), denied murdering both men and went on trial for their murders separately.

The Romanian father-of-one was found guilty of both murders and sentenced to life in prison. However, he appealed his murder conviction in the case of Mr Duke and the Court of Appeal quashed it and ordered a retrial.

The trial took place at the Central Criminal Court in Limerick in 2021. He was acquitted of murder by the jury upon direction of the judge. However, he was found guilty by a unanimous jury of two counts of impeding the apprehension or prosecution of another.

Mr Justice Michael MacGrath sentenced Grozavu to eight years for assisting O’Connor in trying to dispose of the body of Mr Duke in the river, and to six concurrent years for helping O’Connor remove the body from the scene.  

At the Court of Appeal, Lorcan Staines SC, for Grozavu, submitted that the incorrect wording of the impediment charges against his client meant that the jury had returned a ‘perverse’ verdict.

‘The appellant was convicted of offences not known to law,’ submitted Mr Staines.

Timothy O’Leary SC, for the State, submitted the verdict of the trial was ‘safe, reliable and in accordance with the evidence offered at trial’.

In dismissing the appeal last Friday Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy said the jury could be in no doubt of the actions of Grozavu on the night with regard to the wording of the charge on the indictment. He said the court rejected the proposition that the offence was ‘unknown to law.’