Former European figure skating gold-medallist Michael Olohan was described as a "gentle soul" following a jury's finding that his killer should be found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.
Sean Murphy stabbed Mr Olohan to death four months after the defendant moved into the apartment they shared in a low-support, step-down centre run by St Vincent's Hospital Mental Health Services in Clontarf.
The jury heard from two psychiatrists that Mr Murphy was suffering from a severe case of obsessive compulsive disorder that made him believe he needed to kill someone to prevent himself from going to hell and to prevent some terrible harm coming to the world.
In a letter to his treatment team after the killing, Mr Murphy said that when he moved to the facility, he realised he "now had a way" he could kill someone. He said his life became a "constant battle between the ritual [of killing] and trying to stop myself from the ritual".
Following Thursday's unanimous verdict, Ms Justice Mary Ellen Ring invited Mr Olohan's sister Emma to tell the court and jury about her brother. She said: "He saw the best in people, and he didn't really spot things, he took everybody at face value. When we asked him how he was getting on with Sean, he'd say, "yeah, he's a fine chap, keeps to himself"."
She described her brother as a "very interesting young man", a "gentle soul" and a "quiet, placid mammy's boy who would be home by three every Friday to see his mammy".
Aged eight to 17 he competed in figure skating and represented Northern Ireland because there was no team in Ireland. He won a European gold medal aged 17 and dreamed of going to America on a skating scholarship. When he didn't achieve his dream, he fell into depression, she said, and had to deal with his illness at a psychiatric hospital.
By the time of his death he had studied multiple courses, and he loved data and statistics. He was an "eternal student", she said, and was ready to leave the step-down facility at Bradóg Court in Clontarf but was waiting to find a nice place nearby.
Keith Spencer BL, for Mr Murphy, told Ms Olohan and her family that throughout the trial his client "has been asking if he could offer a heartfelt apology and he was told he could at the appropriate time. If I could offer, on his behalf, an apology to you and your family."
Sean Murphy (29) with an address at Bradóg Court, St Lawrence Road, Clontarf, Dublin 3, had pleaded not guilty to the murder of Michael Olohan (35) at the apartment they shared on St Lawrence Road on August 13th, 2020.
Verdict
The jury of six men and six women spent more than six hours considering their verdict. They had heard during the trial that Mr Murphy entered Mr Olohan's bedroom in the early hours while he slept and stabbed him three times in the chest, causing his death. Mr Murphy went immediately to Clontarf Garda Station wearing a blood-stained t-shirt and no shoes. He told gardaí that he should be arrested as he had stabbed someone.
Consultant psychiatrists Dr Ronan Mullaney and Professor Keith Rix told the trial that Mr Murphy was first diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) as a teenager. At the time of the stabbing his illness was acute, and he had developed an obsession with the thought of hell. He believed that by stabbing someone he would prevent his eternal suffering in hell and some catastrophe coming to the world.
Dr Mullaney said that Mr Murphy's OCD was accompanied by psychotic features and he was unable to resist the urge to kill because of his mental disorder. The psychiatrist said Mr Murphy should therefore be found not guilty by reason of insanity. Defence witness Professor Rix disagreed, saying that he did not believe Mr Murphy was psychotic and that he could have resisted killing Mr Olohan.
Professor Rix said that the appropriate verdict would be not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility. The jury preferred Dr Mullaney's evidence.
Following the verdict, Ms Justice Ring remanded Mr Murphy to the Central Mental Hospital (CMH) to be assessed by a psychiatrist who will come before the court on December 6 to indicate whether Mr Murphy requires further treatment.
Mental illness
In his evidence during the trial, Dr Mullaney said that he had reviewed Mr Murphy's long history of mental illness, his development as a child and accounts given by the accused, his treating doctors and his parents.
Mr Murphy's parents had said that his early childhood was normal, but they noticed that at age 11 he had periods of being distracted and started carrying out rituals; he could spend two hours switching a light on and off or would feel the need to open a car door in traffic or to jump multiple times in and out of a window.
His parents engaged the services of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services and at age 16, Mr Murphy was diagnosed with OCD having been admitted to a psychiatric ward at a St John of God's hospital as an involuntary patient.
Despite the time he spent in hospital, Mr Murphy achieved 350 points in his leaving cert and graduated from Kevin St with a degree in 2017. He held down jobs for a short time but stopped working in 2018 and lost contact with his friends due to increasing problems with OCD.
Dr Mullaney noted from various accounts that Mr Murphy left the family home and lived on the streets of Dublin for a time, where he came to the attention of gardaí due to his bizarre behaviour, although he was never charged with any offence.
Tests carried out around this time showed Mr Murphy had "very significant evidence of abnormal brain functioning," Dr Mullaney said. There was evidence that he had suffered epileptic seizures.
'Obsessional thinking'
In his own account, Mr Murphy told Dr Mullaney that he recalled "obsessional thinking" aged six or seven and believed he became "very unwell with OCD" at 14 or 15. He began repeatedly checking things, closing doors and washing his hands over and over.
By 2018, when he was admitted to a facility in Wicklow, he said his OCD was "taking up my whole day". He described being unable to sit still and going into "fits of rage" in frustration at his symptoms.
His parents called gardaí when he displayed aggressive behaviour, "shouting the house down, throwing objects around" but Mr Murphy denied being aggressive to his family.
After his discharge from the Wicklow facility, Mr Murphy said he refused to take his prescribed medication and returned to his parents' home but left three months later. He described that as a "mutual decision" because he was "completely crazy at the time".
When he ended up homeless in Dublin, he said he became angry that he had allowed himself to deteriorate to the point where his OCD symptoms had become "debilitating".
He recalled that his first "intrusive thoughts about killing someone" came in 2018. He described "images of going to hell, me suffering in hell, it was terrifying."
He began to believe that he could prevent it happening if he killed someone.
In August 2019 he was arrested after spending six hours "staring at a tree" and was admitted as an involuntary patient to the psychiatric ward at St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin.
At that time he recalled thinking that bad things would happen and he tried to prevent it by carrying out various rituals, including counting in his head to a certain number and then repeating the exercise.
He remembered being prescribed anti-psychotic medication but he didn't take it. While in hospital he would conceal the tablet under his tongue and spit it out when staff were not looking. He said he stopped taking it because he believed it wasn't helping with his symptoms.
Mr Murphy's condition improved while in St Vincent's and by December he was noted to be "close to his baseline function".
His condition again deteriorated but by February 2020 he was reported to have improved again, and he was offered a place in Bradóg Court in April when his mental state was deemed "stable".
He moved into a unit with Michael Olohan, a patient who had been living at the facility for some years. Four months later, Mr Murphy stabbed Mr Olohan to death.
14-page letter
After he was arrested, charged with murder and held at Cloverhill Prison, Mr Murphy was regularly seen by psychiatrists who noted that he continued to have thoughts about killing someone. He was transferred to the Central Mental Hospital in late 2021 and in January of the following year, Dr Mullaney said Mr Murphy wrote a 14-page letter to his treatment team in which he explained "in detail his experiences and actions".
In the letter he said that he had been having enormous difficulties for a long time, believing at times that he needed to kill or "bad things would happen" while at other times telling himself that he was being "crazy" and "you don't need to kill, none of this is true, you are delusional, you never stopped anything by doing rituals in the past so why is this any different?"
He remembered having thoughts about killing while on the ward in St Vincent's but, he said, he "knew I couldn't afford to get it wrong and just injure someone."
When he moved to Bradóg Court, he said, he "realised I now had a way I could kill someone, that I could kill Michael by stabbing him in his bedroom." He said his life became a "constant battle between the ritual [of killing] and trying to stop myself from the ritual."
He said he entered Mr Olohan's room "so many times with a knife in hand ready to kill him" but then his thoughts would change and he would leave without doing anything.
Part of the plan, he said, was to "kill him at night when he was sleeping to give the best chance". He wrote that he remembered the stabbing "pretty well" and described afterwards being a "state of disbelief that I had actually stabbed someone".
He went to Clontarf Garda Station and was "shocked" when he found out Mr Olohan had died. "Not a day has passed that I haven't thought about Michael," he said. "The moment I stabbed him, the look on his face as he woke up and the roar as he realised what was happening."
He said he can't look at or hold a knife without thinking of Michael and added: "Even though I know I was sick and there wasn't any bad intention, I still feel guilty and ashamed all the time."
