A High Court judge has described a teenage murderer's actions in posting a video of his 51-year-old victim to Snapchat as "sickening" and noted that the boy had an "unhealthy interest" in well-known male role models who “pedal extreme beliefs” which had shaped his thinking and encouraged a negative attitude towards women.
Lorna Woodnutt's family had previously described the sledgehammer attack as a "public execution, hosted on social media by her murderer". "Evil entered the sanctity of our family that day," they told the Central Criminal Court.
The court heard at the child's sentencing hearing last July that the boy, who is under 18 and cannot be named under the Children's Act, had sent a blood-splattered selfie with the victim's faceless body.
Sentencing the teenage boy to life in detention with a review after 15 years, Mr Justice Paul McDermott said today that "defenceless" Ms Woodnutt had suffered "a cowardly, brutal and sustained assault", which the then 16-year-old teen had carried out with an “extraordinary level of brutality and viciousness”.
He added that the killing was carried out without mercy, inflicting maximum terror and suffering.
The judge said the attack, which had "an element of planning", was not "a spontaneous eruption of violence" but "conceived and executed with deliberate intent". He said the posting of the “sickening” video afterwards showed complete disrespect to the victim.
Referring to the boy's probation report, Mr Justice McDermott said it had expressed a concern that the teenager had an "unhealthy interest" in well known male role models who “pedal extreme beliefs and values”. He commented that this had an effect in shaping the boy’s thinking and encouraged a negative attitude towards women.
Mr Justice McDermott stressed to the court that the boy’s release after his review would depend on his progress and the level of danger he posed to others.
The victim's niece previously told the court how she discovered her aunt had been brutally murdered when she received content that she described "as something a terrorist would create".
The boy told detectives he recorded and shared the video on Snapchat with "everyone in his contacts, which the court heard was "a three-figure number", so that officers "would come".
Those individuals had access to the video for thirty minutes, but the teenager took it down when gardaí arrived, the court was told.
The court also heard during the sentence hearing that the now 17-year-old defendant, who cannot be identified because he is a minor, was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at 18 months old and there had been an increase in his aggressive and oppositional behavioural issues towards staff and students in his school in the weeks leading up to the killing.
Laboratory technician Ms Woodnutt had suffered fatal blunt force injuries to the head, face and chest in the attack when she was sitting at a kitchen table working on her computer.
A postmortem report revealed that Ms Woodnutt's facial features were absent, with a defect in the face exposing the skull "without any extracranial content present". There was a loss of the anterior facial skin and soft tissue from the forehead to below the chin.
The boy appeared at court last July for his sentencing hearing having pleaded guilty to murdering Lorna Woodnutt, aged 51, at a property in a rural area outside Tullamore, Co Offaly on September 29th 2023.
Snapchat video
The sentencing hearing was also told that another boy had described opening the Snapchat video in his statement to gardaí, which was posted by the defendant at lunchtime that day.
The court was told that the boy saw a body in the video with "feet up on a couch and a face with a big hole". A sledgehammer and a lump hammer were beside the victim's body in the video. The defendant had also sent this boy "a selfie" with Ms Woodnutt's body in the background and a caption.
The defendant called 999 on two occasions after he murdered Ms Woodnutt and gardai also received a phone call arising out of the video posted online. When the garda asked the defendant who else was with him, he nodded in the direction of the kitchen saying: "Her, I did it'.
In his interviews, the teenager told the gardaí that he got angry and had "lost the head" when he had an argument with Ms Woodnutt. "Now I regret it as I'm stuck here, I just whacked her, I don't know what got into me, it just built up over the years," he added.
The defendant also told officers: "I hit her as hard as I could, 20 to 30 times, I normally wouldn't do this kind of thing, it isn't me". The boy said he "came at" Ms Woodnutt with a hammer and had "overpowered" her.
He said he could see she was still breathing on the ground so "kept going until she stopped". He also said he had put the video on Snapchat as he knew gardaí wouldn't want "me to do that".
An analysis of the boy's phone revealed Google searches about hammer attacks such as "what if your hit on the back of the head with a hammer", the garda’s ability to track phones, "how long is life imprisonment in prison" and searches about the behaviour of psychopaths such as "why does sociopaths bite their lips", [sic] the court was told.
The boy's phone was examined and there was evidence that the TOR internet browser had been used. TOR is designed to facilitate anonymous access to the internet.
In an emotional victim impact statement read to the court last July, the deceased's niece Jessica Woodnutt said she discovered that her auntie had been brutally murdered when she received a video "with content that I can only describe as something a terrorist would create".
The now 20-year-old added: "My legs turned to jelly. I was home alone.... I could not watch the entire video and only clicked into it to find out it was actually Lorna who had been murdered, hoping that it was some sort of mix up.
"Her head was destroyed and her beautiful face was no longer there. Instead, at her shoulders was a pool of blood. I was immediately distraught and entered a state of denial".
"I phoned the local garda station and asked that they check on my auntie... I feared this video was being mindlessly shared on social media as my auntie lay lifelessly at her home without help.
"The guards could not tell me much over the phone but just said that they were looking into something at this time but could not reveal details. This was enough to confirm to me that I was in fact living in what could only be described as my worst nightmare".
A statement on behalf of the Woodnutt family said that they had walked into a garda station on September 29 "oblivious to our sister's public execution, which was hosted on social media by her murderer". "Evil entered the sanctity of our family that day...it is unbearable and we cannot see beyond it".
The statement continued: "Lorna loved life, she loved people and was loved by people. Let Lorna not be defined by the grotesque way she was murdered."
Details of attack
In his garda interviews, the boy told detectives that he got the hammer from a shed before he started "whacking" the victim with it. He said Ms Woodnutt had got down on the couch and held up a chair to protect herself.
The defendant said he hit her with the small hammer first, around 15 to 20 times on the head. "I used the bigger hammer when she was on the ground," he added.
He told gardaí that he had tried to use a knife to stab her in the chest but it was too blunt. He said he tried to stab her three times but gave up when it wouldn't work. The boy said he had to finish what he was doing and didn't feel he could stop.
Prosecution counsel Michael Delaney SC said a garda who examined the selfie type picture taken by the accused found there was blood splatter on the boy's face. Over his left shoulder, the court heard, was a person lying on a tiled floor with their legs raised on the couch.
He said the victim was lying in a pool of blood with facial injuries.
The video posted on Snapchat was 17 seconds long and the camera focused on a sledgehammer standing upright on the bloodied tiled floor. The court heard the camera pans to the left and there is a body in a pool of blood with severe facial injuries.
"The camera lowered over the face of the victim, whose front skull was shattered; a large hole in the skull," said counsel.
The camera then panned to the right of the body where brain material and blood can be seen on the floor. A clock on the wall behind showed the time as 12.36pm.
The camera then pans in closer to the hole on the face and then zooms in on the brain matter on the floor. It then pans back to the left and over the body and upwards before moving over Ms Woodnutt's head injury.
The barrister said the video was uploaded to Snapchat at 12.45pm that day. A garda Inspector agreed with counsel that messages sent and received were recovered on Snapchat and some users had screenshot material "in the chat".
The court heard the boy was heavily involved in bodybuilding, general strength and the consumption of protein as part of a person's diet.
The juvenile's defence counsel Mr Dwyer submitted to the court that his client has high functioning autism with poor social skills. He said his client had attacked the victim with the "most extraordinary ferocity".
