‘A catatonic killer’ – jury sent out to deliberate in murder trial
Wayne Roche (35), of Dominic’s Place, Waterford city, denies murdering John O’Connor on a date between December 30-31, 2024.
A jury has been sent out to deliberate their verdict after a three-week murder trial at Waterford Central Criminal Court.
Wayne Roche (35), of Dominic’s Place, Waterford city, denies murdering John O’Connor on a date between December 30-31, 2024.
John ‘King’ O’Connor was discovered dead at his home at 17 Cluain Fada, New Ross, Co Wexford on the morning of December 31, 2024. He was discovered lying in a pool of blood by his daughter Chloe, who was in a relationship with Roche at the time.
The night before, Roche had been drinking at 17 Cluain Fada with Mr O’Connor and his friend Michael Bancewicz. The court heard that Mr Bancewicz left the flat shortly before 9pm after becoming alarmed by Roche’s ‘erratic’ behaviour. CCTV and geo-location tagging confirmed that Mr Bancewicz had left the flat and stayed at a friend’s house that night.
The jury heard that Roche woke up in the flat on the morning of December 31 and saw Mr O’Connor unresponsive on the ground. Roche claimed that he tried to get help for the deceased but made a "split decision" to leave the flat because he want to get out before his partner arrived. After leaving the flat, he approached multiple people about getting a lift to Waterford and claimed to one man that he had been "stabbed by two foreign guys". The witnesses told the court that at no point did Roche say anything about Mr O’Connor or his serious injuries.
Roche was arrested and eventually brought to University Hospital Waterford (UHW) for medical treatment.
Inside the emergency department, he shouted, "I need to take a shit," multiple times at Gardaí and security. At one point he ran into a cubicle and attempted to cut his neck with broken glass hidden in his underpants.
Gardaí intervened and medical staff sewed sutures into his neck. However, he pulled the sutures out of his neck, so metal staples had to inserted instead.
During his time in in UHW, he made threats of violence and rape against family members of Gardaí, shouted racist abuse at security staff and homophobic abuse at doctors. On the stand, he denied making such comments, claiming: “Some of my best friends are gay.”
While in UHW he asked an armed Detective Garda to shoot him, saying that he "didn’t want to hurt anyone else.”
In the post-mortem report, over 100 injuries were detected on Mr O’Connor’s body, a mixture of lacerations, abrasions and bruising. The cause of death was listed as haemorrhagic shock of the abdominal sac, with liver cirrhosis acting as a contributory factor.
On Wednesday, May 13, counsels for defence and prosecution gave their final arguments.
Prosecutor Dean Kelly SC impressed on the jury that Roche had given a "self-serving" account about the events of John O’Connor’s death.
He began his address by outlining the certainties of the case: “What I am certain of is John O’Connor was alive and well when Michael Bancewicz left his home on the night of December 30. We know that when Chloe O’Connor arrived to the flat the next morning, he was dead.
“We don’t know if he was beaten by foot, fist or an unidentified object but we know that he was beaten to death. We know that the accused fled the scene, leaving his pregnant girlfriend to find the grisly, horrendous sight of her father.”
Roche interrupted with comments several times throughout Mr Kelly’s closing arguments, which delayed proceedings.
Mr Kelly told the jury that Roche did not need to have a motive in killing Mr O’Connor: “He accepts that he killed John O’Connor and that it was an unlawful killing.
“Murder doesn’t require forethought or planning. It is not the prosecution’s case that Wayne Roche went to 17 Cluain Fada with the intent of murder.
Mr Kelly went on: “It is not a defence to be drunk. It is 1000% not a defence to say ‘I don’t remember’. It is an unbelievable, dishonest, self-serving account.”
Mr Kelly stated that Roche has tried to portray himself as a ‘catatonic killer’, who was too intoxicated to recall killing Mr O’Connor. He described Roche’s account as "self-serving nonsense", saying: “Mr Roche is a man who forgets when it suits him to forget, and remembers when it suits him to remember. His attitude was raging, aggressive and feral.”
Mr Kelly highlighted the testimony of Michael Bancewicz and the way he described Roche’s demeanour on the night of December 30. He told the jury: “Mr Bancewicz is a person you can believe.”
Mr Kelly admonished Roche’s seeming attempts to "cast suspicion" on Mr Bancewicz after the discovery of Mr O’Connor's body.
Mr Kelly ended his address by referring to Roche’s comment to Detective Donal Doyle, asking him to kill him "because he didn’t want to hurt anyone else".â¯
Mr Kelly said: “Wayne Roche beat a man to death, a man who was smaller than him and weaker than him. The victim was 5’7 and just over 10 stone. [Roche’s] only point of honesty is when he told a Garda he didn’t want to hurt anyone else. He knew exactly what he did. The only sensible decision is to return a verdict of guilty to murder.”
Defence counsel John Byrne SC urged the jury to be extremely cautious in coming to their decision. He reminded the jury that Roche had earlier pleaded guilty to manslaughter and denied committing murder.
Mr Byrne spoke about the large amount of drugs and alcohol consumed by Roche on the day in question, including heroin and crack cocaine.
He said: “You cannot fill in gaps where gaps exist. There were only two men in that room. There is no evidence whatsoever about the circumstances into how John O’Connor sustained those injuries.”
Mr Byrne noted that the deceased had evidence of both "offensive and defensive" injuries on his hands.
Judge Patrick McGrath charged the jury but was disrupted twice by Roche making comments from his bench.
Judge McGrath counselled the jury on the legal ramifications of a charge of murder and re-iterated the defence and prosecutions’ cases.
The jury were finally sent out to deliberate shortly after 3pm on Thursday, May 14.
