LAST UPDATE | 27 Feb

A MURDER TRIAL jury took just over three hours to find mother-of-two Lisa Thompson’s former lover guilty of strangling her with a blind cord and stabbing her to death in her own home.

Evidence was heard that Lisa Thompson – who was found with 11 stab wounds to her chest and the blood-stained cord wrapped around her neck – was dealing prescription drugs from her home.

Six of the wounds had penetrated her heart and two went through and through, which the defence submitted had “an element of overkill” to it.

Brian McHugh with an address at Cairn Court, Poppintree, Ballymun in Dublin 11, had pleaded not guilty to murdering Lisa Thompson (52) at Sandyhill Gardens, Ballymun in Dublin 11 on May 9, 2022.

Forensic evidence

A forensic scientist told the Central Criminal Court trial that the blind cord contained McHugh’s DNA, while the prosecution argued that he could be seen on CCTV footage near Lisa Thompson’s home on the night of the killing.

When asked to account for the presence of his DNA on the cord, McHugh told gardai that he had been “in and out” of Lisa Thompson’s house “for the last three years”.

The jury has also heard that DNA recovered from jewellery found in the defendant’s home also matched that of Lisa Thompson.

The 12 jurors took just three hours and 24 minutes to unanimously reject McHugh’s defence that Lisa Thompson was a “woman of secrets” and that there was more to her killing “than would appear on the surface”.

Defence’s argument

Defence counsel for McHugh, Brendan Grehan SC with Karl Monahan BL, also submitted in his closing address that this was not “the neat case wrapped up in a bow” which the prosecution had presented to the jury.

They instead agreed with Fiona Murphy SC alongside David Perry BL that the prosecution had “meticulously presented a tapestry of circumstantial evidence”, where each thread had been interwoven, painting a “compelling picture” of McHugh’s guilt.

Evidence has been given that gardaí searching Lisa Thompson’s home found thousands of prescription tablets worth nearly €50,000 hidden in her attic and that she and McHugh (40) had a “bit of a fling” in the year before she died.

Following the verdict, Ms Justice Karen O’Connor thanked the four men and eight women of the jury for their patience and commitment throughout the trial, saying she was very grateful to them all. “You should be proud of having carried out your civic duty,” she added.

The judge told the jury that as an indication of her appreciation to them for their time given to the case she would excuse them from jury service for the next five years.

The judge offered her “sincere condolences” to the Thompson family and thanked them for their dignity throughout the trial. “I cannot imagine your pain and what you have suffered in terms of your grief. I want to thank you for the manner you represented your beloved throughout this procedure,” she said.

Next court date

Ms Justice O’Connor will hand down the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment to McHugh on March 10 and remanded the defendant in custody until that date.

On that date, the Thompson family will have an opportunity to make a statement to the court about the impact Lisa’s death has had on their lives.

McHugh was due to stand trial last year but a pre-trial ruling found that the evidence from two gardai purporting to recognise the defendant from CCTV footage near the deceased’s home should be excluded due to their involvement in the investigation.

However, in what was believed to be the first appeal of its kind, the ruling was overturned by the Court of Appeal after successful submissions by the State, and as a result the evidence was restored for consideration at McHugh’s current trial before the Central Criminal Court.

The jury had watched a CCTV montage of what the prosecution said were the defendant’s and a named woman’s movements near the deceased’s home in Ballymun on the night of the killing.

The prosecutor told the jury in her closing address that McHugh chose to make no comment to gardai when asked to account for his presence at Sandyhill Gardens between 1.25am and 2.50am on May 9 2022 as depicted on CCTV footage.

She said the jury was entitled to draw inference from the fact that McHugh hadn’t denied that the identification was accurate.

Text messages

Evidence was also given that McHugh had received a text message from the named woman saying “I could of been like Lisa today strangle n stab” over a month after Lisa Thompson was found dead.

However, a senior investigating officer told the jury that details of the ligature and strangulation injuries on Lisa Thompson had not been released into the public domain at the time these text messages were sent.

Other text messages sent from the named woman to McHugh in June 2022 included her saying: “Murder Lisa n al” and “Move the knife did u”.

In another text she said: “Goin in bye I’m at Ballymun station bye I’m tellin” as well as “ur runners n the knife”.

In her closing speech, the prosecutor said the named woman was with McHugh before, after and at the time the murder was committed.

She said the named woman had specifically referenced matters she had no reason to know about unless she had some form of “insider information” that Lisa Thompson had been strangled and stabbed.

Counsel said the woman had referenced in her text the two items which were missing in the case and that the pair of runners seized by gardai from McHugh had no blood on them.