Warning: Some readers may find the content of this report upsetting. A teenage boy used a sledgehammer and a lump hammer to bludgeon 51-year-old Lorna Woodnutt to death before posting a video on Snapchat and sending a selfie with the victim's faceless body, the Central Criminal Court has heard. The victim's niece told today 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 Monday's sentencing 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 the court on Monday for his sentence hearing having pleaded guilty earlier this month to murdering Lorna Woodnutt, aged 51, at a property in a rural area outside Tullamore, Co Offaly on September 29, 2023. The sentencing sentencing also heard 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 gardaí 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'. Garda interviews In his interviews, the teenger told 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, the garda’s ability to track phones and searches about the behaviour of psychopaths, the court was told. Victim impact statements At the defendant's sentencing hearing, five victim impact statements were read to the court written by members of the victim's family.
Ms Woodnutt's brother, Derek Woodnutt, said his sister had her life "snatched" from her long before she was due to go to her place of rest "by such a cold-hearted killing". He said he had walked into a garda station that day unknown to him that his "beautiful, joyful little sister's faceless body had been viewed on social media by hundreds of people". He said when people stop him he wonders did they see "my sister's faceless body.
What do they know? What can I talk about...
. my sister's beautiful face is supposed to be remembered as she was. Peaceful and loving.
...
not as he left her". In another victim impact statement read to the Central Criminal Court today, Ms Woodnutt's sister Roberta O'Brien said her "gruesome murder hosted on social media has left us broken beyond words. You never wanted to die in such an evil way, faceless.
Our biggest fears would be his video to reappear on social media in the future. This would lead to more suffering, a constant reminder of how our despicable nightmare began". 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.
Our last wish was to kiss our beautiful sister Lorna goodbye...
our enduring memory to the day we die is her mutilated body. Faceless". The victim's niece, Jessica Woodnutt, said her family had kissed the top of the fabric that covered Lorna's face before the coffin was closed for the final time.
"I shed tears as I knew the full extent of what lay beneath the cloth. "I now hate the mere mention of the word hammer. I can't stand the sight of them.
Even a wooden mallet used to put up a sign post at an event one day turned my stomach." Mr Justice Paul McDermott said it was essential to have a probation report available to him before he could complete the sentencing process. He adjourned the case until October 3 and directed that the boy be detained at Oberstown Children Detention Centre until then.
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