Brutal sex killer freed after 13 years in jail for double slaying

Just before 4.30pm, a bearded Bambrick, looking relaxed in a black rain jacket, black slacks and loafers, stepped out the front entrance to the jail, escorted by two prison officers. Then as a posse of photographs looked on, he got into a waiting red Ford Mondeo estate car and was quickly driven away.

It was a low-key departure for a convicted killer whose crimes shocked the nation because of their savagery.

Bambrick, formerly of St Ronan's Park, Clondalkin, Dublin, had pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of his former common-law wife Patricia McGauley, the mother of their two children, between September 1991 and February 1992.

He also pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of mother-of-one Mary Cummins in Dublin between July 1992 and December 1993.

Gagged

Graphic evidence given at the inquests into the women's deaths in 1998 heard how, following an argument at their home, Bambrick had tied Ms McGauley's hands behind her back and gagged her. She turned blue, but when he returned with a scissors she was dead. He later dismembered her body and took the parts to a nearby dump.

Months later, his second victim, Ms Cummins, suffered a similar horrific fate after meeting Bambrick in a Dublin pub.

She, too, died after being gagged and having her hands tied behind her back. Her body was cut up and dumped in a black sack in a nearby ditch.

In July 1996, Bambrick was sentenced to 15 years' penal servitude for the manslaughter of Ms McGauley and to take account of his "then knowledge of his propensities", he was given 18 years for the manslaughter of Ms Cummins -- both sentences to run concurrently.

Jailing the double killer, Mr Justice Paul Carney said he was concerned with two matters -- the propensity of Bambrick to re-offend and constitutional problems where a life sentence appeared to be a non-mandatory option. His preference would have been to sentence "this dangerous accused" to life imprisonment for the "horrific homicides".

But in a 22-page judgment in the Central Criminal Court, the judge said he could not do so because of existing case law, Bambrick's guilty plea and the fact that the Director of Public Prosecutions had accepted his plea of not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter.

The judge said Bambrick's killing of Ms Cummins with the knowledge of what he had done to Ms McGauley "must satisfy me that he has a propensity to re-offend".

"He is of an age that he is liable to be sexually active on release with remission from any determinate sentence. The probability is that he will have a pent-up appetite for his form of bondage, fuelled by group fantasising with other sex offenders in Arbour Hill Prison."

To protect the community and Bambrick from himself would necessitate jailing him for life with the possibility of release after a substantial punitive period, but only when the expert advisers to the Minister for Justice were fully satisfied he no longer posed a danger or threat to women in particular, the judge said.

That was the approach Mr Justice Carney said he would take, but interpretations of the Constitution which were binding persuaded him that he was not free under the law as it stood to approach the case from this perspective.

The judge quoted from Superior Court judgments which found against preventative detention on the grounds of having a propensity to commit a crime. He said he believed Bambrick's guilty plea and a Supreme Court ruling prevented him from pursuing that option.