Youth BATTERED teenager to death Megan McAlorum Murder Documentary Ireland

Youth BATTERED teenager to death in KILLING operation | Megan McAlorum Murder Documentary Ireland

The brutal murder of a 16-year-old girl by a youth was branded “a killing operation” by a judge today.

Thomas Purcell, 18, from Windsor Road in Belfast, faces a long life sentence for the murder of Megan McAlorum whom he battered to death at an isolated spot in a forest above Belfast.

Purcell pleaded guilty last month just before he was due to be tried for the killing in the early hours of Easter Sunday in April 2004 when he was just 16.

He has a string of previous convictions, including an arson attack in England in which £250,000 (€364,000) damage was caused to property owned by Richard Branson, the court heard.

The grim details of the slaughter were recounted as he sat with head bowed in Belfast Crown Court.

Such was the extent of submissions by the prosecution and defence that Mr Justice McLaughlin said he needed time to consider what minimum tariff the mandatory life sentence should carry.

He said he wanted to study the evidence and a statement submitted by the murdered girl’s mother, Margaret, which was described in court as “a deeply moving document”.

The sentence is expected to be passed next Wednesday.

The court heard there was significant evidence Megan was raped before being murdered, but outlining the prosecution case Mr John Orr QC, said while it was certain sex took place, rape could not be proved.

The accused insisted the sex had been consensual.

He said said when reports were being drawn up following Purcell’s change of plea to guilty, he told a psychologist. “I met the girl, we had sex. I got angry and killed her – that’s all.”

Later he elaborated, claiming that after consensual sex “she looked at me in a sneering way and said I was the first Gipsy she had had sex with.

“I lost it and beat the f*** out of her,” the court heard.

Purcell punched the girl in the face breaking her jaw in two places then picked up a log and battered her around the head and face as she lay on the ground.

Post-mortem examination results showed death would have been almost instantaneous as she suffered multiple fractures to the skull and brain damage.

Mr Orr told the court that Megan had worked as a waitress in a west Belfast roadhouse until 9.30pm on the Easter Saturday night and then joined friends in another bar.

When they left she declined the offer of a lift home and was seen several times walking on the Shaws Road in west Belfast, talking on a mobile phone and meeting people when she stopped at a take-away for a pastie. Mr Orr said.

At some stage in the early hours of the morning she had got into a stolen black Volvo S60 driven by the accused and eventually ended up at the isolated spot where she died.

It was somewhere courting couples went and very remote, said Mr Orr.

“One could stand at the scene and shout at the top of one’s voice and no one would hear” he added.

The dead girl’s body was found the day after she disappeared when Purcell took two female cousins to the forest to let them drive his van and they all ‘discovered’ the body.

Mr Orr said Purcell had a string of convictions in England going back to 2000 when as a 13-year-old he made a series of appearances at Oxford Juvenile court.

He had been convicted of six robberies, common assault, shoplifting, motoring offences and racial harassment.

In July 2002 he was convicted of arson – causing £250,000 damage to premises owned by Richard Branson.

Since the murder he had been sentenced at the Crown Court in Newry, Co Down to three years for robbery at knife point.

The crime was committed before the murder but sentence was passed earlier this year.

Defence lawyer, Terence McDonald, QC, said the offence admitted by his client could not morally be mitigated.

But he said: “The upbringing of this accused can only be described as squalid, abusive and completely lacking in any moral compass.

“It did not provide this accused with the kind of upbringing he required to enable him to connect with an ordinary community”.

Mr McDonald said his completely disinhibited behaviour was “the sign of someone who has never been effectively taken aside by a responsible person and had explained to him the basic norms of behaviour in a civilised society.”

Purcell’s behaviour had been deteriorating and the murder “sadly, tragically, represents the nadir of gravity,” said the QC.

Before reserving sentence Mr Justice McLaughlin said: “This young woman was not a threat to the accused and not able to resist him in physical terms.”

He said it was not a case of someone thumping someone else and happening to cause death.

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