The brother of a man who murdered their ailing 58-year-old mother in her own home has told the Central Criminal Court that “someone who should have protected” her had instead taken her life in the “most cruel, violent and sadistic way possible”.
In his victim impact statement on Tuesday, Angela Canavan’s son Keith Canavan said his brother Nigel didn’t just take their mother’s life but had also tried to take her dignity in the way he had killed her “using the one method she feared the most”.
Keith Canavan also said his brother had “portrayed her in the courtroom not as the woman she truly was, but as someone he could scapegoat to protect himself”.
Keith Canavan said his mother always had a fear of anyone touching her neck and “to think that this was the way she died in the one way she had a deep fear of” was “unthinkable” and “beyond comprehension” to him.
The witness said his brother had denied their mother “even the smallest grace, both in her final moments and in how he spoke about her after”.
In his statement, Keith Canavan also said that anyone who would have known his brother Nigel would have known how much he loved their mother, but his actions had not shown love.
He added: “The actions he took that night were that he battered and killed our mother. The actions he took in this courtroom were to scapegoat her as the antagonist; someone who attacked him, someone who was out of her mind on alcohol, someone who was mentally unwell.
“Nigel chose to focus on how he was feeling throughout this entire trial. How he was untouchable. How he put his hands on my mothers neck and ended her life so, in his words, she wasn’t a threat to him anymore.
“These are not the attributes of a person or a son who has love in his heart for our mother. These are not the actions of someone who wanted to be there for his mother.
He added:
Presiding judge Mr Justice Kerida Naidoo noted on Tuesday that Ms Canavan was a well-loved and accomplished person and that it “must be beyond any mother’s darkest imaginings that they would die at the hand of the child they gave birth to”. “The defendant will have to live with what he did,” he added.
The testimony was heard as part of an emotional victim impact statement read on Tuesday to the Central Criminal Court, where Nigel Canavan (aged 39) was sentenced to the mandatory term of life imprisonment for murdering his mother Angela Canavan. The sentence was backdated to April 30 last.
Earlier, the court heard that Nigel Canavan has two previous convictions, one for assault and the other for drink driving, with both committed on February 26, 2023.
Defence counsel, Desmond Dockery SC, said the defendant’s brother Keith had made a passing reference in his victim impact statement that despite the violence inflicted by Nigel Canavan on their mother, anyone who knew Nigel would have known how much he loved his mother.
On May 16 last, a jury convicted Nigel Canavan of murder, rejecting his claim that he was provoked and defending himself from an attack by his mother, whom he strangled and smothered to death in her own home.
Nigel Canavan claimed that stab wounds to each of Ms Canavan’s thighs, one of which tracked to 13.5cm in depth, were self-inflicted by his mother, who the trial heard had a “glittering career” as a psychotherapist before she fell into the grip of alcoholism.
Nigel Canavan also claimed that he had acted in self-defence when his mother, who had a brain injury from a fall four years before her death, attacked him by swinging her open hands at him and trying to kick him.
Taking the stand at his Central Criminal Court trial, Nigel Canavan further accused his mother of deliberately provoking him by calling him the “worst son in the world” and saying she wished she had never had him during a heated argument.
The jury also rejected a suggestion by Nigel Canavan’s defence that his mother’s alleged insults so provoked him that he could be found guilty of manslaughter rather than murder.
A pathologist found that besides being strangled and smothered, Ms Canavan had suffered a laceration to the top of her head, bruises to her face, body, arms and legs and three broken ribs. Some injuries indicated she tried to defend herself from an attack, and bruises to her chest suggested she had been manhandled before her death.
Nigel Canavan, with an address at Erris Gardens, Crossmolina, Co Mayo, had pleaded not guilty to his mother’s murder at her home in St John’s Terrace, Co Sligo on May 1, 2023.
