Teenage boy killed Lorna Woodnutt in hammer attack and posted images online, court hears

by Alison O'Riordan

A teenage boy used a sledgehammer and a lump hammer to bludgeon 51-year-old Lorna Woodnutt to death before posting images of the scene on social media, 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 gardai arrived, the court was told.

The court also heard during today's sentence 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.

The boy appeared at the court today 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 defendant called 999 on two occasions after he murdered Ms Woodnutt and gardai also received a phone call arising out of the video posted online.

In his interviews, the teenager told gardai 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.

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.

In an emotional victim impact statement read to the court today, the deceased's niece Jessica Woodnutt said she discovered that her auntie had been brutally murdered when she received a video "with content that I can only describe as something a terrorist would create".

"I phoned the local garda station and asked that they check on my auntie... I feared this video was being mindlessly shared on social media as my auntie lay lifelessly at her home without help. The guards could not tell me much over the phone but just said that they were looking into something at this time but could not reveal details. This was enough to confirm to me that I was in fact living in what could only be described as my worst nightmare".