A Wicklow man has been jailed for life for the murder of a woman he had a one-night stand with over Christmas 2014.
Roy Webster, a cabinet maker from Ashford, beat Anne Shortall to death four months later after she threatened to tell his wife he’d cheated on her.
Roy Webster’s lips started to quiver when he was asked to stand in the dock before Mr. Justice Patrick McCarthy.
An hour beforehand, a jury found him guilty of murdering Anne Shortall on Good Friday 2015.
At his sentence hearing, Anne’s daughter Alanna told the court her whole world fell apart when she found out how her mother had died so “brutally”.
Roy Webster hit her nine times in the head with a claw hammer and left her body in his work van before hiding it in a work shop beside his house.
He claimed she was looking for money for an abortion and threatening to tell his wife they’d had a one-night stand.
A post mortem revealed she wasn’t pregnant.
Webster started to cry when the mandatory life sentence was handed down and mouthed “I’m sorry” to the Shortalls as he was being led away.
Our Courts Correspondent Frank Greaney reports:
