A woman who repeatedly stabbed her abusive partner in the chest and abdomen as he slept wept in court as a jury convicted her of his murder.
Julie Ann McIlwaine was bent double in the dock of Coleraine Crown Court and was audibly retching as Mr Justice Kinney told her that given the unanimous verdict of the jury, “the only sentence that I can pass on you under the law is life imprisonment”.
He told McIlwaine that once reports had been gathered together, he will then “hold a tariff hearing” where the 33-year-old mother-of-four will be told the minimum period she will spend in jail before she can be considered for release.
The jury of five men and seven women deliberated for around eight and a half hours over the course of two days before returning to unanimously convict McIlwaine of the murder of her abusive and bullying partner James Joseph Crossley on March 2, 2022.
During the two week trial the jury heard how the 38-year-old had been lying fast asleep and snoring, “filled with WKD and beer” and having taken a sleeping tablet, when McIlwaine crept down the stairs of her former home at Filbert Drive in Dunmurry and lifted the largest kitchen knife available.
Walking back into the bedroom, she had the wherewithal to move her ten month old daughter before stabbing her victim a total of ten times – seven to his chest and abdomen, once in the leg and once in each arm.
As he awoke and called out “help me Julie Ann” she grabbed their child and fled, locking herself in the downstairs bathroom where she rang 999 and then, under instruction from the call hander, she ran to a neighbour’s house to summon help.
An ambulance crew rushed to the scene and found the stricken victim on all fours at the top of the stairs but despite their best efforts, Mr Crossley died within an hour of being stabbed.
McIlwaine was in the back of a police car on her way to custody when news came through the radio that she had killed the man she claimed to love but who, in her words, had “tortured” her.
The police car had to pull over to allow her to vomit on to the roadside.
It was during that hour when McIlwaine paced back and forth and sat in her neighbour’s living room, her stream of conscious being recorded on the officer’s body worn cameras.
The jury heard how Mr Crossley had given her an “ultimatum” of choosing between either him or her family and she was recorded telling police and her neighbour the situation had gotten to the point where: “I’m thinking it’s either him or me…if I don’t get rid of him I have no way of escaping from him…it’s either him for me.”
“It was like premeditated… I knew what I was doing… it was like there was no escape,” she was recorded saying, “I didn’t plan to kill him. He is a horrible person, twisting things in my head about his solicitor and his family.
“I just couldn’t take any more. I would’ve ended up with nothing. I would’ve had no one and nothing – I felt that was the only option… I didn’t think he would’ve died… he would’ve ended up killing me – that was my only option.”
While McIlwaine had always admitted inflicting the fatal stab wounds, she fought the murder charge on a partial defence of a loss of self control.
During her police interviews McIlwaine told detectives she and Crossley had been arguing off and on that day but as her victim lay sleeping, “I was getting all these thoughts in my head…I didn’t know what was going on…I felt like a psychopath.”
“I didn’t want me and him to be together. I didn’t want to happen what happened,” she told police, who suggested to her “something came over you?”
“I couldn’t stop, I just kept pushing it and pushing it. He said ‘Julie Ann help me’…I took the baby and ran out,” she told the detectives.
She told police how they first began their relationship in January 2020 but that between then and the fatal stabbing around 11.30pm on March 1, 2022, there had been periods of separation with incidents of domestic violence, coercive control and verbal abuse interspersed in the relationship which McIlwaine was hiding and keeping secret from her friends, family and Social Services.
The jury heard how incidents included:
Two psychiatrists gave evidence and while they did not give a view on whether McIlwaine had suffered a loss of control, the culmination of the physical assaults, psychological abuse and coercive control would have created a “traumatic bond” between McIlwaine and Mr Crossley.
Dr Christine Kennedy testified it would be “naive” to think that McIlwaine could simply have walked away and left the relationship while Dr Jeremy Kenney-Herbert said in his report that McIlwaine had exhibited behaviour consistent with “depersonalisation”.
He explained that with Crossley delivering his ultimatum to McIlwaine that she had to choose either him or her family, such a decision would have been “psychologically intolerable” for McIlwaine and that when she was in the process of getting the knife and stabbing her victim, “she knows that she’s doing them [her physical actions] but she feels in some way separated from them.”
If successful she would have been convicted of manslaughter but by their unanimous verdict, the jury rejected the proposition and accepted that, in the words of the prosecution, she made a “rational decision” to kill Mr Crossley.
Following the jury’s verdict, Mr Justice Kinney emphasised their role was an “integral part” of the justice system and thanking them for their patience and the “conscientious way” they had approached the case, he said they had to deal with “very difficult evidence”.
As the jury filed out McIlwaine struggled out of her coat, audibly weeping and retching in the dock.
Defence KC Eilish McDermott asked for the judge to order a pre-sentence report and the judge agreed and suggested the case could be reviewed in two weeks to set a time table for various reports and the tariff hearing.
Remanding the weeping and shocked looking killer into custody, he adjourned the case to November 6.
As McIlwaine was led away to the cells, there were angry shouts exchanged between her family and the grieving relatives of Mr Crossley.
News Catch Up – Wednesday 23 October