The brother of a man who murdered their ailing 58-year-old mother 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 a victim impact statement on Tuesday, Angela Canavan’s son Keith Canavan said his brother Nigel did not 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 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”.
He 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.
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Keith said Nigel 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 also said that anyone who would have known Nigel would have known how much he loved their mother, but his actions had not shown love.
Mr Justice Kerida Naidoo said Ms Canavan was a well-loved and accomplished person and he said it “must be beyond any mother’s darkest imaginings that they would die at the hand of the child they gave birth to”.
On Tuesday Nigel Canavan (39) was sentenced to life imprisonment after he was convicted last month of murdering his mother.
Desmond Dockery SC, defending, said the defendant’s brother Keith had made a passing reference in his victim impact statement that despite the violence inflicted by Nigel on their mother, anyone who knew Nigel would have known how much he loved his mother.
On May 16th, a jury convicted Nigel of murder, rejecting his claim he was provoked and defending himself from an attack by his mother, whom he strangled and smothered to death in her own home.
Nigel 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 succumbing to alcoholism.
Nigel also claimed 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 during his trial, Nigel further accused his mother of deliberately provoking him by calling him the “worst son in the world” and saying during a heated argument how she wished she had never had him.
The jury also rejected a suggestion by Nigel’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, the court heard.
Nigel, 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, Sligo, on May 1st, 2023.
