{"id":457343,"date":"2026-05-19T22:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T22:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/457343\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T22:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T22:06:10","slug":"murderer-of-donegal-woman-jailed-for-life-in-scotland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/457343\/","title":{"rendered":"Murderer of Donegal woman jailed for life in Scotland"},"content":{"rendered":"

A woman has been jailed for a minimum of 21 years for the cold-blooded murder of a Donegal woman in her apartment in Scotland.<\/p>\n

Claire Kilduff inflicted a \u201cfrenzied\u201d attack with a hammer and a knife on Gweedore-native, Ann Coll (61), a mother-of-three and grandmother, just before Christmas 2023.<\/p>\n

Kilduff (40) was sentenced to life imprisonment by Lord Arthurson at the High Court in Glasgow. She must serve a minimum of 21 years behind bars before being eligible to apply for parole.<\/p>\n

Kilduff tendered a plea to murdering Ms Coll just before she was due to stand trial.<\/p>\n

Kilduff set upon Ms Coll with a hammer and a knife. The victim was struck on the head, face and neck with a hammer while she was stabbed on the neck and body.<\/p>\n

Kilduff reigned at least 21 blows with the hammer, causing extensive skull fracturing and repeatedly stabbing Ms Coll.<\/p>\n

A post mortem noted a total of seven stab wounds on Ms Coll\u2019s body.<\/p>\n

Kilduff hid the murder weapons as well as incriminating items of clothing in an underfloor cavity of her own home.<\/p>\n

The attacker had searched on the internet for terms such as \u201cdeadliest stab wounds\u201d, \u201cstab wound to the neck\u201d and \u201chammer to head injury\u201d.<\/p>\n

Kilduff had arrived at Ms Coll\u2019s flat at 7.30pm and she knew the log-in details to her victim\u2019s banking app.<\/p>\n

Ms Coll was due to receive a payment of \u00a3400 the following day.<\/p>\n

At 7.40pm her phone was disconnected from her home broadband network and a bank transfer of \u00a3320 from Ms Coll\u2019s account to Kilduff\u2019s was set up. At 12.51am on December 22, the money was transferred to Kilduff\u2019s account.<\/p>\n

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Kilduff called 999 and claimed that she found Ms Coll in a pool of blood.<\/p>\n

Ms Coll survived cancer twice and lived alone at Newfield Place, Rutherglen, with her dog, Lola.<\/p>\n

\u201cTruly, as one of her children eloquently expressed matters, their lives will, due to the murder of their mother and grandmother by you that night, never be whole again,\u201d Lord Arthurson said.<\/p>\n

Lord Arthurson said he had to have regard to a plea of mitigation in which a senior counsel for Kilduff said she now took responsibility for the crime. The counsel asked the court to consider that she has health difficulties, had publicly expressed contrition and that this crime was out of keeping with her life to date.<\/p>\n

Lord Arthurson described the attack as being a \u201cfrenzied and sustained episode of multi-instrumental violence upon a 61 year old lady in her own home\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said that Ms Coll suffered \u201ccatastrophic, extensive and horrifying\u201d injuries.<\/p>\n

He also noted the bank transfer into Kilduff\u2019s account and the \u201chighly incriminating internet searches\u201d as well as the concealment of the weapon and clothing.<\/p>\n

He said that these matters, together with the \u201cfabricated content\u201d of the 999 call and the lack of defensive injuries found at post mortem \u201care all highly suggestive of a cold blooded and intentional murder carried out for financial gain\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said the crime was completed when her \u201cdefenceless victim had no idea about the savage, merciless and wholly murderous attack\u201d that was to be inflicted upon her.<\/p>\n

The sentence was backdated to February 5, 2004, when Kilduff went into custody on these matters.<\/p>\n

Police Scotland Detective Superintendent Lynsey Watters said: “This was a violent and shocking attack which has been devastating for Ann’s family and friends.<\/p>\n

“While no outcome can truly ease the pain of their loss, we hope this sentencing will bring some comfort to her loved ones as Kilduff faces the consequences of her actions.<\/p>\n

“Violent incidents such as this are not tolerated in our communities and our officers will continue to work tirelessly to bring those responsible to justice.”\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman has been jailed for a minimum of 21 years for the cold-blooded murder of a Donegal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-457343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}