The trial heard how Mr O’Connor, who was 58, was discovered in a pool of his own blood, having suffered extensive blunt force injuries all over his body after spending the night drinking with Roche.<\/p>\n
The 36-year-old, previously of Dominic’s Place in Waterford city, had pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to the manslaughter of Mr O’Connor at the Cluain Fada housing estate in New Ross, Co Wexford on New Year’s Eve 2024.<\/p>\n
The trial heard that Roche had been in a relationship with Mr O’Connor’s daughter for some years prior to the murder and that the couple had just learned they were expecting a child.<\/p>\n
Handing down the mandatory term of life in prison to Roche today, Mr Justice McGrath said the deceased had over 100 injuries to his body.<\/p>\n
He said Mr O’Connor “effectively bled to death and died from a savage beating at the hands of the accused Wayne Roche”.<\/p>\n
![\"Headshot](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/0021a3ae-614.jpg\"\/)
\nJohn O’Connor died on 31 December<\/p>\n
The judge said Roche had repeatedly lied in the immediate aftermath of these events and tried to lay the blame on a “wholly innocent man and friend” of the deceased, Michael Bancewicz.<\/p>\n
He said Roche had known the deceased well and was about to become a father to Mr O’Connor’s grandchild.<\/p>\n
Mr Justice McGrath said Roche had given evidence in his own defence, stating that he could not remember what had happened on the night in question due to taking a substantial amount of drugs.<\/p>\n
The judge said the jury of four men and eight women had entirely rejected the this evidence.<\/p>\n
The judge added: “The appalling behaviour of the accused during the trial persisted to today’s date, which included repeated interruptions of prosecution witnesses, repeated threats to discharge the services of his lawyers and continued to include several disruptions to the closing speech by the prosecution lawyer.”<\/p>\n
Mr Justice McGrath said the defendant had interrupted today’s sentence hearing, indicating he did not want to sit through it, “then deciding he wanted to stay, then wanted to leave and simply upped and left court”.<\/p>\n
The judge said that this was in keeping with a pattern of behaviour that he had observed since the very outset of dealing with the case.<\/p>\n
He said the defendant’s behaviour was in contrast to the patience and dignity shown by Mr O’Connor’s family.<\/p>\n
“I can only commend the family for the manner they dealt with these provocations on the part of Wayne Roche,” Mr Justice McGrath said.<\/p>\n
Roche had significant criminal history, says judge<\/p>\n
The judge pointed out that Roche had a very significant criminal history and had served various periods of time in custody for robbery and violence.<\/p>\n
Today’s sentence hearing was told that Roche has 83 previous convictions, which include assault, threats to kill, theft, robbery, burglary and false imprisonment.<\/p>\n
Mr Justice McGrath went on to say he was in no doubt that Mr O’Connor was a “much-loved and very kind” man, who was “sorely and sadly missed” by his family.<\/p>\n
He said Mr O’Connor hadn’t deserved to die in the manner he did.<\/p>\n
“I can only offer my condolences to the deceased’s family and can only hope they take some small comfort from the finding of the jury and the conclusion of this process today,” the judge added.<\/p>\n
In a victim impact statement today, the family of the deceased said that “a vicious, inhumane attack” had been carried out on Mr O’Connor inside his home and that he had been robbed of his future.<\/p>\n
They said Roche had shown no remorse for what he had done and “we as a family feel we have been handed the life sentence.”<\/p>\n
Mr O’Connor’s daughter, Chloe said her ex-partner had taken her “whole life” by taking her father away from her. She said Roche had also taken her son’s future with his grandfather.<\/p>\n
John Byrne SC, defending, told the court that his client wished to apologise to Chloe and all of the O’Connor family.<\/p>\n
However, he said Roche still did not accept the verdict of the jury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A judge has noted how the “appalling” and disruptive behaviour of a violent criminal, who murdered his then…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-501713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501713","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=501713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}