Man (30) who beat 'best friend' 'to a pulp' told gardaí he wanted to kill another person

Alison O’Riordan

A 30-year-old man who beat his "best friend" to a pulp" with a baseball bat after they had set out together on a fishing trip told gardaí that he wanted to kill another person and make his victim's head "explode", the Central Criminal Court heard on Monday.

Robert Broughan also told detectives in his interviews that there had never been a "cross word" between the pair, but he had swung the bat "with bad intentions and power".

The court heard that the father-of-three later texted Roy Hopkins' phone after he killed him with a message that read "how is the head?".

He also said the deceased's eyes had "nearly come out from the beating he got".

The defendant said if Mr Hopkins had answered him he would have "gone back down and finished him off".

Broughan said he had left the deceased to die and his "sole intention" was to kill him. He also told officers that Mr Hopkins was "a gentleman" and his "best friend" and that he had wanted to kill another person.

Broughan, the court heard, had put petrol on the baseball bat before leaving it on the top of a shed at his home. He told his brothers what he had done and made "some disclosure" to his parents before his father alerted Kildare Garda Station.

The deceased's mother, Catriona Hopkins, told the Central Criminal Court on Monday in her victim impact statement that her son had died in "horrendous and shocking circumstances".

"How could his killer have valued Roy's life so cheaply? I'm so full of rage and anger and haunted by the horror of it. Sometimes in the dark of the night I dream I'm having my worst nightmare ever and then jump up and realise I'm now living it".

Ms Hopkins told her son's killer: "No punishment you receive will ever compare to the grief, pain and loss you have inflicted on me and my family.... We live hell on earth everyday as a result of the terrible atrocities you inflicted on my son".

She said her son was a very caring and considerate person whose pastime was fishing and loved peace and tranquility. She said she had got him a fishing rod for his birthday present the year he was murdered and he was so proud of it.

The testimony was heard as part of an emotional victim impact statement read to the Central Criminal Court, where Broughan of St Patrick’s Park, Rathangan, Co Kildare was sentenced to the mandatory term of life imprisonment for murdering Mr Hopkins (34) in the same town on July 31st 2020.

The sentence was backdated to August 1st 2020, when he went into custody.

On February 28th, a jury took just two hours and 53 minutes to find Broughan guilty of murdering Mr Hopkins.

Earlier, the court heard that Broughan has three previous convictions which arose out of one incident, where he was convicted for criminal damage and received a €200 fine. Two public order incidents for threatening and abusive behaviour and intoxication were taken into consideration.

Evidence was given that Broughan had addictive issues with Codeine and Solpadeine and would take excessive amounts of the painkillers. He was very badly burned in a bonfire as a ten-year-old child, was in hospital for a year and had numerous skin grafts.

In his fifth interview, Broughan told gardaí that he had taken three or four Solpadeine tablets before killing his friend and that he wanted "to get a third party".

The court also heard that a psychiatrist found that Broughan initially qualified for a defence of diminished responsibility on the basis of psychosis. However, when Professor Keith Rix retired, a new psychologist was appointed who didn't share the same opinion and that defence wasn't put forward.

In his fifth garda interview, Broughan told detectives that he had taken three or four Solpadeine tablets on July 31st before killing his friend and that he wanted "to get a third party".

A post-mortem examination revealed Mr Hopkins died from a traumatic head injury, namely blunt force trauma to the head and skull consistent with force to the front and side of the head.

Detective Garda Seamus Doyle told Maurice Coffey SC, prosecuting, that Broughan gave a full account of and admitted to the murder of Mr Hopkins in his garda interviews.

The detective said Broughan admitted to hitting Mr Hopkins on the forehead with the baseball bat followed by another hit to the side of the head.

Broughan said he had wiped down the bat in the grass before he hit the victim again a number of times. The court also heard that Broughan told gardaí he had swung the bat with bad intentions and power, and intended to make his friend's head explode and also intended to kill him.

Extending his condolences to the Hopkins family on the loss of Roy, Mr Justice Tony Hunt said, unfortunately, life had dealt the family "a very bad hand" as they already had a lot of difficulties in their background without having this thrust upon them.

"It illustrates that very bad things happen to very good people...For the little it is worth, I'm not unmoved by the human side of these cases," he said.

The judge said Broughan had shown no sympathy for the Hopkins family or expressed any remorse for this "horrendous tragedy". He said what was noticeable was the kindness of the people who had come to attend to Mr Hopkins in his "badly injured position". He said they had made as much of an impression on him as they had on the Hopkins family.

Commenting on the CCTV footage in the trial, Mr Justice Hunt said it was "very sad to see" as it showed Mr Hopkins "going about the things he enjoyed" on a beautiful summer's evening in July 2020.

He noted the way the deceased had interacted in "a very friendly way" with the people he came across in an off-licence and on the street in Rathangan.