'We still don't know why the warning signs about our son's murderer were ignored'
Killed Door Richard Front James Died Parents Mclaughlin When Of Crowbar Of Burst Who Sligo In Home Loughlin The And Paula 2018 The Connolly Through And Michael A Picture: Him His In With Jimmy Loughlin,
Jimmy Loughlin was 20 years old when he was beaten to death in the flat he shared with two friends.
The previous day, he’d had lunch with his parents and two of his sisters.
On the morning of the day of his death, Saturday, February 24, 2018, he exchanged texts with his father Michael about a broken vacuum cleaner that needed attention.
Jimmy was living in Sligo town, where he had moved a few months previously from his family home in Ballintogher, 15km away. He was on the cusp of his life taking off.
Around 1pm on the day in question, a man that Jimmy didn’t know broke down the door of his flat with a crowbar.
Jimmy was the only one home.
The assailant, 31-year-old Richard McLaughlin, used the weapon to beat Jimmy to death. Later, McLaughlin told gardaí that the motive for the killing was that he believed Jimmy, whom he has seen on the street, was raping his, McLaughlin’s, mother.
Over the previous decade, McLaughlin had been involved in a number of incidents in which he had threatened to kill or claimed that others were out to do him harm. He had been diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. There was a whole series of red flags suggesting that McLaughlin represented a danger to the public.
He was charged with murder and on July 9, 2019, a jury found that he was not guilty by reason of insanity. He was detained at the Central Mental Hospital.
On March 6, 2023, Jimmy’s parents Michael and Paula reached the conclusion of legal proceedings connected with the violent death of their only son. They received an apology in the Four Courts in circumstances that indicate a complete lack of sensitivity for what the family had been through.
This is in stark contrast to serious and even vital matters surrounding the killing of Jimmy Loughlin.
“It’s so similar to what happened in Nottingham,” Michael Loughlin says.
“And in Nottingham, they managed to have an investigation, inform the families, and now the UK government is saying it will conduct a public inquiry.
"Nobody has done any of that for Jimmy or for us to find out some answers and particularly to ensure that no other family will have to be put through what we have.
"The whole thing is shocking.”
Michael and Paula Loughlin moved to Sligo from London in 2002. Michael’s father was from Ballintogher and his extended family still lived there. The couple had three children, two daughters and Jimmy, when they moved.
Their youngest, Kitty, was born in Sligo.
“We came back to have a new life and give it a go,” Michael says. “My father was from the area and my grandfather was still here and there was some land so it all worked out.”
The children were schooled locally and all was well with their world. When Jimmy finished school, he began working but had a particular interest in performing as a DJ.
In late 2017, he moved into a flat in Connolly St in Sligo town with two friends whom he’d had since school.
“We were a bit worried about the security at the flat,” his mother Paula says.
"The top half of the front door was glass and we thought it might be easy for somebody to break in.
"But our worry was not for the lads’ safety, we never thought they would be at risk, but for Jimmy’s DJ equipment being stolen.
"We told Jimmy to be careful about who he brought back there and to mind the equipment. We spoke to the landlady about the door. We said we’d pay for a more secure door to be put there but she wasn’t interested.”
Normally at the weekends, the three friends headed back to their family homes.
Usually, the flat would be vacant from Friday until Sunday night at least. The weekend of February 23-25 was unusual in that respect. Jimmy had a shift to work on Saturday and his two friends were away on a charity skydive. So it was that he was alone in the flat that morning.
Around 1pm, the front door was broken down and Richard McLaughlin entered with the crowbar. After assaulting Jimmy, he is reported to have searched through the other rooms in the flat to see if anybody else was present. Then he returned to his victim and repeatedly beat him again with the weapon.
He left the flat and was arrested soon after.
“We got a phone call from Jimmy’s flatmate,” Paula says. “A man in a shop across the road rang him and told him that there were a lot of guards outside the flat.
"We went into Sligo and there was a tape around the entrance. A garda told us we couldn’t go in there.
“We told him who we were and he said they [medical personnel] were trying to do something for him. But we now know he was probably dead by then.”
Richard McLaughlin had a completely different background, experience, and home life to that of Jimmy Loughlin. He was an only child. His parents split when he was an infant. His father is reported to have suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.
From an early age, as young as 11 or 12, McLaughlin had experimented with alcohol and cannabis. He wasn’t too interested in school and left without completing the Leaving Cert. For a while he worked in sales, but it appears this was discontinued within a few years.
In 2008, when he was 21, he was referred to St Columba’s psychiatric hospital for “wrecking his mother’s house as she had got rid of his dog”, according to a subsequent psychiatric evaluation.
He became violent in the home and broke a table and piano. His mother reported the incident to gardaí and took out a barring order. After his release from hospital, he lived in a flat in Sligo town but it appears that at various stages thereafter he lived on and off with his mother.
In a move that would be repeated over the following decade, his condition appears to have improved in the latter half of 2008. In 2009, he presented at the hospital again. He had told his mother that he had “paranoia like in , believing he was being watched by others on a really big scale”.
He talked of going to the US to escape those who were watching him. It was noted around this time that he had received two head injuries in his youth, one while boxing in which he had been knocked out for 10 minutes.
A risk assessment was conducted in which it was noted that he “only thinks about hurting someone bad if he can get away with it and he knows it can’t be so”.
He was offered admission to hospital but declined and he failed to attend two subsequent appointments.
In April 2012, Richard McLaughlin was brought to St Columba’s by his mother with a garda escort. He had threatened to kill his mother the previous week and on the day of his admission he had broken staircase bannisters.
He was reported to have paranoid beliefs about freemasons and a ring of paedophiles around him. By then he was smoking cannabis daily. He was prescribed an anti-psychotic drug and referred to addiction services.
Two days later he left the hospital without informing anybody and went to his mother’s house. She was in bed and, according to a psychiatric report compiled weeks later, he blocked the door of her bedroom and said:
He was reported to have had possession of, and was swinging, a machete.
The gardaí were called and a siege ensued for over two hours. Later, his mother revealed that there had been incidents previously in which he had “blocked her bedroom door with a couch while she was in the room, pouring lighter fluid on the couch and threatening to burn the house”.
His mother didn’t report any of this to gardaí because “she was worried about her son going to prison”.
The forensic psychiatric report compiled the following week notes that there had been some “therapeutic gain” with medication, but that McLaughlin should remain an inpatient until there was significant recovery.
It went on to state that “in view of the longitudinal history of escalating violence to his mother” there was “a significant risk of homicide in the event of his premature discharge”.
The report included a recommendation that, on his discharge, the patient should be housed in a 24-hour staffed hostel with the condition that he does not visit his mother without an escort.
By then, gardaí were worried about the threat that Richard McLaughlin could pose to public safety.
The inspector in Sligo Garda Station, Paul Kilcoyne, noted in an email to the HSE: “In an effort to allow An Garda Síochána to respond appropriately to any further reports or incidents I am request[ing] that I am kept informed of any changes to Richard McLaughlin’s status at St Columba’s Hospital to include full or temporary release or any instance where he is absent without permission.”
Richard McLaughlin was released from hospital in mid-August on the basis that his condition had greatly improved. He was still reported to be using cannabis and drinking alcohol while on medication.
Over the following two years, he continued to interact with the health service, although often missing appointments. At various points he expressed, or his mother relayed, that he was “paranoid”.
In April 2015 he was re-admitted to St Columba’s. He had again made threats to kill his mother, and he was suffering with “paranoid delusions, he believed people were laughing at him”. He had also threatened to kill a friend. The gardaí were called again.
One garda, James Conneely, expressed concerns in a letter about McLaughlin’s “risk to others, including the general public”. He went on to state that there were communications issues between An Garda Síochána and the HSE when issues of public safety arose.
“This, it appears, is an ongoing and continuous breakdown between the garda (who respond to these calls and become involved in these confrontational situations on a daily basis) and the personnel responsible for the care of patients in the HSE.”
The potential threat posed by McLaughlin was to the fore of garda management as well. A few weeks after McLaughlin was admitted in early April 2015, Inspector Kilcoyne, in an internal email, alerted colleagues about him.
“In the event that a call is received in respect of Richard McLaughlin or if he is encountered in any situation each member is advised to proceed with extreme caution and report the matter immediately to enable an appropriate response to be considered.
“Please brief each member under your control immediately. Report any developments, please.”
Richard McLaughlin left hospital in June 2015 and his condition was once more considered not to warrant further inpatient treatment. Over the following 15 months, he continued with the same pattern of behaviour that had characterised most of his time outside a hospital setting over the previous six or seven years.
Then, in October 2017, he once more exhibited signs of a relapse of sorts.
One neighbour described him throwing food out of the window of his flat around this time, rowing with others, and drinking excessively.
She said he was a “violent man” who would go around the rear of the apartment block with boxing gloves and begin punching a wall.
Another neighbour later recalled that, around Christmas 2017, he was filming somebody on the street from the window of his flat, shouting at them: “I know you’re going to murder me”.
In early February 2018, McLaughlin’s mother phoned a social worker who was liaising with him and said she was very worried for his welfare. Her son was “ringing and texting” her constantly, asking if she was alright. He told her that if he “did not get to some part of the Bible she would die”.
He also stated that he was “obsessed” with people living across the road from him.
By this point, Jimmy Loughlin and his two friends were resident on the same street as the disturbed man.
A social worker appointed to liaise with and assist McLaughlin contacted the HSE.
Later, it would be claimed that an appointment was then made for him — but before that, on February 24, Richard McLaughlin beat Jimmy Loughlin to death.
“It’s unbelievable how he was left for all those years and never treated properly,” Paula Loughlin says of the man who killed her son.
“It beggars belief really, all the serious things he was involved in before he killed Jim.
Paula Loughlin’s assessment is quite obviously freighted with grief, but whether or not Richard McLaughlin was treated according to procedure, and whether that procedure was appropriate and adequate has never been determined by inquiry.
“He consistently missed appointments,” Michael Loughlin says.
“He consistently didn’t take the medication, they were told he could kill, they were told what he was capable of by his mother, they were told by others who worked with him — and that was over a six and a half year period. The same problems were there again and again.
“In some places his file reads more like a criminal file than a medical file.”
Losing a young loved one in the circumstances that pertained would have been a life-transforming event in itself. As might be expected, the Loughlin family were numb with grief and full of questions.
What followed heightened rather than alleviated the sense of despair that was permeating the family.
They launched a legal action against the HSE. In respect of this, the family’s solicitor applied for Richard McLaughlin’s medical records. The coroner refused access to the records. The family was then forced to go to the High Court which ultimately directed the coroner to hand over the records.
In July 2019, McLaughlin was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.
The coroner’s court was postponed four times before eventually sitting over two days in May 2022. It returned a verdict of unlawful killing.
The legal action persisted. The family’s solicitor retained an expert consultant psychiatrist in London to review Richard McLaughlin’s medical records. This was done and a report prepared with the proviso that it would need to be amended after the expert had sight of the criminal file, which would be available once the criminal trial concluded.
The criminal file was duly forwarded to the expert psychiatrist. However, among the documents which he included in the subsequent report, and which hadn’t been available to him from the medical records, was the correspondence that gardaí had had with the HSE over McLaughlin in 2015.
The family does not understands why these letters were not included.
In response to a question about what actually consists of medical records, in terms of policy, a spokesperson for the HSE said it “cannot comment on individual cases when to do so might reveal information in relation to identifiable individuals”.#
In recent years, the Loughlins have repeatedly attempted to find out what — if any — inquiry or review has been conducted. They got nowhere. In the end, Michael submitted a Freedom of Information request looking for the serious incident report required to be completed in the wake of any such incident.
“The final reply was that my request was being denied,” he says. “And the reason for being denied was that such a report does not exist.”
In response to questions about any inquiry, the HSE issued a statement saying that the mental health service of the area “have committed to a file review, which is currently progressed to tender stage”.
“The file review was unfortunately delayed, outside current Incident Management Framework timeframes due to the complexity of the incident and the various legal proceedings being undertaken.”
The incident management framework referenced cites that a serious incident report should be compiled within 24 hours of the incident. There is provision for exceptions. However, it is now over six and a half years since Jimmy Loughlin was unlawfully killed. It is unclear how legal proceedings could delay the review by six years. In any event, the legal proceedings were completed in March 2023, and the ‘review’ is now only at the stage of tendering out the work.
“It’s a joke,” says Michael Loughlin.
“I wrote to them last February about a report and was sent from pillar to post until I was informed this month about this review.
“Why is it happening now? Will everything still be around this far on? Will people have retired, will some of them not be able to remember some of the details of what went on going all the way back 15 years?
“Personally, I don’t believe there will be any outcome to it. That recent report about the killings in Nottingham was completed in 13 months. And this now is six and a half years on and they are tendering for who will do the job?”
There is one postscript to the Loughlins’ journey to attain justice for their son that reflects poorly on how people in their predicament are treated by the courts.
The family reached agreement on a settlement with the HSE through mediation, as per standard practice. All that was left to be done was the issuing of a formal apology — without admission of liability — by the executive before the High Court. This was scheduled for March, 2023.
Naturally, the occasion held significance for the couple and their three surviving adult children.
“We went up [to Dublin] the night before,” Paula says. “We thought we were going to be in a little courtroom ourselves but it was nothing like that.”
Instead, they were directed to Court Six in the Four Courts, where each morning a judge allocates the various cases for the day to barristers and judges. As such, the room is crowded with gowned barristers waiting for their case to be called.
Michael and Paula were led in and sat on a bench at the rear of the room. The crowds of lawyers milling around meant they didn’t even have a clear view of the judge or who was saying what.
“We heard our barrister call the case and said it had all been sorted out and then the barrister for the HSE stood up and people who were standing in front of us had to move out of the way so that we would have a clear view of him. He turned and opened his laptop and read the apology from that.
“I didn’t even pay attention to what he was saying, it was all distracting. Then the judge said he was happy we had reached agreement and as we were getting up to go out the door, I heard another case being called out.
“The whole thing was like a market.”
On August 13, a report was published into the fatal stabbings of three people in Nottingham by a man suffering paranoid delusions.
The report, carried out by Britain’s care quality commission, found “a series of errors, omissions, and misjudgements” by mental health services.
The killings occurred on June 13, 2023.
Valdo Calocane was suffering from paranoid delusions when he stabbed 19-year-old students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar when they were returning home from a night out. Ian Coates, 65, was then attacked near the school where he worked as a caretaker. Calocane then stole Mr Coates’s van and drove into three pedestrians, inflicting serious injuries.
Last January, Calocane was sentenced to a hospital order (equivalent to being committed to the Central Mental Hospital in this State) and told he would be in the high-security facility “very probably” for the rest of his life.
Calocane had been in contact with the local mental health services over psychotic episodes between May 2020 and September 2022.
The report found that “key” risk factors in Calocane’s case had either been missed or omitted, including his refusal to take medicine. He had also displayed persistent symptoms of psychosis and a level of violence to other people. Without action, the report stated, the issues identified would “continue to pose and inherent risk to… public safety”.
Prior to the report’s publication, Britain’s minister for health met with the bereaved families.
The British government has pledged to conduct a judge-led inquiry, although it is as yet unclear whether the inquiry will be a statutory one as requested by the families.
Speaking to the BBC, Mr Webber’s mother Emma said the failings were “dreadful”.
“If any one of those missed opportunities had been addressed, then I honestly think Barnaby would still be here today — so would Grace. He and Grace might be off on holiday together.
“Ian would have been off fishing enjoying his retirement that he jolly well earned. But they’re not.
“It’s systemic It’s not just one mental health trust. It’s uncovered and highlighted the urgency for conversation and change. It’s not a witchhunt, but we do expect accountability.”
Mr Coates’s son James said the report had been “a hard read”.
He told BBC radio: “If jobs were done properly and these opportunities weren’t missed and were dealt with properly and if he’d got the help he needed at an early stage, he might’ve gone in a different direction.
“He might be an upstanding member of society.
“He might not have been in Nottingham.
“We’ll never know.”