Members of the Garda Technical Bureau at the scene of Aoife Phelan's murder
Aoife Phelan was brutally murdered by evil killer Robert Corbet
Daire Phelan has been left heartbroken by his sister's death
IN LIFE, murdered nanny Aoife Phelan was “beautiful, bubbly, bright, vibrant, kind, and caring”, according to 13 victim impact statements read to the Central Criminal Court on behalf of her family this week.
It was a polar opposite portrait to the Fatal Attraction image painted by 25-year-old Robert Corbet, who was found guilty of one of the most gruesome murders in living memory last week.
The cowardly psycho maintained Aoife had provoked him into punching, strangling and packing her into a 45-gallon oil drum that he sunk into a 10-foot-deep pit, having secured a bin liner over her head with cable ties strapped around her neck.
The attack occurred on October 25, 2012, but it was impossible to ascertain when exactly Aoife died or when she was buried before she was found 13 days later.
The motive that emerged in court over the last fortnight could have been plucked from 1950s Ireland.
But truck driver Robert Corbet, from Capoley/Sheffield Cross, Portlaoise, Co. Laois, also wanted all the advances in attitudes 2012 had to offer.
When his path crossed with the vibrant nanny in Coppers Nightclub in Portlaoise on June 30, 2012, he wanted no-strings-attached sex, a one-night stand, “a friend with benefits”, as he put it himself.
Aoife, from Ballyroan outside Portlaoise, might have lived for her family, but for Robert, who had only one brother, it was all about the haulage business, which had been financially secured against the family home.
The firm had been started by his father, who’d died of a stroke aged 55, which Robert put down to stress in interviews with gardai.
He was highly-strung himself, having had a nervous breakdown at 16 after spending too much of his youth sitting in the truck to keep his father company on long drives.
He’d tried going to college to study logistics in the haulage trade at a DIT in Dublin – but left after five weeks because he was having suicidal thoughts.
He’d returned to the family firm, where it was nearly impossible to make a living anymore with the price of diesel.
Since his father’s death, he’d felt the burden more acutely than ever to make the business work.
The one good thing in his life up to 2012 was Catriona Murphy from Dysart – they’d been dating since 2007 – but in the summer of 2012, she relocated to the States.
And so Robert, aged 23, determined to enjoy his new-found freedom.
Attracted to Aoife in Coppers, he accepted her invitation to go back to her friend’s house for a party.
The following morning, they went their separate ways after Aoife put her number in his phone. She entered his name in her phone as ‘Robert Carmen’.
Eight days after their first sexual liaison, she texted him saying she believed she was pregnant.
They continued to text, and Robert avoided Aoife until agreeing to meet her in woodland behind his home, where they had sex.
He dodged her as much as he could, but on July 21, she came back to his mother’s house and he resisted her attempts to have sex, but had oral sex, he claimed.
The texting between them subsequently became ever more intense. They would “banter”, and “bicker”, but the talk of babies was doing his head in, he told gardai.
Aoife was 30 years old and living between her parents’ home at weekends, and the home of the couple she worked as a nanny for – Linda and Darren Bayliss.
On Aoife’s last day alive, Robert agreed to meet her and took her to his garage, where he informed her he was flying out to see his ex in the States next day. He wanted to know the exact story with regards to the pregnancy.
According to him, Aoife flipped, causing his crime of passion that led to a total loss of self control and ultimately her death.
“I never set out for this to happen,” he said in the witness stand.
But, conveniently, there was an empty pit around the back of his home and he set about depositing Aoife’s lifeless body in it. After rolling the barrel he had stuffed her in into the hole, he arranged for it to be filled up and the following morning went shopping.
On return, he was arrested and questioned but lied about where he had dumped Aoife’s body “to protect the homeplace, my mother grew up there”.
He wiped away tears as he was sentenced to life this week.
His attempt to trash Aoife’s character with a rape claim she had made in 2005, and a threat to blame gardai in any note she left should she kill herself, said more about him, the jury concluded.
One by one, Aoife’s parents and siblings reclaimed her memory following a harrowing trial.
Mum-of-12 Betty Phelan revealed she did not recognise Aoife when she was laid out on a slab in the mortuary of Tullamore hospital for identification purposes – at first.
Her beautiful daughter’s “face was black and blue”, and Aoife’s normally immaculate straight blonde hair was spiked and “matted” with dirt and blood.
“We have our angel back,” she said, as she realised the body was indeed her daughters.
Dad Michael revealed how he had to drive past Sheffield Cross, where Aoife’s body was found, most days. Each time, “my heart races, my hands sweat, and my legs shake”, he revealed.
Aoife’s brother Daire recalled “the devastation in my heart” as he had to drive his parents past Sheffield Cross on the journey to identify Aoife’s body and how “I never thought I would be digging my sister’s grave”.
And Aoife’s sister Donna described “the hardest part” as having to tell her autistic son Owen that she was gone because Aoife had such a special relationship with her nephew.
“She was chief bridesmaid at my wedding. I will never get to see her be a bride now,” she added.
Another brother, Michael Anthony, said he visits her grave every day, but feels deprived he never got to see her to say goodbye.
Aoife’s sister Leighanne said her son Ryan has non-verbal autism and Aoife “was brilliant with him”.
“Now he does not have that special aunt,” Leighanne said. “No-one will ever replace her, she was the most caring, considerate woman anyone ever knew.”
Another sister, Lavinia said: “Not a day goes by I don’t think of you. I will never forget the fun, the mischievous laughs.”
Lavinia had to fly back from Australia when Aoife went missing, a 27-hour journey that was “long, silent and miserable”.
Another sister, Shona, said Aoife had always encouraged her to sing, but she was unable to finish a song at Aoife’s funeral.
“Every time I hear that song I tried to sing at your funeral [One Sweet Day], I sob uncontrollably.”
Aoife’s sister, Shalane said she had promised to bring Aoife to Knock one day, but ended up leaving her photograph in the basilica instead.
Aoife’s youngest sister, Nicole, said she too had come back from Australia, and had to abandon college work crucial to her visa application because of what had happened.
“That flight home was an eternity,” she said.
Her youngest brother Dale was in his leaving cert year when Aoife died and his studies were also affected.
“I’ll miss the banter we used to have when Man United and Chelsea played,” he said.
After all the statements were read to the court by Aoife’s eldest brother Daire, he commented: “We ask how much compassion was shown to Aoife on the night she died?
How much compassion over the following 13 days and nights was she shown?”