COLE: MOTHER SET TO DIE BEHIND BARS FOR WINE BOTTLE MURDER
Central News, Press Room, Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, LONDON, EC4.
Tel: 020 7236 0116.
Old Bailey/sa
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http://www.CourtNewsUK.co.uk
22 August 2011
with pic of cole
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A mother-of-three who battered a helpless 91-year-old man to death with a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape is facing a life sentence today (Monday) – six years after she was cleared of another murder.
Melanie Cole, 49, brutally attacked frail William Reilly in his bedroom for his pension money.
The widower suffered multiple skull and facial fractures after being clubbed over the head with the wine bottle and a bottle of orange curacao liqueur.
He was found by his eldest son James covered in blood on December 29 last year.
The pensioner, a father-of-three who was registered blind and almost completely deaf, died a week later in hospital by inhaling his own vomit, after developing pneumonia.
Cole had wanted the few pounds Mr Reilly kept in his coat pocket and previously stolen cash from him.
She was convicted of murder at the Old Bailey after a two-week trial. Prosecutor Zoe Johnson said there was a ‘prospect she may end her days in custody’ as she faces sentence with a minimum 30-year starting point.
In the same court in 2005 the then 43-year-old walked free after she was formally cleared of murdering her landlord Robin Williams, 47, when juries in two trials failed to reach verdicts in her case.
She was accused of battering him around the head before stabbing him in the heart at his north London flat on New Year’s Eve 2003.
Judge David Paget QC said will sentence Cole at 2pm.
The unanimous verdict was met with cheers from the public gallery, which was packed with the victim’s family and friends.
Cole stood open mouthed in the dock.
Mr Reilly, originally from the town of Prison, County Mayo, had lived with his family in (55) Tower Gardens, Tottenham, since 1977. He had retired as a builder aged 78, but lost his wife a year later.
The pensioner continued to live with his son James, but was also assisted by carers.
The court heard Cole had met him in a pub close to his home in Tottenham, north London, and would turn up announced at his home unannounced.
Mr Reilly had called her the ‘bottle pincher’ after she had taken a whisky bottle containing loose change from the house and James Reilly, known as Seamus, had asked her to stay away from the house.
But on December 29 last year she turned up at the house while James Reilly was out, asking for a drink and a cigarette.
The old man was with his friend Carol Palmer, but she left shortly after Cole arrived at 5pm.
An hour later at 6pm James Reilly returned to the house with a friend to be met with the ‘appalling sight’ of his father severely injured.
‘His father was sitting on the edge of the bed covered in blood and had been badly battered,’ said Miss Johnson.
‘So ferocious had the attack been there was blood on the bed, on the walls and even some spots of blood on the ceiling.
‘James Reilly asked his father what happened and he said “It’s your fault, a white woman has given me a mauling”.’
Police officers called to the scene were ‘shocked’ by the state of the pensioner’s injuries.
He was rushed to the Royal London hospital, where it was discovered he had multiple skull and facial fractures and a broken jaw.
Over the following days he developed a chest infection and subsequently died. A post mortem gave the cause of death and pneumonia and blunt force traumatic head injury.
A pathologist noted 20 separate injuries to his head and face, which were consistent with at least three blows with a heavy object.
Cole was picked out by Miss Palmer in an ID parade, who said she had smelt strongly of alcohol.
At the scene, police found the wine and spirits bottles were both heavily bloodstained. Scientists also found traces of Cole’s DNA on the liqueur bottle.
A full DNA profile was found on a roll-up cigarette end in the living room and the mouthpiece of an open can of Strongbow cider left in the kitchen, which was also stained with the victim’s blood.
The lining of Mr Reilly’s brown jacket which hung on his zimmer frame had been pulled out and was also bloodstained and the Cole had made attempts to clean the blood from their hands in the kitchen sink.
Mr Reilly’s cash, somewhere between £30 to £80, was missing.
Cole had been clean from drink and crack cocaine after a six month stay in a rehabilitation clinic earlier in the year, but had relapsed in November.
She would drink six cans of cider a day and would smoke drugs as often as she could.
She turned up drunk at her friend Wendy Turner’s home that night, still bloodied, and said: ‘I am in trouble. I have got blood all on me.’
She refused to explain what had happened, but muttered ‘what have I done, what have I done.’
She then said: ‘If I get caught for this I will go away for a long time.’
In court Cole told the jury she ‘didn’t know jack sh*t’ about the murder. She admitted visiting Mr Reilly to wish him a ‘happy New Year’ but said she had left him as she found him, sitting in front of the television in his lounge.
Cole had walked free from the Old Bailey in February 2005 after two trials for Mr Williams’ murder.
His half-naked body was found submerged in the bathtub at his home in Lordship Lane, Tottenham, while bloodstained carpet from the flat had been ripped out and dumped in the garden.
His face was severely bruised and he had been stabbed twice, once to the front of the chest and once to the lower back.
Cole, who lodged with the victim, was said to have begged a neighbour to lend her clean clothes and her landlord’s blood was found on her boots.
Neighbours had heard a row raging during the afternoon, but after being arrested she told police in interview she had been performing a ‘sex act’ on a many for money, in a nearby park.
Cole, of [85] Culford Road, Hackney, north east London, denied murder.
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