Belfast woman Julie Ann McIlwaine jailed for 12 years for murder of her abusive partner

Jailing Julie Ann McIlwaine at Belfast Crown Court, Mr Justice Kinney told the 34-year-old mother of four that despite the fact she was bullied, assaulted and subjected to coercive control by James Joseph Crossley, “nothing can ever excuse the murder of another person.”

The fact that she was subjected to a catalogue of domestic abuse did lower McIlwaine’s culpability but there were also a number of aggravating features including the use of a weapon on the victim who was vulnerable because he was asleep and “the number of wounds inflicted by the defendant on the victim.”

Imposing the 12 year minimum tariff, the judge emphasised that McIlwaine will not be automatically released at the end of that period but instead, it will be up to the Parole Commissioners to decide when, and under what licence conditions, she will be released.

Addressing the family of Mr Crossley, Mr Justice Kinney said while he accepted “it will be difficult for the deceased’s family to listen to these sentencing remarks on several levels” it was important the features of the “dysfunctional” relationship were fully outlined.

“However, regardless of sentencing remarks, the loss sustained by deceased’s family cannot be measured, and in particular cannot be measured in terms of a tariff set on a life sentence of imprisonment. I hope that eventually, with the passage of time, some measure of closure will be felt by the family,” the judge concluded.

At the end of a two week trial last October, the jury unanimously convicted mother-of-four McIlwaine of the murder of Mr Crossley.

The jury of five men and seven women were told how the 38-year-old serial domestic abuser and bully had taken a sleeping tablet and was lying fast asleep and snoring when McIlwaine crept down the stairs of her former home at Filbert Drive in Dunmurry and lifted the largest kitchen knife she had.

Walking back into the bedroom, she had moved her ten month old daughter before stabbing Mr. Crossley a total of ten times - seven to his chest and abdomen, once in the leg and once in each arm.

The jury heard she used such force the knife went between the radius and ulna bones of the victim’s forearm and penetrated through to the other side. As he awoke and called out “help me Julie Ann” she grabbed their child and fled, locking herself in the downstairs bathroom where she rang 999 and then, under instruction from the call handler, she ran to a neighbour’s house to summon help.

An ambulance crew rushed to the scene and found the stricken victim on all fours at the top of the stairs but despite their best efforts, Mr Crossley died within an hour of being stabbed.

McIlwaine was in the back of a police car on her way to custody when news came through the radio that she had killed the man she claimed to love but who, in her words, had “tortured” her and the police car had to pull over to allow her to vomit on to the roadside.

It was during that hour when, wearing animal print pyjamas, McIlwaine paced back and forth and sat in her neighbour’s living room, her stream of conscious being recorded on the officer’s body worn cameras.

The jury heard how Crossley had given her an “ultimatum” of choosing between either him or her family and she was recorded telling police and her neighbour the situation had gotten to the point where “I’m thinking it’s either him or me…if I don’t get rid of him I have no way of escaping from him…it’s either him or me.”

“It was like premeditated…I knew what I was doing…it was like there was no escape,” she was recorded saying, “I didn’t plan to kill him. He is a horrible person, twisting things in my head about his solicitor and his family.

“I just couldn’t take any more. I would’ve ended up with nothing. I would’ve had no one and nothing - I felt that was the only option…I didn’t think he would’ve died…he would’ve ended up killing me - that was my only option.”

While McIlwaine had always admitted inflicting the fatal stab wounds, she fought the murder charge on a partial defence of a loss of self control.

During her police interviews McIlwaine told detectives she and Crossley had been arguing off and on that day but as her victim lay sleeping “I was getting all these thoughts in my head…I didn’t know what was going on…I felt like a psychopath.”

“I didn’t want me and him to be together. I didn’t want to happen what happened,” the 33-year-old told police who suggested to her “something came over you?” “I couldn’t stop, I just kept pushing it and pushing it.

She told police how they first began their relationship in January 2020 but that between then and the fatal stabbing around 23.30 on 1 March 2022, there had been periods of separation with incidents of domestic violence, coercive control and verbal abuse interspersed in the relationship which McIlwaine was hiding and keeping secret from her friends, family and Social Services.

The jury heard how incidents included: * Mr Crossley being arrested and put into custody by Spanish police when he choked McIlwaine in a Santa Ponsa hotel in August 2020; * “Ramming” McIlwaine’s car off the road in a drunken rage causing £7,000 of damage; * that McIlwaine and her children were living in a Women’s Aid refuge for six months in 2021 “to get away” from Mr Crossley; * Calling her children “fat” and “ugly,” telling each of them to their faces that “there’s a bullet for you;” * Mr Crossley was subject to a restraining order having been convicted of domestic violence; * That McIlwaine was left suffering from PTSD from the incident in October 2021 when Crossley punched and choked her; * At the time of his death the victim was subject to a restraining order and was on bail for a violent assault where he punched & strangled McIlwaine and threw her phone at her; * Just hours before the fatal stabbing, McIlwaine had tried to end the relationship but after Crossley apologised, she contacted the PPS and the police to withdraw her statement; * As he went to sleep that night Crossley gave her an “ultimatum to choose between him or her family.”

Two psychiatrists gave evidence and while they did not give a view on whether McIlwaine had suffered a loss of control, the culmination of the physical assaults, psychological abuse and coercive control would have created a “traumatic bond” between McIlwaine and Mr Crossley.

Dr. Christine Kennedy testified it would be “naive” to think that McIlwaine could simply have walked away and left the relationship while Dr. Jeremy Kenney-Herbert said in his report that McIlwaine had exhibited behaviour consistent with “depersonalisation.”

He explained that with Crossley delivering his ultimatum to McIlwaine that she had to choose either him or her family, such a decision would have been “psychologically intolerable” for McIlwaine and that when she was in the process of getting the knife and stabbing her victim, “she knows that she’s doing them [her physical actions] but she feels in some way separated from them.”

If successful she would have been convicted of manslaughter but by their unanimous verdict, the jury rejected the proposition and accepted that, in the words of the prosecution, she made a “rational decision” to kill Mr Crossley.