A man who plunged a knife more than 11cm in to the chest of a 31-year-old woman and left her to die on an apartment floor in Mallow, Co Cork has been jailed for 10 years.
Joseph Butler (43) was originally charged with the murder of Paula Canty at an apartment in the Belfry, Bridewell Lane, on January 3rd, 2025. The Director of Public Prosecutions subsequently accepted his plea of guilty to manslaughter.
The mother of two died from a single knife wound to the chest. She had been due to celebrate her 32nd birthday three days later.
Butler, who is a native of Midleton in Co Cork, initially told gardaí he “didn’t feel guilty” about what had occurred as it was “an accident”.
At a sentencing hearing in the Central Criminal Court in Cork on Friday, Judge Eileen Creedon dismissed the account of events Butler had given to gardaí.
She said his claim that the killing had been accidental and arose from a tussle was not in any way consistent with the evidence of the pathologist in the case.
“His account was that he grabbed a knife from her during a struggle and that it was an accident. He indicated that he didn’t feel guilty because it was an accident and he didn’t know she was dead until later when he got a phone call from his niece,” she said.
“The accused’s versions of events were inconsistent with the postmortem and the blood-spatter analysis by forensic scientists. The blood pooling indicates that the deceased bled heavily at that location.
“Paula Canty was a vulnerable person, and was much smaller and physically weaker that Joseph Butler. It is not credible that she posed a danger to him that required him to plunge a knife 11.5cm into her chest. He left the apartment and there was no call to the emergency services. This demonstrates a callousness.”
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The judge imposed a sentence of 12 years with the last two years suspended with the condition that Butler keeps the peace and is of good behaviour for two years after his release from prison. She said she could only imagine the grief and the hole left in the lives of the family of the deceased following the loss of their loved one. She praised members of the family for their powerful victim impact statements.
Victim impact statements were previously read into evidence.
Darragh Canty, a brother of the deceased, said it broke his heart that she suffered such a brutal death.
“It eats me alive that I could not protect her from that monster of a man. She was left in a pool of her own blood just three days before her birthday,” he said.
Rianna Canty, the dead woman’s sister, said the family had expected to be organising a birthday party for her but ended up having to plan her funeral. She said Paula Canty had been denied the opportunity of seeing her two children mature into adults.
Sinead Canty said her “beloved darling daughter” had been stolen from the family in the “prime of her youth.” She said her daughter had a “soft, pleasant nature” and a creative disposition.
She said she and her daughter had a great bond and that her life had changed forever following Paula Canty’s death.
Paula Canty was in a relationship with Michael John Butler, a brother of the accused, at the time of her death. Joseph Butler, who has a long history of alcohol addiction, lived with the couple in the apartment in which he killed her.
Butler told gardaí he had been fighting with his brother, Michael John, and calling the deceased “bad words” when she pulled a knife. He claimed that she was injured in a “struggle” between them and that she was “grand” when he left the apartment. He stated that he later learned of her death from his niece.