Pearse McAuley freed from jail
McAuley jailed for Christmas Eve 2014 attack on ex-wife Pauline Tully, now a Sinn Fein TD.
Ex-IRA killer Pearse McAuley walked free from Roscommon's Castlerea Prison today (June 24) having served close to three-quarters of a revised 12-year sentence for the 2014 Christmas horror attack on ex-wife, now elected TD Pauline Tully.
McAuley was whisked away from the prison in a Northern registered white-coloured SUV.
Pearse McAuley (55), previously with an address in Ballyconnell, Co Cavan, was sentenced at Cavan Circuit Criminal Court to 12 years' imprisonment with the final four years suspended in December 2015.
However, following an application for review by the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Court of Appeal found McAuley's eight-year jail term to be “unduly lenient” and re-sentenced him to 12 years with the final two years suspended.
McAuley stabbed Ms Tully, now a Sinn Féin TD, 13 times at the home the couple previously shared in Kilnaleck on Christmas Eve 2014.
McAuley used a steak knife to seriously assault his wife, also punching her multiple times over a prolonged period of almost four hours while their kids were still in the house.
Only when a drunken McAuley passed out on the kitchen floor did Ms Tully manage to escape, locking herself in the car he had arrived in and letting off the handbrake allowing the vehicle to roll down the hill where it struck a ditch.
Even at that McAuley followed and, when help arrived, he had been holding a rock above his head threatening to break into the car to inflict further injury to Ms Tully.
He had previously served a sentence for killing Det Garda Jerry McCabe in 1996, and hit headlines in 1991 as one of several inmates who broke free from London's infamous Brixton prison.
Ms Tully is a Sinn Féin TD for Cavan-Monaghan and the party’s spokeswoman on disability and carers.
In an interview with The Anglo-Celt back in January of this year, Ms Tully spoke of the horrifying ordeal, and McAuley had forced their two young boys to say goodbye to their mother.
Asked with McAuley’s release date nearing, does she feel safe, Ms Tully answered: “There’s nothing I can do about it. He’s served his time. He’s going to be out and all I can hope for is that he will keep his distance. He will respect the Protection Order that’s in place and leave me and the children alone.
“I am not naïve enough to think that he won’t look for access to the boys but I’m hoping that he will do that through the courts, which is the proper way to do it, and then that he will respect the decision of the court, whatever that might be, which I hope will be based on what the boys want.”
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