Killer Raymond Donovan has been transferred back to a high-security jail on suspicion of having a mobile phone and sending threatening texts.
The brute, who beat and strangled his ex-girlfriend Ann Walsh after she ditched him, has been sent from cushy Shelton Abbey back to Castlerea Prison.
Lifer Donovan had been boasting he’d get out of lock-up after a parole hearing later this year but now his hopes of early release have been set back.
A source told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “A phone was found and it is alleged to have had threatening text messages to a woman on it.
“He had been enjoying the perks of Shelton Abbey, and day release to visit family, but that will likely end now.”
Donovan was caged for life in 2006 after he was convicted of murdering 23-year-old Ann Walsh.
Ann’s body was found on waste ground behind St Senan’s Church in Kilrush, Co Clare. She had been stripped from the waist and clumps of her hair were missing.
Popular shop worker Ann had dated vicious Donovan for three years but split from him almost a year before her death.
She was just days away from a family holiday in Salou in Spain when he dragged her to her death after meeting her in a local pub.
Last night, her heartbroken brother Stephen Walsh said brute Donovan should be kept behind bars and forced to serve his full life sentence. He told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “He was out before Christmas visiting his family – but all we have to visit at Christmas is a grave.
“He’s not someone who should be let back into society. Ann was afraid of her life of him, what about the next person he meets down the road?
“We feel we are being left in the dark. There’s more thought for the murderer than for the people who have been robbed of a loved one.”
Ann’s brutal killing is the focus of a TG4 documentary, Maru Inar Measc, set to air on Wednesday.
Stephen revealed: “He used to beat her, stuck her head into the toilet, into the sink. Ann had been looking forward to going on holidays. She never had a passport. It was her first passport and her passport photo ended up on her headstone.
“He dragged Ann by the head across from the opposite side of the road and he strangled her.
“After he killed her he took her clothes off and folded them neatly.
“His face was marked everywhere. They said that she put up an awful fight to get him off.
“Ann was only very thin. I can just picture him kneeling on her chest and strangling her.”
Donovan’s next parole hearing is due in September 2022 and Ann’s family will be forced to write a letter to the board outlining why he should not be freed.
Stephen said: “He has never shown one ounce of remorse for what he did. I couldn’t imagine seeing him.
“Life should mean life.”
A spokesman for the Irish Prison Service said it “does not comment on individual prisoners”.
