The man who died in a house fire in the Douglas area of Cork on Tuesday afternoon was a convicted killer who had been jailed twice for violent crimes against women, it has emerged.
Conor Downey, 57, was pronounced dead after being found in his home on West Douglas Road following the blaze on Tuesday.
CorkBeo reports that in 2004, Downey (then 39) was jailed for 12 years after a trial in the Central Criminal Court in Dublin heard that he had broken into a woman's flat in Cork city while she was sleeping, sexually assaulted her and beat her so badly that when she arrived at a nearby Garda station, officers thought she was 'wearing a Halloween mask'.
READ MORE - Man dead following house fire in Cork
Downey had also been jailed in 1993 in London for the 1988 manslaughter of 26-year-old Donegal woman Suzanne Redden, with whom he had been sharing a house. The attempted rape and assault in Cork also happened in 1988 but Downey was only arrested for it in 2001, when fingerprint evidence and advances in DNA technology led investigating Gardai to him.
The remains of the woman he killed in England were only discovered in 1992, after Downey himself went to police in Surrey and confessed to the crime. Downey told police they had been having consensual sex but she had withdrawn her consent at one stage. During his confession, he told detectives that he then became angry and strangled her.
Downey gave information to the police which led to some of her body parts being recovered but the woman's torso was never found. His fingerprints were found on bags in which the dead woman's body parts were concealed.
Downey was jailed for just three years in England for the killing of the young Letterkenny woman. After his release, he returned to Cork to live in the late 1990s.
In May 2001, Downey was arrested by Gardai in Cork investigating the 1988 rape of a woman who was attacked after she was woken in her apartment to find a half-naked man standing at the foot of her bed.
After learning he was being sent to trial for that crime on the basis of DNA taken from blood samples he had provided, Downey went to the surgery of the doctor who had collected the samples and threatened him with a knife, shouting: "I am in the Central Criminal Court because of you."
He was jailed for 12 years but was released late in 2011 and returned to his native Cork.
Locals in the neighborhood where Downey had been living told CorkBeo that he had kept a very low profile in the area, where he was most often seen doing the shopping for a family member who lived nearby.
One local told the outlet that some people in the area knew of Downey's violent criminal past and were very wary of him, but that "he lived a very quiet life" and seemed to spend most of his time caring for his sister. His parents are deceased.
They said: "There was a bit of fear when he first moved in, but he ended up being very quiet. You’d see him out and he was friendly, but he never went to the pubs or anything like that. He just kept to himself at home.
"His sister lived nearby and he would go out to help her with stuff but otherwise he’d only have popped to the shops or had a drink in his house."
Three units of Cork City Fire Brigade responded to the house fire near the junction of West Douglas Street and Galway's Lane on Tuesday afternoon.
The blaze broke out shortly before 3.15pm and Downey's body was found deceased on the ground floor of the home.
The exact cause of the fire has yet to be established but the death is not believed to be suspicious. His body was removed to Cork University Hospital and an autopsy is expected to be carried out later today.
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